Unpack the Future of Work at HR + L&D Innovation & Tech Fest Australia 2025
)
The future of work is here, transforming how HR and L&D professionals lead, learn, and develop talent amid ongoing change.
From advances in generative AI and digital tools to shifting employee expectations and unpredictable markets, the way organisations operate is evolving rapidly. HR and L&D leaders are moving beyond traditional roles to become key drivers of culture, capability, and organisational change. But the question remains:
How do we stay ahead when change is constant?
It starts with continuous learning, building future-ready skills, and rethinking how we lead and grow talent so we can build organisations that adapt and thrive.
That’s exactly why we’re bringing together HR, L&D, and organisational leaders at HR + L&D Innovation & Tech Fest Australia, taking place 22-23 September at Hyatt Regency Sydney.
With a fantastic lineup of speakers already announced and more still to come, this is the must-attend event for people leaders ready to share bold ideas, explore proven strategies, and help shape the future of work.
In the lead-up to the event, we caught up with a few of our expert speakers to hear their take on what’s next for HR and L&D - from game changing innovations to balancing technology and human experience.
Dana Schulenburg, People Director & COO, QBE
What’s the most exciting innovation you’re currently seeing in the HR or L&D space, and why do you think it’s a game-changer?
Gen AI or agentic AI - that feels like the mandatory answer at the moment. Over the course of my career, I’ve seen a lot of technology, and most of it has been iterative, just making the things we already do a little bit better each time. But what we’re seeing now is probably the most fundamental shift. It’s not just about doing the same work more efficiently; it’s about changing how we work altogether. These tools can meaningfully take away big chunks of work that usually eat up time and slow us down. They’re being applied across the employee lifecycle, and while everyone’s still trying to make sense of them, this feels like the most transformative development we’ve seen so far.
How can organisations strike the right balance between leveraging technology and maintaining the human element in people development?
I think we still need to focus on the experiences we are creating. Technology is, and always has been, an enabler. Even with developments like Gen AI and agentic AI, we need to look at them through the lens of what they are enabling us to do and what kind of experience we are trying to create. If we can keep that mindset, we avoid the risk of simply saying, here is a tool, here is a technology, here is an agent. Instead, we ask, what is the experience we want to create, and how can this tech help bring that to life.
What’s one myth about HR tech or digital learning you’d love to bust and what’s the truth?
I’m not sure it’s a myth, but the reality is there are no perfect solutions. There’s never going to be one piece of technology that gets everything right. When we’re operating in the tech or digital space, we need to go in with a clear mindset about what we want to achieve. Then it’s about working with the technology partner we’ve chosen to find the best path to that outcome. That means understanding what we’re willing to compromise on or adjust to get there.
In your experience, what’s one overlooked area in HR or L&D that’s ripe for innovation?
It’s a tricky one, but where I’ve landed is the construct of an organisation itself. In tech, we rely heavily on hierarchies and org structures. They give us a framework for data, workflow, and how systems function. But it feels like we’ve only dabbled in rethinking those structures. Some organisations have started to explore new approaches, but most of it still looks and feels like a variation of the same thing. I think that’s an area where something truly different is still yet to come.
What are you most looking forward to sharing or learning at the HR + L&D Innovation and Tech Fest?
I’ve been coming to Tech Fest since the very beginning, years and years ago, and for me it’s always amazing to see how the community continues to grow. It’s a space where people share, connect, and exchange ideas. I’m curious to hear how other organisations are approaching AI, how they’re embedding it into the employee life cycle and managing workforce change around it. But more than anything, I’m just looking forward to seeing how this community continues to thrive and connect.
What’s the most exciting innovation you’re currently seeing in the HR or L&D space, and why do you think it’s a game-changer?
My focus is on building mentally healthy workplaces, not just preventing harm from a safety perspective but also enabling people to thrive. The most exciting innovation I’m seeing is the long overdue the shift from trying to fix individuals to fixing work itself, and the tools and techniques emerging to support that. Right now, the HR and L&D space, especially when it comes to workplace mental health, has been relying on solutions that might look good or feel good, but often don’t have real-world impact. Some of the most popular approaches don’t necessarily help, and some can even increase the risk of mental health harm.
The area of psychosocial risk management has been around for a while, with tools that often borrowed from physical safety models - but many of those, despite their popularity, haven’t translated well. What’s emerging now is technology that can look at both the parts of work that are creating risk and the parts that are working well. These next generation tools, built from a HR as well as Work Health and Safety perspective can support not just mental health, but also performance, productivity, engagement, motivation, and even help ensure improved financial outcomes. They can help us get beneath the surface of issues enabling us redesign and improve the way people are working at individual, team and organisational levels.
