DAY 2 | THURSDAY, 25 SEPTEMBER 2025

8:00 AM

Registration

9:00 AM

Opening address

Aditi Sharma Kalra

Aditi Sharma Kalra

Editor-in-Chief

Human Resources Online

9:30 AM

[Opening keynote]
Purpose-led growth: The role of career philosophy in learning and development

In the modern workplace, it’s not just skills that shape success but the underlying beliefs and values that drive people to grow. Career philosophy, or one’s personal outlook on work, purpose, and progress, plays a powerful role in how individuals approach learning and development.

As employees seek more meaning and alignment in their professional journeys, organisations that recognise and support these personal philosophies can unlock deeper engagement, faster upskilling, and longer-term commitment.

In this session, we learn:

  • Why understanding career philosophy is key to designing meaningful learning experiences.
  • How aligning development pathways with individual values can boost motivation and growth.
  • Ways leaders and L&D teams can personalise learning to foster purpose-driven performance and retention.

Future-ready leadership & workforce agility

10:10 AM
[Fireside chat]
Internships redefined: Turning Malaysia’s 1:3 policy into a launchpad for local talent pipelines

Malaysia’s 1:3 internship policy — which mandates one local intern for every three foreign employees — marks a bold move to strengthen the nation’s future talent pool and reduce over-reliance on foreign labour. But compliance alone won’t move the needle. Companies must seize this as an opportunity to create high-impact internship programmes that deliver real skills, mentorship, and employability outcomes for Malaysian youth.

In this one-to-one interview, we explore how companies can move beyond policy compliance to unlock value from structured internship frameworks that serve both local talent and business growth.

  • Designing internship programmes for youth that genuinely prepare them for corporate roles.
  • Sustaining the talent pipeline through local internships, building future-ready talent pools, while reducing dependency on foreign hires.
  • Embedding knowledge-sharing into internship programmes to ensure meaningful upskilling and mentorship between international experts and local interns.

10:50 AM

Morning break

11:20 AM

[Panel discussion]
Unlocking potential within: Rethinking internal talent development & mobility

The talent you need might already be in your organisation, if you know how to find and grow it. Internal talent development and mobility are emerging as critical levers for filling skills gaps faster. Yet many organisations still struggle to operationalise internal mobility in a way that’s strategic, equitable, and aligned to future workforce needs.

Let’s come together to learn how to:

  • How to surface hidden skills and connect them to high-impact opportunities across the organisation.
  • Enabling talent mobility by shifting focus from roles and titles to capabilities and potential.
  • Make mobility work: Building a culture and infrastructure that supports cross-functional moves and reduces talent hoarding.
  • From reactive to proactive: Using data and people analytics insights to identify mobility opportunities and future-ready talent from within.
Panellists:
Elaine Chong

Elaine Chong

Director, Human Resources & Communications

Tyson Foods

12:00 PM

[Keynote presentation]
Reinventing leadership: Leading with clarity, empathy, and tech fluency for a disrupted world

Constant disruption from technology and workforce shifts is reshaping the leadership landscape.

Many executives are still building their understanding of new technologies, while employees feel leadership communication on transformation is falling short. Meeting today’s expectations means evolving leadership to blend digital fluency with emotional intelligence, inclusivity, and cross-generational collaboration.

In this session, the following key points will be addressed:

  • Building digital fluency to lead confidently through transformation and communicate technology’s impact on work, teams, and skills.
  • Embracing inclusive leadership that supports wellbeing, DEI, and generational diversity, especially as Gen Z takes centre stage.
  • Developing leadership skills for the modern era: combining emotional intelligence, tech-savviness, and agile collaboration across hybrid, multigenerational teams.
Speaker:
Natalia Navin

Natalia Navin

Group Chief People Officer

Pos Malaysia

12:40 PM

Networking lunch

1:40 PM

[Keynote presentation]
Boosting talent density: Rebuilding core capabilities to strengthen organisational performance

Before organisations can unlock innovation and transformation at scale, they must first solidify the fundamentals. This means ensuring every employee not just high performers, possesses the core competencies, behaviours, and mindset needed to meet evolving business demands. Focusing on foundational skills and behavioural alignment, organisations can significantly increase talent density – the collective strength, readiness, and potential of their workforce.

This session explores how strengthening the basics today can lay the groundwork for more ambitious, innovation-led strategies tomorrow. 

Let’s come together to learn: 

  • Redefining the baseline – What core competencies and behaviours are non-negotiable in a high-talent-density organisation? 
  • From fragmented to focused – Building a unified L&D strategy that reinforces critical capabilities across all levels. 
  • Readying leaders from within – How reinforcing the basics improves succession pipelines and builds leadership readiness. 

Transformative tech in learning

2:20 PM

[Panel discussion]
Accelerated but at risk? Preserving critical thinking in an AI-driven learning environment

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the way we learn, providing instant access to knowledge, personalised learning paths, and automated content curation. While this evolution accelerates learning, it raises a growing concern: are we trading depth for speed? For younger employees who have grown up with on-demand answers, the risk of diminished critical thinking and problem-solving capabilities is real.

This session will examine how L&D leaders can harness the power of AI without compromising essential human skills, and how to ensure that speed doesn’t replace substance.

Key discussion points include:

  • Exploring the impact of AI on critical thinking and how passive learning may weaken problem-solving over time.
  • Preserving essential human skills, reasoning, judgement, and analysis in tech-driven learning environments.
  • Designing learning experiences that blend instant access with deeper reflection and inquiry.
  • Reinforcing mentorship, peer learning, and dialogue as key tools to cultivate independent thinking.

3:00 PM

Afternoon break

3:30 PM

[Case study]
The AI advantage: Creating smarter and more seamless L&D ecosystems

The need for fully integrated, AI-enabled learning ecosystems is becoming increasingly critical to streamline the entire L&D process, from identifying skill gaps to measuring learning outcomes. While some tools address specific stages of the L&D cycle, the future lies in AI-powered platforms that provide a seamless, end-to-end solution.

This session will explore how AI can transform each phase of the L&D cycle, enabling businesses to design, deliver, and measure the impact of learning initiatives with precision and efficiency.

  • Using AI to personalise learning paths and enhance employee engagement.
  • Tracking and analysing the impact of learning programmes in real time through AI-driven insights.
  • Aligning AI-powered L&D strategies with business goals to ensure measurable outcomes and long-term success.

4:10 PM

[Mini keynote presentation]
Performance reimagined: Measuring real employee impact in an AI-augmented workforce

As AI becomes a standard tool in the workplace, organisations face a new challenge, that is, how to fairly assess employee performance when machines assist in much of the work. The answer lies in shifting focus from how tasks are done to the quality, creativity, and impact of the outcomes. Rather than discouraging AI use, forward-looking companies are training employees to use it wisely and setting new standards for high performance in AI-augmented roles.

In this session, let’s hear about:

  • Redefining performance – How to measure value-added contributions in an AI-enabled workforce.
  • Beyond the tool – Identifying creativity, problem-solving, and judgment that go beyond AI capabilities.
  • Building AI fluency – Setting clear expectations for effective and responsible AI use across roles.

4:30 PM

Closing remarks

Aditi Sharma Kalra

Aditi Sharma Kalra

Editor-in-Chief

Human Resources Online

4:40 PM

End of Learning & Development Asia 2025