All 2026 Conference Sessions

Gartner Opening Keynote: Productivity Isn't the Prize - Expanding What's Possible for Your Organization

Speakers:

• CV Viverito, Senior Director Analyst, Gartner
• Arj Bagga, Vice President Analyst, Gartner

Key takeaways

• “For many, business performance remains strong, but costs are rising and most leadership teams hope AI will be a solution to the cost problem.”
• “HR has focused on getting employees to adopt AI tools and embed them across workflows in an effort to take costs out.” 
• “Unfortunately, AI will never be as cheap as it is today, yet almost 40% of companies are over budget on AI.”
• “Organizations showing the strongest results from AI are doing two things at the same time: 
  • Using redesign to change the cost of work, making them more than twice as likely to exceed their cost goals. 
  • Redirecting those gains from AI investment towards innovation, which increases the likelihood of outperforming revenue goals by nearly 4 times.” 
• “To enable this, HR will have to do three things for their organizations:  
  • Concentrate efforts and investments to put AI to work where it will make the greatest difference for success. 
  • Build for speed by getting closer to the business so that opportunities for value aren’t missed. 
  • Treat capacity gained as an asset to deploy towards future growth.”

Signature Series: Top CHRO Trends & Priorities Shaping 2027

Speakers:

• Mark Whittle, Vice President Analyst, Gartner

Key takeaways

• As business needs evolve faster than HR’s delivery model, HR excellence requires speed to value, not just efficiency.
• Human accountability is essential no matter what work AI takes on, particularly as employees increasingly co-create outcomes with AI.”
• “The workforce has become more load-bearing due to organizational decisions; to mitigate this, successful organizations operate with fewer, differentiated skills carrying most of the weight.
  • “Many CEOs have hit the gas but felt their leadership engine stalled, attributed to entrenched ways of working, lagging performance and critical skills gaps.
• The leader role is not designed or supported for disruption, requiring leaders to intentionally let go of legacy behaviors and ways of working and replace them with those that better align with evolving business needs.”

Building Future-Ready Leaders at Speed

Speakers:

• Ingrid Laman, Vice President Analyst, Gartner

Key takeaways

• “Sixty-eight percent of CHROs agree their leaders are not ready for what's next due to not having the right skills, leading low-trust teams and/or clinging to legacy habits.”
• “To build future-ready leaders, organizations must redefine the pace of leadership development by: 
  • Building leader AI readiness through a more efficient development approach
  • Helping leaders drive urgency to accelerate change adoption
  • Enabling leaders to deliberately disrupt ways of working with their teams”
• “Just 36% of HR leaders said most of their leaders are prepared to successfully drive their organization's AI objectives, while 60% of HR leaders agree leadership needs are evolving faster than development programs can keep pace.”
• “Leaders who routinize change are three times more likely to achieve healthy team change adoption.”
• “Eighty-one percent of HR leaders report issues with legacy leader thinking, reinforcing the need to identify and eliminate legacy ways of working and empower teams to co-create new approaches.”

The Future of Integrated Talent Management

Speakers:

• Alistair Kidson, Director Analyst, Gartner

Key takeaways

• “Sixty percent of CHROs rank identifying, placing, and retaining the right talent as their top priority to meet evolving business needs.”
• “There are two major friction points for talent management functions:
  • Nearly half of talent management leaders say misalignment between internal processes creates friction and wasted effort.
  • Forty-two percent of leaders say their day-to-day activities don’t reflect their talent strategy.”
• “An integrated talent management program enables organizations to generate an 11% increase in talent outcomes.”
• “To integrate their talent management program activities, organizations must do three things:
  • Connect talent customer data 
  • Design outcome-aligned solutions
  • Collaborate across the talent value chain.”