How can organisations strike the right balance between leveraging technology and maintaining the human element in people development?
People development is such an important area, but we need to move away from an overreliance on traditional training. When it comes to workplace mental health and improving peoples experience of work, most current training models don’t work because they often focus on the wrong capabilities, are important, or don’t focus on embedding and hardwiring those capabilities into organisational systems and practices. Technology can play a valuable role in helping facilitate that integration, rather than just delivering one-off learning experiences that don’t get long term traction.
What’s one myth about HR tech or digital learning you’d love to bust - and what’s the truth?
In my specialty areas, psychosocial risk management, workplace mental health and positive job design, we need to bust the myth that just because something is popular or well marketed that it is good. Be they high visibility risk management tools, apps with grandiose claims about improving mental health or digital mental health learning platforms, there is often very little research to support their efficacy. When it comes to workplace mental health, no amount of individual training and awareness or attempts to build resilience can compensate for poorly design work. When it comes to psychosocial risk technologies, it is easy to identify the individual parts of work that have the potential for mental health harm (e.g, work overload, role clarity, organisational injustice), understanding how these various factors interact and what leads to risk, and knowing what to do to remediate issues is much more important and requires another skill set altogether.
In your experience, what’s one overlooked area in HR or L&D that’s ripe for innovation?
Job design. It’s not a new area, but it’s a critical one that people struggle with, and done well it can protect mental health and wellbeing as well as driving performance and engagement. Currently it sits in the too hard basket for most organisations and many of the contemporary tools and approaches are just too impractical to really bring to life. This isn’t about downing tools and rethinking the entirety of work, but how can we upskill HR leaders in this space, empower leaders to better understand and influence ‘good work’ at a local level, and empower individual employees to be more proactive in shaping their own experience of work.
What are you most looking forward to sharing or learning at the HR + L&D Innovation and Tech Fest?
I’m really looking forward to learning but also sharing how organisations can cut through the noise around workplace mental health, wellbeing, and psychosocial risk management. I want to talk about what’s next in the job design space - things like ‘The Healthy Work Project’ that bring together some of the greatest minds in workplace mental health, performance, productivity and engagement. Practical approaches to job design that can genuinely improve people’s overall experience of work.
Kate Ludwig, Head of People & Culture, Story House Early Learning
What’s the most exciting innovation you’re currently seeing in the HR or L&D space, and why do you think it’s a game-changer?
I’m sure AI is the typical answer, and honestly, it’s mine too but with a twist. Initially, AI was mostly focused on admin and automation, which is important. But recently, I’ve been seeing some exciting innovations around diversity and inclusion and cultural fit within organisations. For example, we’re using AI products in talent acquisition that support candidates who speak English as a second language or come from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. These tools help build confidence through pre-interview coaching and support.
Similarly, there are AI tools that assess how well a candidate’s values align with an organisation, which I think is a valuable use of AI. Instead of being fearful or concerned about how new technology will play out, it’s exciting to see AI adding value and helping create more inclusive workplaces. To add - safety is an area where exciting innovations are on the horizon. There are tools and approaches coming that could make a meaningful difference, but they haven’t quite landed or been fully realised yet.
How can organisations strike the right balance between leveraging technology and maintaining the human element in people development?
I don’t think organisations have to choose between technology and human connection. If tech limits connection, it’s probably not being implemented correctly. Technology should create or amplify meaningful moments that connect people. For us, with a dispersed workforce, tech enables people across states or the country to come together, share experiences, learn, and exchange information. When I first started, our services worked in silos without connection. Without technology, we wouldn’t be the successful organisation we are today.
It’s not about trading connection for tech or vice versa - technology should enhance the human connection. From an efficiency perspective, especially for lean people and culture teams like ours, technology and AI can automate admin and compliance tasks. This lets our people team focus on connecting with our Services and adding value, while service leaders focus on their teams and the children in their care.
What’s one myth about HR tech or digital learning you’d love to bust - and what’s the truth?
One myth about HR tech or digital learning is that it’s complex, overwhelming, or scary, especially for larger organisations implementing big changes. People often see tech as just another extra task or something they have to sign into, and it ends up underused or seen negatively. But the truth is, if you do tech right, it should add real value. It should make everyone’s lives easier and build personal connection within the organisation. The key is to approach technology from a human-centred perspective - focusing on how it benefits people both at work and as individuals. If you implement technology only to improve admin or profitability without considering your people, values, and culture, it won’t be successful. But if you put people first, the technology will be well utilised, and business outcomes will naturally follow, often more effectively than expected.
In your experience, what’s one overlooked area in HR or L&D that’s ripe for innovation?
