The Human Advantage - Building a best place to work in an AI-enabled world
About the Masterclass
When everyone has access to AI, what will be your organisation’s advantage?
AI is already changing how work gets done.
The bigger opportunity is deciding where AI should create capacity, where people should continue to lead, and how work can be designed around the strengths of both.
The Human Advantage Masterclass brings these connected conversations together in one practical day, exploring where leaders can invest in human capability as roles, teams and ways of working change.
As part of the day, a guided role-design workshop will help you apply that thinking to your own organisation. You’ll leave with a role-design map, a focused set of priorities, and a clearer starting point for conversations with your team and board.
It’s time to join the dots
Much of the focus on AI has been on using technology to do existing work faster.
But productivity is only one part of the picture.
As AI becomes part of everyday work, leaders need to consider four connected areas:
AI readiness and employee experience
How is AI changing clarity, confidence, capability, workload, expectations and the way people experience work?
The new leadership mandate
How do you lead while learning, create clarity without having every answer, and continually build capability as work changes?
The human advantage
Which capabilities become more important as AI takes on more work, and how do we continue developing judgement, leadership, relationships, influence, communication and creativity?
The future of work and roles
Many businesses are stuck on how AI should reshape their roles, and how is work best done — by Humans, AI or both?
This session gives you a practical framework to audit how work is currently done across your business, to identify where AI could free up significant time and capacity, and redesign roles intentionally — so that the human energy and talent you have is redirected to the most value adding work.
This isn’t about humans versus AI
It’s about getting better at both.
The question isn’t simply how much AI can your organisation use?
It’s how intentionally will you use it?
Where can AI create capacity? Where should people continue to lead? And where can a combination create greater value?
The Human Advantage brings together employee experience, AI readiness, leadership, talent and organisational design to help you make those decisions with greater clarity.
What you’ll take away
By the end of the day, you’ll have:
A clearer picture of how AI is shaping the experience of work, informed by Best Places to Work™ employee experience insights.
A better understanding of AI readiness, including the organisational and workforce drivers and gaps emerging through AI ORA™.
A practical view of the new leadership mandate, drawing on LEAD’s leadership expertise to explore leading while learning, creating clarity without having all the answers, and continually developing capability as work changes.
Clarity on the human capabilities that matter, with Consult & LEAD exploring the skills AI cannot solely replace and how organisations can continue developing judgement, influence, relationships and their next generation of leaders.
A focused action plan, bringing together insights from Best Places to Work™, AI ORA™, Consult & LEAD to identify where AI could improve performance, where human capability needs greater investment, and what to prioritise next.
A practical way for intentional role and organisation design using AI and LEAD's customised organisational design lens to audit where time is actually going in your business, to identify where AI can free up capacity, and make deliberate decisions about where humans, AI, or both should lead the work. You will leave with a clear starting point for redesigning roles in your own business - understanding where AI can genuinely increase efficiency, where it cannot, and how to direct your people toward the work that creates the most value.
Key experts delivering the day.
Best Places to Work™
Employee experience
Independent insights into how people experience work and the workplace conditions that support organisational performance.
Best Places to Work™ is a research-led continuous improvement programme, with its employee experience framework spanning areas including Trust in Leadership, Performance and Growth, Innovation, Wellbeing and Tools and Tech.
AI ORA™
AI readiness
Organisational and workforce AI readiness insights and benchmarking, helping leaders understand where their organisation and people are today and where capability may need to develop.
LEAD Executive Search | Impact Leadership
Leadership capability and workforce design
LEAD specialises in executive talent, leadership development, and workforce strategy, with a dedicated in-house specialist team working at the intersection of leadership capability and AI-enabled org design. LEAD helps founders and senior teams understand not just how to adopt AI, but how to embed it intentionally - rethinking roles, structures, and ways of working so that people and performance both benefit. www.lead.co.nz
Consult Recruitment
People and talent specialists
Consult is one of New Zealand's leading people and talent specialists. With deep expertise in how people are found, developed, and retained, Consult works with some of New Zealand's most recognised employers helping them build the teams and talent pipelines that perform.
Together, Consult and LEAD have placed and developed hundreds of leaders across New Zealand's fastest-growing businesses, and have been behind some of the most significant leadership and people transformations in the market.
Brought to you in partnership with EMA.
Who should attend?
The Human Advantage is designed for leaders responsible for how their organisation and people navigate AI, including CEOs and executive leaders, business owners, People & Culture leaders and HR Directors, and senior leaders involved in AI adoption, capability or workplace redesign.
No technical AI expertise is required.
This is a leadership and workplace masterclass, focused on the people, performance and organisational decisions that sit around the technology.
What we’ll explore
- 9:00 am
The Human Advantage: setting the scene
Best Places to Work™ x AI ORA™ x LEAD Why AI adoption, employee experience, leadership and organisational design need to be considered together. We’ll set the context for the day, looking at AI as a shift in how people experience and perform at work, not simply a technology change, and why understanding the connections between these areas matters.
- 9:30 am
How AI is changing the experience of work
Best Places to Work™ x AI ORA™ What Best Places to Work™ employee experience insights and AI ORA™ readiness insights tell us about how organisations and their people are navigating AI. We’ll explore changes in clarity and expectations, confidence and capability, workload and pace of work, changing roles, and the factors influencing responsible and effective AI adoption.
