Latest / Edan Haddock - Total Talent / UPLIFT 2026: The Future of Talent Is Human. And That's the Point.

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UPLIFT 2026: The Future of Talent Is Human. And That's the Point. · Edan Haddock - Total Talent

• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome back to Eden Haddock Total Talent.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Eden Haddock, Head of Talent and People Experience at Movember.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: No guests, no sponsors, just conversations about talent, people, technology, and the future of work from somebody who is still very much on the tools.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: And this week I'm coming to you with a slightly different episode.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because I've just spent two days as the MC at the ATC 2026 annual conference in Melbourne.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: And what an extraordinary couple of days.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I've attended plenty of conferences throughout my career.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: I've spoken at them, sat in the audience, participated in panels, and spent plenty of time wandering around exhibition halls.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: But this one felt different.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't say that lightly.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, the content was exceptional.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, there were some challenging conversations about artificial intelligence, the future of recruitment, workforce planning, and the changing expectations of talent professionals.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: But what made this event particularly special wasn't necessarily what happened on stage.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: It was what happened around it.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: The kindness, the generosity, the genuine connection between people.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: There was a real sense that everybody was there from something for something bigger than themselves.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that, for me, is what a professional community should look like.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: I had the absolute privilege of co-hosting the event with Carrie.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: And while much of my time was spent on stage or sitting or standing just off to the side, I was completely immersed in the content.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Listening, learning, challenging some of my own assumptions, and coming away with quite a few ideas that I want to explore further.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: So today, I'm not going to walk you through the conference agenda.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to give you a blow-by-blow account of who spoke when.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, I want to pull together some of the bigger themes that emerged across these two days.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because when you take all of those presentations, conversations, and different perspectives and put them together, I think they tell a really interesting story about where our profession is heading.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps more importantly, what we need to do to get there.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll start with the future of talent isn't about recruitment.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: One of the strongest themes across the conference was that talent acquisition is moving into something fundamentally different.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we're finally getting beyond simply talking about it.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Kevin Wheeler challenged some of the assumptions our industry has been operating under for decades.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: That jobs are stable, that recruitment begins when a vacancy appears.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: That candidates provide the information and recruiters assess it.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: And that people perform the work.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Increasingly, none of those assumptions can be taken for granted.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Work is becoming more fluid.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Technology is changing how tasks are distributed.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: And humans and AI agents are beginning to operate together.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Kevin's challenge was that piloting AI isn't the same as redesigning work.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's an important distinction.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because we've spent a lot of time asking how AI can help recruiters do their existing jobs faster.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: But perhaps we've been asking the wrong question.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: What if we stopped trying to make the old recruitment model more efficient?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: What if we actually redesigned the function around the work that needs to be done?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Another presentation, the capability architect, challenged exactly that.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: If we were building talent acquisition from scratch today, with the technology available to us, would we build the function we currently have?
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: I suspect many of us would say no.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: We'd probably spend less time designing teams around sourcing, screening, and coordination.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: And considerably more time thinking about judgment, influence, workforce intelligence, capability, and of course business advisory.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's not to say those traditional activities disappear overnight.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: But the value proposition is changing.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's exciting.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because for years we've talked about wanting a seat at the table.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, perhaps the opportunity now is to stop asking for that seat and start demonstrating why we belong there.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Another theme for me: AI is getting real, and the reality is messier than the hype.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, we couldn't have a conference about the future of talent without talking about AI, naturally.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: But what I appreciated was that the conversation wasn't simply about how wonderful the technology is.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: There was a healthy dose of reality.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Andrew Barker shared experiences of putting AI agents inside actual talent teams, not theoretical demonstrations, not another beautifully polished sales desk.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: Real agents doing real work, coordinating interviews, supporting candidates, managing tasks, and sometimes not delivering what everybody hoped they would.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Some implementations worked, but others struggled.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: And not every agent survived.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I actually found that refreshing because our industry has become very good about talking about the potential of AI, right?
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: But the implementation is where things get interesting.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's one thing to demonstrate a tool, it's another to introduce it into a complex organization with different systems, behaviors, expectations, and stakeholders.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: And suddenly discover that the technology isn't the hardest part, right?
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's the process, it's the data, it's the change management.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it's simply the fact that we haven't properly defined the problem that we're trying to solve.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: The presentations from O'Brien Glass and Workday also reinforced the opportunity to move beyond transactional efficiency.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: If automation gives talent professionals more capacity, what are we going to do with it?
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because if all we do is increase the number of vacancies every recruiter manages, have we really transformed anything?
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Or have we just made the same operating model faster?