Safety is an area that’s ripe for innovation but hasn’t been fully leveraged from a tech perspective yet. There are some amazing organisations doing great work in safety tech, but it still feels largely inaccessible for most, whether that’s due to cost or the complexity of implementation. I think that broader impact hasn’t quite landed. For example, I saw some exciting innovations at Tech Fest last year, like AI-powered onboarding and virtual reality tools that let you walk through workplace scenarios. Things like identifying hazards, understanding evacuation procedures, and managing risks -these are basic but critical safety foundations, and technology can really enhance how we train for them. But it hasn’t yet reached a point where it's commonly used across industries. I think there’s still hesitation from organisations around rolling out large-scale implementations, and some uncertainty about the real impact.
What are you most looking forward to sharing or learning at the HR + L&D Innovation and Tech Fest?
I’m most looking forward to seeing all the new tech innovations and exploring what we might be able to implement. But more than that, I really love hearing from other organisations and people sharing their stories, what they’ve achieved, how they’ve approached things differently, or ways of thinking that we maybe haven’t considered yet. It’s always exciting to take those ideas back to our own organisation and see how we might apply them. And of course, seeing companies doing cool things with tech is always a highlight too.
Vesna Garnett, Chief People Officer, SunRice
What’s the most exciting innovation you’re currently seeing in the HR or L&D space, and why do you think it’s a game-changer?
It’s something I haven’t seen implemented yet, but I’ve been reading a lot about it, and I’m really excited to see where it goes. The development of robots that are becoming increasingly human-like is fascinating. I’ve come across a lot of discussion about robots working side by side with humans, and thinking about what that could mean for workforce planning and talent pipelining really sparks my curiosity.
Even beyond that, the advancements with drones are incredible. The other day I saw drones being used to clean office windows - something you’d usually see people on pulleys doing. It just shows how far innovation is pushing beyond new software into the physical workspace. Where it’s hard to find talent, I’m especially interested to see how these kinds of technologies could evolve. It’s almost like having agentic AI in physical form. I’m curious to watch this space and see how working side by side with robots might become part of the future.
How can organisations strike the right balance between leveraging technology and maintaining the human element in people development?
It needs to start with awareness and understanding. A lot of people are putting in strict guidelines, but we are not at that point yet. For us, it is about building foundational literacy around technology and AI helping people understand what it is and how it works. It depends on the maturity of your workforce, how technologically literate people are, and what their individual perspectives might be. Often it is the unknown that creates fear. So, the key is making sure people clearly understand the purpose of the technology, seeing it not as a threat but as a support or enabler to enhance the way we work.
What’s one myth about HR tech or digital learning you’d love to bust - and what’s the truth?
The myth is that HR people can’t understand technology. I’ve been in a few organisations that have really progressed tech and traditionally not a capability within the HR team. I want to bust that myth in our profession. For me, this is now a really core capability. Every HR professional needs to be savvy, aware, and understand how technology can be a key enabler, whether that’s driving culture, helping the workforce be more productive, simplifying work, or improving enjoyment and engagement at work
In your experience, what’s one overlooked area in HR or L&D that’s ripe for innovation?
One area I think is ripe for innovation is compliance. For example, right now people are manually trawling through thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, of data points to check pay clauses and make sure employees are paid correctly according to awards and EBAs. It’s a huge pain point. I know some consultants are working on AI tools to help with this, but it hasn’t really been cracked yet.
In L&D, I feel like the LMS and LXP space hasn’t seen much innovation lately. Things like VR don’t seem mainstream. I’m curious what’s next to help people learn better. Self-directed learning is still a challenge because people don’t make time for it, so how do we build a continuous learning mindset that feels seamless and easy? There’s a lot going on, and companies are doing great things, but I feel like we’ve only just scratched the surface when it comes to real innovation in these areas.
What are you most looking forward to sharing or learning at the HR + L&D Innovation and Tech Fest?
I’m really interested in seeing what’s enabling business performance, not just what’s improving HR. When I walk around, I want to see the tools and technologies that are genuinely helping companies perform better, achieve their goals, progress key priorities or even disrupt markets. I’m curious to see how technology is influencing that kind of impact, not just making HR teams happier or saving time. I’m looking for the proof points and the case studies that show what it’s doing for the business.
With two energising days of content, discussion and practical insights, HR + L&D Innovation & Tech Fest Australia is your chance to explore the ideas, technologies and strategies that are driving real change in workplaces today.
Join a vibrant community of HR and L&D professionals as we unpack what’s next for leadership, learning, and people strategy.
22–23 September | Hyatt Regency Sydney
This is an event not to be missed.
Secure your tickets online or get in touch with the team.