- 10:15 am
Leading while learning: the new leadership mandate
LEAD This session explores what leadership now looks like in a time of unprecedented change in how we work and lead. AI is not a one-time shift to lead through and move on from. It is an ongoing, fast-moving change that is rewriting expectations of leaders, teams, and organisations — often faster than anyone can realistically keep up with. The technology changes daily. The answers change with it. And yet people still look to their leaders for clarity, direction, and confidence. This session explores how to lead effectively within that reality — creating clarity without having every answer, building your own capability while building your team's, and showing up with confidence in a landscape that remains genuinely uncertain. Because the leaders who navigate this best won't be the ones who had all the answers. They'll be the ones who got better at leading without them.
- 11:00 am
Designing an AI-enabled organisation without losing the human advantage
LEAD Through LEAD’s leadership, talent and organisational design lens, we’ll explore the human capabilities that become increasingly important as AI takes on more work. We’ll also consider how roles and teams can be intentionally redesigned around what people do best, what AI does well, and where the combination creates greater value.
- 12:00 pm
Leaders in practice: 2026 Best Places to Work™ finalists
Best Places to Work™ A practical conversation about what AI adoption looks like inside organisations of different sizes and stages - what they are changing, what they are learning, how roles and ways of working are evolving, and how they are bringing their people with them. Hear what's working, what hasn't worked as expected, and what these leaders would do differently if they were starting again.
- 1:00 pm
Lunch
- 2:00 pm
Workshop: From insight to action
Best Places to Work™ x AI ORA™ x LEAD A hands-on, guided working session where you apply everything you have heard directly to your own business. Using LEAD's AI x Human role-design framework, you will map your current teams reality across four areas: 1) Where you and your people sit on the AI adoption curve. 2) Where AI could enhance performance, productivity, and cost efficiency. 3) Which human capabilities are most at risk of being underinvested — and how to protect them 4). Where roles and teams could be redesigned intentionally — protecting human work, building human-AI collaboration, automating with oversight, or simplifying what no longer needs to exist You will leave with a role-design map for your organisation, a clear set of priorities, and the confidence to take these conversations back to your team and board.
- 4:00 pm
Your next moves
Best Places to Work™ x AI ORA™ x Consult & LEAD x Panel Speakers Bring the day together into a focused set of priorities for you, your people and your organisation. You’ll leave with a clearer view of where you are now, where the greatest opportunities sit, and what to focus on next.
- 4:30 pm
Close
Facilitators
Karly Boast (Group CEO, LEAD Executive Search & Consult Recruitment)
Karly Boast is Group CEO of Consult & LEAD, bringing over 20 years of leadership, culture and people-strategy experience across some of New Zealand's most dynamic sectors, including professional services, tech, finance, legal, retail, construction and hospitality. Karly is recognised as one of the country's leading voices in commercial people strategy and was named NZ HR Director of the Year in 2025 and has featured on the HRD Hot List in both 2023 and 2024, and having led the People function inside an NZ tech business through a Best Places to Work win in 2024. Karly is a regular conference speaker, panellist, and industry judge, and brings a direct, commercially-minded perspective to how businesses build for what's next. As AI reshapes how organisations lead, structure, and develop their people, Karly works directly with businesses navigating that shift, helping leadership teams adopt and integrate AI in ways that strengthen rather than replace their human capability. Her focus is on the questions AI adoption raises for leadership itself: how roles and org design need to evolve, which human skills matter more than ever, and how to lead people through change with clarity and confidence.
Amy Laing (Business & Growth Advisor, LEAD Executive Search & Consult Recruitment)
Amy is a business strategist, board advisor, and founder of Opportunity Co, bringing over 20 years' experience advising NZ businesses on strategic growth and turnaround across FMCG, retail, B2B, and B2C, and commercial, social enterprise, and not-for-profit organisations, as well as running her own business. Amy brings together big picture thinking with the pragmatism and commercial reality of what it takes to run a business. As part of her strategy and board work, Amy helps organisations think about the role AI plays in their business and people strategy - where it fits, and just as importantly, where it doesn't. She's passionate about businesses retaining their point of difference and genuine connection with their people and customers, believing that the over-use of AI, risks creating generic, forgettable businesses. Amy is known for future-focused thinking grounded in pragmatism and commercial reality - and for helping businesses realise growth while building workplaces where people do their best work.
Ullrich Loeffler (CEO, AI ORA™)
Ullrich is the Co-Founder and CEO of ORA Benchmarking and creator of AI ORA™, an independent workforce and organisational AI-readiness assessment. With a background in technology research, advisory, and organisational transformation, he helps leaders connect their AI ambitions with the people responsible for turning them into business success and value.
Julie Gill (CEO, Best Places to Work™)
Julie is the CEO of Best Places to Work™, where her mission is to "float all the boats higher" by helping organisations build cultures where leadership, innovation, and performance thrive together. With a career spanning business, technology, media, and innovation across both global enterprises and founder-led ventures, Julie is passionate about helping leaders turn employee insight into meaningful action that strengthens workplace experience and organisational success.
Your day includes
A full-day facilitated masterclass
Current insights and data
Practical frameworks and tools
Peer discussion and shared learning
Catering and refreshments
Tickets for good, not greed Humanitix dedicates 100% of profits from booking fees to charity