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'd much rather see that capacity would be invested in better workforce conversations, stronger relationships, and improved decision making.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I agree.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's where the opportunity becomes genuinely interesting.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the next up, don't automate away our judgment.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Truly, this is where the conversation gets more.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because while we're celebrating the capabilities of AI, we also need to think carefully about what happens to human judgment.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: Aubrey Blanche's presentation, Use It or Lose It, explored the risks of automation and discrimination in hiring.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the important reminders was that technology doesn't automatically eliminate bias.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, poorly designed automation can scale it.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: If the underlying data or decisions contain bias, automating those decisions can reproduce the same problems at a much greater scale.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: So human oversight simply cannot be a box we tick.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: It needs to be meaningful.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there's another risk here.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: If we increasingly outsource our thinking to technology, do we eventually become less capable of making decisions ourselves?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's something worth considering.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because judgment is developed through experience, through uncertainty, through getting things wrong occasionally, through conversations where there isn't an obvious answer.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: And if we remove people from those experiences entirely, where does the next generation of talent professionals develop that capability?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Kevin Wheeler also made the distinction between what agents can do and what humans remain accountable for.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: An agent might coordinate an interview, it might draft communication, it might support an assessment.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: But accountability for the decisions and their consequences remains with the organization.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: For me, the goal isn't to keep humans involved in every single activity.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: That would defeat much of the purpose of automation.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: But it's to be deliberate about where human involvement actually adds value.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: And to make sure we're developing those capabilities rather than allowing them to disappear.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Another theme: candidate experience.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we still have work to do.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: This was one of the most confronting themes.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know how much work we still have to do on candidate experience in 2026.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: James Whitcomb presented research based on applications to Australia's one hundred largest employers.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: And what I loved about this was its simplicity.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Rather than asking employers how good their recruitment processes were, he experienced them as a candidate.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: The application, the acknowledgement, and the rejection.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: And some of the findings were pretty uncomfortable.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Rejection emails that looked almost identical, generic language, poor personalization, communication arriving at strange hours, and some genuinely embarrassing mistakes.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: In the research, fewer than half of the rejection emails were signed by a named individual.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: Think about that.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: We've invested enormous amounts of money into recruitment technology, employer branding, and candidate engagement.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yet something as basic as communicating respectfully with an unsuccessful applicant remains inconsistent.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a particularly interesting connection here to another presentation from Greenhouse about the AI doom loop in hiring.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: Candidates are using AI to produce more applications.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Employers are receiving more applications, but struggling to identify genuine signals.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: So employers introduce more automation.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Candidates respond with more technology.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: And trust begins to deteriorate on both sides.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's a fascinating problem.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because technology is making it easier to apply for jobs while simultaneously making it harder to stand out.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: And employers are finding it easier to process applications while potentially finding it harder to understand the people behind them.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: So my takeaway, we need to stop confusing process efficiency with candidate experience.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: They're not the same thing.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes the most meaningful improvement isn't another technology implementation.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's a thoughtful email, a genuine conversation, or simply treating someone like a human being.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Which, interestingly, brings me straight back to the importance of kindness.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Employer brand is no longer what you say it is.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: And this is another theme I found particularly interesting, the evolution of employer branding.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because we're entering a world where organizations no longer have complete control over how their employer brand is presented.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: Ben Stevens and Dane Nash explored what happens when a candidate asks AI, what is it like to work for an organization?
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: Not when they visit the career's website.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: Not when they watch the carefully produced culture video.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: But when they ask an AI assistant for an answer.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: And suddenly your employer brand is being interpreted through information gathered from multiple sources.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: That changes the conversation.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: Search engine optimization is no longer the only consideration.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: Answer engine optimization and generative engine optimization are becoming increasingly relevant.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there's a bigger lesson here.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: You can't simply publish an employer brand or an employer value proposition and then assume that's how people experience your organization.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: You simply can't.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Another employer branding presentation challenged where the organizations are actually asking candidates what matters to them.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's a fair challenge.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: We can spend months developing beautifully crafted messaging.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: But if it doesn't reflect the lived experience of employees or address what candidates genuinely want to know, then what's the point?
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like at Movember, we talk about doing good.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: And our employer brand is built around that purpose.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: But the responsibility isn't simply to communicate the promise, it's to make sure the experience supports it.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because increasingly the market will tell your story whether you participate in that conversation or not.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: And authenticity is going to matter enormously.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: The next theme: talent needs to speak the language of business.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Another really strong theme was the commercial contribution of talent.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: Derek Del Simone challenged the traditional measures we use to demonstrate success.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: Time to fill, agency spend, recruitment activity.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: And while those metrics have their place, they don't necessarily tell the business what it needs to know.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: The executive team is thinking about growth, productivity, risk, capacity, financial performance.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: And if we want to be taken seriously as strategic advisors, we need to understand that language.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: I really liked the challenge of asking what it would cost an organization if its talent function disappeared tomorrow.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: Not how many vacancies would remain open, but what would happen to the business?
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: What capacity would be lost?
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: What revenue would be affected?
