CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition (ACE) 2026

You may not have been able to attend CIPD ACE, so in this article I aim to provide a snippet of what you might have missed and, more importantly, what you might be able to learn from.

Before I start, a quick word of warning. This conference featured three amazing keynote sessions from speakers who have had truly remarkable life experiences. If you’re lucky, you get one great keynote, so three was amazing. All shared personal stories with the humility and honesty that left the room so quiet, I wondered at one point if anyone was breathing. I’ve included links for each one so you can learn more about their life and work. It’s honestly worth it.

Keynote: The Future of Work – How to Lead, Adapt and Innovate for What’s Next
Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon MBE

Traffic meant I only managed to catch the last twenty minutes of Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon’s keynote, but it was enough to make a lasting impression. Her session struck a balance between realism and optimism, exploring how we can lead through the uncertainty of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Before I discuss her session, I’d like to provide a brief bio for Anne-Marie. At 11, she was the youngest girl ever to pass A-level computing, and at 20 years old, she received her Masters in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Oxford. Since then, she has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from five UK universities. If that is her education, just imagine what she has done since then…. Oh, and her MBE was for services to young women and STEM sectors.

Back to the session… Anne-Marie urged us to stay curious (a theme repeated during the conference). She stresses the need to keep learning a little more each week, and to embrace ‘quality mistakes’. The idea is to allow us to view mistakes as opportunities for insight and progress, rather than creating fear. She spoke about the need to build, measure, and iterate our ideas with agility, reminding us that the future of work is still being written and belongs to everyone, not just technologists.

Key takeaways for L&D in charities:

• Be endlessly curious. Growth comes from small, continuous learning.
• Encourage experimentation. Reward ‘quality mistakes’ and shared learning.
• Celebrate difference. Diverse thinking drives innovation and inclusion.
• Keep humans at the centre. Technology should serve people, not replace them.
• Recognise your influence. L&D professionals help shape what the future of work looks like.

Masterclass: Building an L&D Strategy for Stronger Line Management
Matthew Meynell, Deputy Director of Leadership, Cabinet Office

This masterclass presented a unified approach to improving line management across the Civil Service, developed by the Cabinet Office. With more than 100,000 managers in a workforce of half a million, the goal was to bring consistency, clarity, and higher standards to one of the most complex people systems in the UK.

Matthew Meynell outlined how his team utilised research from universities, industry bodies, and consultancy partners to define what “good line management” entails, focusing on empathy, trust, active listening, and self-awareness. The new standards are now embedded into recruitment, performance management, and training pathways, supported by a structured curriculum aligned to the Civil Service Code.

While the approach is outside the ability of most charities, the session provided an interesting look at how a large, distributed organisation can tackle inconsistency in management capability. The emphasis is on setting expectations, defining standards, and building a shared learning framework.

Case Studies: Right Skills at the Right Time – How to Master Strategic Workforce Planning to Meet Future Needs
Laura Wall (Lloyds Banking Group)
Natalie Dalton (Registers of Scotland)

This session explored how two large organisations are addressing the challenge of ensuring they have the right skills for the future. Both speakers emphasised that strategic workforce planning is not just about producing a plan, but about leading a long-term change programme.

Natalie Dalton from Registers of Scotland described how her team reframed workforce planning as a continuous change process rather than a one-off document. She shared that they found engaging people in honest conversations about ‘present pain points’ helped frame a conversation that had previously been ‘I’ve no idea, I don’t know the future’.

Laura Wall from Lloyds Banking Group spoke about horizon scanning, looking across technology, risk, and sustainability to anticipate future skill needs. Her team utilises scenario planning and data to inform investment in emerging skills, such as AI literacy and operational resilience. This was based on a framework that they had developed.

While some of the technical details went over my head, it was fascinating to see how both speakers combined data, foresight, and storytelling to make workforce planning more human and strategic.

Keynote: Leading Under Pressure – What HR Can Learn from Extreme Environments
Professor Kevin Fong OBE

This was one of the most memorable sessions of the event (although there were a few others). Professor Kevin Fong combined science, storytelling, and humanity to explore what leadership really means when lives are at stake. Drawing on his career in space medicine, emergency response, and intensive care, he took the audience inside moments where calm, clarity, and teamwork were the difference between success and failure.

It was his experience during the COVID-19 response that hit hardest. Until recently he held the position of National Clinical Advisor in Emergency Preparedness Resilience and Response for the Covid-19 Incident. A job title he was quick to joke about. He described through images and his personal experiences, how, in the early days of the pandemic, systems and protocols quickly became irrelevant. Leadership became about coordination and humility, listening, improvising, and making decisions with incomplete information. He reflected on the pressure of working alongside exhausted colleagues, the fear of getting things wrong, and the necessity of collective problem-solving. His point was simple but profound: in a crisis, no one leads alone. The best leaders enable others to act with confidence, even when certainty has disappeared.