Frustration Machines: Tackle AI Work Friction Today

Speakers:

• Cian O Móráin, Senior Director Analyst, Gartner

Key takeaways

• “Only 30% of high AI usage employees are highly productive. AI makes tasks easier, but without active work design, makes work harder.”
• “Just 17% of organizations actively identify and manage work friction created by AI.”
• “Forty-seven percent of employees with high AI usage report they are overwhelmed by work, while 54% say they experience decision drag.”
• “Employees with high AI usage are 1.69 times more likely to regularly correct AI-generated work or accept AI output even when they know they can do better.”
• “To reduce AI work friction, organizations must do 3 things: 
  • Increase speed by shifting decision making from a default of “No” to a default of “Go”
  • Reduce overwhelm by building employee judgment on value in the flow of work  
  • Build desirable difficulties into workflow to stem AI workslop and build critical thinking capabilities.”

The Two-Tier Candidate Market: Recalibrating Investments to Secure Scarce Talent

Speakers:

• Emi Chiba, Director Analyst, Gartner

Key takeaways

• “Organizations are navigating two conflicting realities: crushing application volume driven by unchecked candidate use of AI, alongside acute shortages of scarce, in-demand talent.”
• “Approximately 90% of candidates are ‘available talent’ who submit many applications and receive few offers, while roughly 10% are ‘scarce talent’ who receive multiple opportunities and who are willing to walk away from offers that don’t meet expectations.”
• “Almost one-third of available candidates: 
  • Trust AI tools that organizations use will fairly evaluate their application
  • Believe AI tools that organizations use will evaluate more fairly than a human
  • Are open to a job interview conducted by AI.” 
• “Recruiting has been upended by AI – 86% of organizations are adopting AI in their hiring processes and 53% of recruiters use AI to write their outreach messages.” 

Hidden Drag: Why Performance Management Isn’t Driving A Culture of High Performance

Speakers:

• Tony Guadagni, Director Analyst, Gartner

Key takeaways

• “Just 39% of CEOs and senior business execs say that current workforce productivity is sufficient to meet business goals, while only 38% of employees say that performance management helps them perform in their role.” 
• “There are three challenges with performance management:
  • Too tolerant of underperformance: 49% of CHROs report that their process effectively differentiates between core and low performance. 
  • Does not inspire high performance: Only half of employees believe performance impacts pay.
  • Disconnected from day-to-day work: Just one-third of employees talk to their manager about performance at least monthly.”  
• “HR can address these issues with performance management by taking the following actions:
  • Changing the narrative on underperformance by supporting managers in identifying and addressing marginal performance.  
  • Disproportionately rewarding employees who make outsized contributions.
  • Embedding meaningful performance conversations throughout the year.

Don't Risk Failure: 3 Essentials for Elevating Your AI Agent Roadmap

Speakers:

• Stephanie Clement, Senior Director Analyst, Gartner

Key takeaways

• “Despite the excitement surrounding agentic AI, only 14% of HR agentic AI initiatives are fully or highly successful.”
• “Not all AI agents are created equal: the more autonomy you give an agent, the more important readiness becomes.” 
• “Organizations that have been successful with their AI initiatives start with the work, not the technology. They aren't trying to deploy an agent for everything but instead find work where autonomy creates meaningful value.”
• “Reliable AI agents require the right data, not just more data: Gartner research found that 56% of HR leaders report the top barrier to AI agent success is poor data quality.”
• “AI agents don’t simply charge you for employees and users; they charge you for outcomes and the complexity required to achieve them.”

Making Increased Spans of Control More Manageable

Speakers:

• Ingrid Laman, Vice President Analyst, Gartner

Key takeaways

• “Manager spans of control will increase by 18.6% in the next 5 years.”
• “Employees on teams with 11 or more direct reports say they have stronger talent outcomes (e.g., enterprise contribution, engagement) than employees on smaller teams.
• “Employees on larger teams report higher manager effectiveness at helping them adapt to changes in organizational strategy, build new skills as their roles evolve, and find new ways to accomplish work with AI.”
• “Job manageability is 5 times more impactful than skill proficiency in improving manager effectiveness.”
• While managers have increased workloads, HR can help by assisting managers with scaling time and cognitive effort.