Kick off the day by examining the forces driving change in workplaces today. This dynamic discussion will set the scene, surface key challenges, and explore emerging trends and strategic insights, offering a shared perspective on the future of work and the opportunities that lie ahead.

The 2026 Work Trend Index shows work being redesigned around AI agents — and Switzerland is already ahead, with Swiss professionals leading the world in AI-driven productivity. This session translates the findings into what they mean on the ground: the rise of the Frontier Firm, where human-agent teams and intelligence-on-demand reshape how work gets done. We'll look at the implications for companies (redesigning workflows, closing the capacity gap) and for employees (becoming "agent bosses" and doubling down on essential human skills) — and how Microsoft's Frontier Firm story turns these trends into a practical roadmap for Swiss competitiveness.

While the potential of agentic AI is clear, turning strategy into reality requires organisations to rethink work, skills and operating models. This session combines new research on AI’s impact on the workforce with practical examples and stories from leading companies. We will explore which activities are most likely to be automated, key success factors and mistakes to avoid when redesigning work around agents, and the role HR should play in enabling successful transformation.

When SIX introduced Microsoft 365 Copilot to 4,500 employees, we expected technology deployment to be the primary adoption challenge. It wasn't. Despite extensive training, role-based learning, communications and communities, we learned that access alone does not create adoption. Employees embrace AI when they understand how it helps them in their own work. This session shares lessons from scaling AI in a highly regulated financial-services organisation, including how to build relevance, encourage new work habits, and sustain adoption through continuous learning, reinforcement and responsible AI enablement.

Workplace leaders have more data than ever, but the true value emerges when it is integrated and scaled across diverse global portfolios. At the same time, organisations are operating in environments where signals are often fragmented, conditions are constantly shifting, and decisions increasingly need to be made faster and with less certainty than traditional models allow. This session explores how practitioners are translating workplace and real estate strategy into day-to-day decision-making across complex organisations. Panellists will discuss how they interpret behavioural, operational, and portfolio signals in practice, and how they prioritise action when information is incomplete, timelines are compressed, and competing demands must be balanced. The focus is on how workplace intelligence is actually being used to support responsiveness, alignment, and confident decision-making across different organisational contexts.

This session explores how Bühler transformed its 160-year-old industrial site from a traditional manufacturing campus into a vibrant innovation hub for the future of work. Starting with a deep understanding of how people actually use spaces, the project reimagined the site as a small city, enriching it with learning, research, health, dining, innovation, and social destinations. The transformation has strengthened employee experience, collaboration, innovation, and employer attractiveness while staying true to the values and culture of a global family-owned company.

This panel explores the cutting-edge technologies shaping the modern workplace—tools that enhance collaboration, elevate the employee experience, and boost productivity. Industry leaders will share how integrated AV solutions, digital collaboration platforms, and workplace analytics are transforming physical and virtual spaces into seamless, engaging environments that empower employees to perform at their best. Attendees will gain practical insights on leveraging these innovations to build more connected, agile, and high-performing teams while delivering an exceptional workplace experience.

For decades, workplace decisions have been driven by cost. Today, organisations are being asked to create outcomes beyond financial performance.As organisations navigate AI, accelerating sustainability commitments and evolving business and reporting expectations, financial performance remains fundamental. But organisations are increasingly expected to understand, measure and communicate broader organisational impact.

In this interactive session, delegates will work collaboratively to challenge conventional thinking, exchange perspectives and explore the evolving definition of workplace success. Join us to rethink how organisations create, measure and communicate success as workplace leaders enter a new era where performance is increasingly being evaluated, and reported through a broader lens.

AI investment is accelerating, but the real challenge is embedding it into the everyday habits, decisions and workflows that drive lasting business value. In this fireside chat, Gabriel Schaepman shares how Swiss Re is fostering a culture of experimentation to accelerate AI adoption across the organisation. From empowering a multigenerational workforce and overcoming resistance to change, to developing innovative use cases that enhance communication, coaching and decision-making, discover how a people-first approach is helping transform AI from a technology initiative into a catalyst for enterprise-wide innovation, productivity and measurable impact.

Agentic AI is not eliminating work — it is changing and further compressing it. As AI absorbs execution, what remains for humans is structurally different: overseeing more tasks, higher stakes, faster cadence. Meanwhile, the average knowledge worker’s attention span has collapsed from 2.5 minutes to 47 seconds, and is still falling. Research shows that the more we trust AI, the less we engage our thinking. Tech psychologist Sylvain Rottier — who led one of the world’s first large-scale robotics deployments — names the change-management challenge most organisations are starting to observe, and shows what cognitive readiness looks like and how to build it.

For decades, workplace decisions have been driven by cost. Today, organisations are being asked to create outcomes beyond financial performance.As organisations navigate AI, accelerating sustainability commitments and evolving business and reporting expectations, financial performance remains fundamental. But organisations are increasingly expected to understand, measure and communicate broader organisational impact.

In this interactive session, delegates will work collaboratively to challenge conventional thinking, exchange perspectives and explore the evolving definition of workplace success. Join us to rethink how organisations create, measure and communicate success as workplace leaders enter a new era where performance is increasingly being evaluated, and reported through a broader lens.

In operation since July 2025, 1Roof, the headquarters of the Lombard Odier Bank located in Bellevue (GE), is a state-of-the art building in terms of sustainability and smart building technologies. This presentation will walk you through the early journey of this architectural landmark and will present our (early) learnings from operating such a building.

What makes change actually stick? This session zooms out from technology to explore what happens around it: how we listen before solving, follow through when momentum fades, shift narratives, find leverage points and build capabilities that last. Drawing on what worked, what stalled and what surprised along the way, Nina offers a set of perspectives and provocations — not as answers, but as hypotheses to challenge, discuss and develop further.

The day's conversations don't end here—they come together. Following the interactive workshop, facilitators Key and Susannah return to reveal the key themes, ideas and recommendations generated by delegates during the breakout discussions. Drawing together the collective intelligence of the room, they'll explore where participants found consensus, where opinions diverged and what these conversations reveal about the changing definition of workplace value.

But there is one more voice to hear. Working quietly in the background throughout the conference, Microsoft's AI agent has listened to every session, identifying recurring themes, connecting ideas across sessions and surfacing insights that may otherwise have gone unnoticed. Now, AI enters the room as an active participant, joining the facilitators to compare perspectives, challenge assumptions and test the breakout findings against the wider conversations from across the day. Part reveal, part reflection and part live conversation, this closing session blends collective human intelligence with AI-powered synthesis to uncover the day's biggest ideas—and explore what they mean for the future of work.