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: What risks would increase?
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very different conversation, and it's one I've been advocating for for some time.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because talent data becomes considerably more powerful when we can connect it to business outcomes.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: A vacancy isn't simply an empty position.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: It might represent lost productivity, delayed service delivery, increased pressure on an existing team, or a risk to future growth.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where strategic workforce planning becomes so important.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: I was particularly proud to see my chief people officer from Movember, Fiona Lund, sharing our approach to workforce planning.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: The central message was to think big, but meet the organization where it is.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's very easy to design an ambitious workforce strategy, but it's considerably harder to make it meaningful and practical.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: At Movember, we're building the conditions to have better conversations about future capability, organizational needs, and how work is changing.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, That's the point.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: Strategic workforce planning shouldn't simply be an elaborate headcount exercise.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: It should help organizations make better decisions about their future.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it should give talent professionals the opportunity to contribute well before somebody raises a requisition.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: Another theme: well, our profession is expanding beyond the higher.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: We all know that.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: But this was something else that emerged: the increasing overlap between talent acquisition, people experience, and organizational capability.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: Myob shared how its talent function has broadened its remit across the employee life cycle.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's a really important direction.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because the traditional boundary between finding somebody and supporting their experience once they join is becoming increasingly artificial.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: If we understand the capabilities and organization needs, why would our involvement end on somebody's first day?
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: Why wouldn't we contribute to internal mobility, career development, succession planning, retention, and workforce design?
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm not suggesting every talent professional suddenly becomes responsible for everything.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: We've already got enough on our plates.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: But I do think our profession needs to become more connected to the entire workforce ecosystem.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that requires different capabilities: commercial understanding, data literacy, workforce planning, organizational design, and the confidence to challenge business leaders.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: It also requires us to look beyond our own markets.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: Tosh Oneshiri, sorry, his that presentation on leading across APAC was a useful reminder that expanding regional responsibility isn't simply a matter of adding countries to an organizational chart.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, think different cultures, different expectations, different working arrangements, and different approaches to leadership.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: If we're going to operate as genuine strategic partners, we need to understand the context in which people work, not simply add the same solution everywhere.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because the future of talent might be increasingly technology enabled.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: But it is certainly not one size fits all.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then there was the community.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now I want to finish with something that I think is just as important as all the technology, research, and future of work conversations.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: The people.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: Sharing the stage with you over these two days was an absolute pleasure.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think we made a pretty good team.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: What struck me was that everybody seemed genuinely invested in making the experience special for somebody else.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps that's what was so different.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps that's why the event felt so different.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because it wasn't just professionally valuable, it was personally meaningful.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: At a time when so much of our industry conversation is about automation, efficiency, artificial intelligence, and the future of human work.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: Here we were, surrounded by hundreds of people, demonstrating exactly why human connection matters.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: You can't automate that feeling of belonging.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: You can't manufacture genuine generosity.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: And you certainly can't replace the energy of a community that genuinely cares about each other.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: For me, that was the most powerful demonstration of the future of talent across the entire two days.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: So what do we take forward?
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: What am I taking away from ATC 2026?
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think our profession is at a really interesting crossroads.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: Technology is going to change the work we do.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: Some activities will disappear.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: New responsibilities will emerge, and the expectations placed on talent professionals will continue to evolve.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: But we have a choice in how we respond.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: We can spend our time trying to protect the recruitment processes we've always known, or we can help design what comes next.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: We can become better commercial advisors, better workforce planners, better at understanding capability, better at using technology, and importantly, better at creating meaningful human experiences.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because the future of talent isn't simply about AI agents or new operating models.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's about what we choose to do with the opportunity those technologies create.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: And after two days at ATC, I feel genuinely optimistic about that future.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: Not because I think it's going to be easy, but because I've just spent two days surrounded by people who care enough about this profession to challenge it, question it, and help it evolve.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: And who are willing to bring others along with them.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's what uplift should mean.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: Not just lifting our capability, but lifting each other.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: So to Joe, Trevor, Kevin, Carrie, the incredible ATC team, the volunteers, exhibitors, presenters, and everybody who attended, thank you.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for the learning.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for the conversations.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: And most importantly, thank you for the kindness.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: It really was something special.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: And if you were there, I'd love to hear what you took away from the event.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: What challenged your thinking?
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: What are you going to do differently?
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because the real value of a conference isn't necessarily what happens during those two days.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's what we do when we return to work.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: And on that note, I need to.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: So that's all from me this week.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: You've been listening to Eden Haddock Total Talent.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: Rather quirky voice today from two days of speaking, rather tongue-tied.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: But here I am.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: No guests, no sponsors, just real conversations about our industry and where we're heading.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: If you enjoyed this episode, please follow the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and share it with somebody in your network.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, keep challenging the status quo, keep looking after each other, and keep doing good.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: Cheers.