As digital transformation, global economic uncertainty, and generational shifts reshape work, Thailand is entering a critical phase of workforce transformation. For HR leaders and senior executives, this moment calls for the intentional redesign of talent, skills, and productivity.

This opening keynote sets the national context, highlighting how labour policy, market development, and cross-sector partnerships are shaping workforce capability and elevating business performance. Grounded in locally-relevant initiatives and best practices, the session connects macro priorities with the workforce decisions leaders face today.

Key themes include:

• Policy-driven workforce modernisation to build productivity, skills, and resilience
• Strategic partnerships as a multiplier for scalable talent development.
• Purpose-led workforce initiatives that enable upskilling, retention, and long-term competitiveness.

As economic volatility, skills scarcity, and digital disruption intensify, organisations can no longer rely on intuition or legacy workforce models to guide critical decisions.

This session explores how workforce intelligence, from labour market and skills visibility to organisational insights, can enable leaders to make more informed decisions on talent, productivity, and growth.

Key discussion areas include:

• Translating labour market and skills insights into clearer, more actionable workforce strategy
• Balancing productivity, talent investment, and business risk in an uncertain environment
• Moving from reactive responses to proactive, intentional workforce design

The rapid rise of AI is clashing with a workforce that is not adapting at the pace that the business requires. While AI promises greater productivity, it is also creating uncertainty, especially for employees unsure of how tech will reshape their roles.

In this session, allow our expert speakers to talk about how HR can break through adoption barriers, shift mindsets, and turn AI from a source of anxiety into a catalyst for growth.

Topics of discussion will include:

• Understanding the adoption gap: Why AI readiness varies across segments of the workforce, and how organisations can read these signals.
• Shaping mindsets for change: Practical ways to reduce AI anxiety, build familiarity, and turn learning patterns into sustainable practices.
• Targeted strategies for faster AI integration: Ways to design upskilling initiatives that accelerate enterprise-wide digital confidence.

Organisations are facing an interesting challenge: not whether employees can use AI, but whether they should. In highly-regulated sectors, for example, unchecked AI use can introduce significant ethical, legal, and reputational risks, and land companies in statutory trouble. In others, challenges such as AI hallucinations and non-explainable decision-making loom large.

It’s time to explore how CHROs potentially work with their CIOs to establish clear governance to help employees use AI responsibly and confidently.

The session will cover:

• Defining boundaries for AI use: Where AI adds value, where it poses risks, and where human judgment can override machine output.
• Building AI literacy: Feasible interventions to create awareness around issues like hallucinations, bias, and over-reliance.
• Designing governance that guides: The potential in CHRO and CIO working together on policies, workflows, accountability frameworks for AI usage.

For MNCs in Thailand looking to scale globally, agility is not just about workforce flexibility, but about executing consistently across regions while adapting to local realities.

This session examines strategies to strengthen performance by aligning pan-Asia business and talent objectives with local execution. This takes into consideration of the management of cross-border teams and the need for shifting mindsets. With the added complexity with technology, compliance and operational constraints, HR leaders must step up to align local realities with business objectives.

Key discussion areas from the speaker will include:
• Translating global strategy into local execution to adapt to local markets, regulatory, and cultural contexts.
• Practical challenges of decision-making, accountability, and speed when teams span geographies and time zones, and how to overcome them.
• How clarity of roles, systems, and leadership behaviours enables teams to adapt and perform without changing headcount or cost structures.

Cost management and productivity have become the defining talent challenges for both large organisations and SMEs in Thailand. As headcount growth slows, or even reverses, traditional workforce planning models, that used to link revenue directly to employee numbers, are proving increasingly ineffective.

HR leaders must come together to analyse ways to rethink manpower planning through a sharper focus on productivity, technology enablement, and alignment with the organisation’s P&L realities. Let’s ponder over:

• Why old workforce planning models are breaking down: Headcount-to-revenue ratios are failing in today’s cost-constrained environment.
• Is productivity the new currency? What automation and AI mean for redefining roles, workloads, and performance expectations.
• HR as a cost management partner, not driver: Practical ways for human capital leaders to connect manpower planning with financial outcomes.

The pressure to cultivate leaders who can unite teams, shift mindsets, and drive value creation has intensified. Today’s leadership pipeline demands far more than traditional managerial ability – the future organisation needs leaders who can combine functional expertise, enterprise-wide understanding, and the agility to evolve with business expectations.

This session explores how we can identify critical roles, bridge capability gaps, and build a future-ready talent bench in an era of continuous change.

Look forward to a conversation around the following talkpoints:

• Evolving the leadership profile: Why tomorrow’s leaders must be both deep functional experts and broad enterprise thinkers.
• Identifying & prioritising critical roles: How organisations can address widening gaps between business expectations and current talent readiness.
• Building a sustainable pipeline: Practical strategies to strengthen leadership readiness and close critical capability gaps.

In a business world obsessed with performance metrics, one organisation is taking a markedly different stance: leadership grounded in compassion. With the measure of success being societal impact, this philosophy, spearheaded from the very top, challenges conventional win-win thinking by asking leaders to be role model beyond the organisation.

In this mini keynote, leave inspired with insights on:

• Reframing compassion as a leadership capability, rather than a trait that conflicts with performance.
• How leaders can role-model compassion through everyday actions, people decisions, and business trade-offs.
• Practical lessons on compassion-led leadership, proving that doing what is right can also be good for business.

If you’re going out of your way to retain your best staff, you’re not all. Think about your employees who are digitally savvy, growth-oriented, and critical to future capability building. Losing this quality talent is often termed as a ‘regrettable loss’ and creates disproportionate business risk owing to their critical role.

Progressive people leaders are adopting tiered retention strategies, comprising purposeful development, and differentiated rewards to protect their most business-critical talent – and that’s what we will dive into for this session.

Get set to discuss:

• Identifying business-critical talent: Utilising tools such as talent segmentation and skills gap analysis to pinpoint which roles and individuals matter most.
• Designing targeted strategies: Purposeful training and differentiated rewards as potential tools for retaining high-impact talent.
• Balancing fairness with focus: How to communicate and implement tiered retention strategies without eroding perceptions of workforce equity.