Key takeaways for L&D in charities:

• Leadership and followership are equally important. Great teams share responsibility and adapt as situations evolve.
• Plan, practise, reflect. Rehearsal builds confidence; honest reflection builds learning.
• Lead through uncertainty. Trust, communication, and empathy matter more than rigid control.
• Stay humble under pressure. True leadership is about service and being calm in chaos.
• Build collective strength. Crisis leadership is a team effort, not a solo act.

Panel: Navigating the Future Skills Horizon – What Skills Are Coming Next?
Fiona Aldridge (Skills Federation)
Gemma Marsh (Skills England)

This session examined how the UK’s skills landscape is evolving, with a focus on how employers, government, and education providers can collaborate to prepare individuals for the changing world of work. While I’m not sure the discussion fully answered the question in its title, it did provide insight into the scale and complexity of national skills planning.

Gemma Marsh outlined Skills England’s mission to simplify the system, close regional gaps, and support employers to access the right training. She spoke about the need for shorter, more flexible learning options, recognising that traditional apprenticeships don’t suit every employer or sector. She also touched on digital and AI skills, noting that upskilling the existing workforce is just as important as preparing young people for new jobs.

Fiona Aldridge highlighted the growing importance of human skills, such as communication, collaboration, problem-solving, creativity, and information literacy, as technology automates more technical work. She reminded the audience that lifelong learning is about more than productivity: it strengthens wellbeing, community, and opportunity, particularly for those furthest from education and employment.

Keynote: Rising from Adversity – Resilience, Leadership and the Power to Change Your Story
Dr Sabrina Cohen-Hatton KSMF

Dr Sabrina Cohen-Hatton’s opening keynote on the second day was the third powerful conference session. Again, full of powerful moments of inspiration, she gave a deeply moving and personal account of resilience, empathy, and the science of leadership under pressure.

She began by sharing her story of homelessness as a teenager, describing how she washed in public toilets, put on her school uniform, and went to class as if everything were normal. That experience, she explained, taught her the most important lesson of her life: you never know what someone else is dealing with. It was her first lesson in empathy, and it shaped everything that followed.

After joining the fire service at 18, Sabrina found a sense of belonging and purpose in helping others on their worst days. But she also faced sexism, harassment, and doubt about her place as a woman in a male-dominated service. Her second moving story was set many years later, when she responded to a serious fire and thought her husband, also a firefighter, might have been seriously injured. She viscerally described her physical response to this terrifying experience, which made her realise how easily decision-making can be clouded by emotion and stress. Determined to understand why, she began studying psychology and went on to earn both a degree and a PhD while working full-time.

Key takeaways for L&D in charities:

• Empathy transforms leadership. You never know what others have faced before they walk into the room.
• Stress changes thinking. Under pressure, people need time, calm, and structure to make good decisions.
• Build psychological safety. Learning only happens when people feel safe to fail and try again.
• Science meets humanity. Understanding the brain can help us design better learning under stress.
• Keep going. Resilience is built one decision, one setback, and one success at a time.

Fishbowl: RIP Traditional Learning! What is the New Role of L&D in the Age of AI?
Steve George, Head of Learning, CIPD

What stood out for me in this session wasn’t the content but the format. It was my first experience of a fishbowl discussion, a technique that I thought was a brilliant idea in a conference setting.

A fishbowl starts with three people on a table in the centre of the room. One chairperson and two initial responders. The chairperson asks the first question, and the two people respond. After answering, they stand up and leave the table, going to sit elsewhere in the room. Anyone from the audience can step into an empty chair to join in and answer the question. This creates a constantly evolving conversation where the audience effectively becomes the panel, sharing their perspectives, questions, and experiences in real-time. Our topic was AI and the role of L&D. The central table saw a series of panellists, each giving their perspective. As the supply ran dry, a new question was posed. The session ended with the original panellist returning to answer the final question.

I was struck by how well this approach would work with L&D professionals from charities, especially in communities of practice or learning network events. It gives a great opportunity to share experiences and surface practical solutions without the hierarchy of a traditional panel.

Keynote: Speaking Truth to Power – Politics, People and the Future of Work
Nick Robinson

Nick Robinson’s keynote was entertaining and wide-ranging, filled with political anecdotes and reflections from his long career in broadcasting. I didn’t feel that the session offered much direct insight into the workplace or the future of learning, but it did provide a thoughtful examination of uncertainty, leadership, and the forces shaping modern politics.

He began with stories from his time covering figures like Sir Alex Ferguson, John Prescott, and George W. Bush, using them to illustrate the human side of leadership — from Ferguson’s habit of chatting to the laundry staff every week to remind them they mattered, to the way political figures can lose touch with reality when surrounded by power.

Much of the talk centred on how unpredictable the world has become (which he acknowledged we were all too familiar with). Drawing on decades of political reporting, Robinson argued that anyone claiming to know what happens next, in politics, economics, or society, is either “a liar or a fool.” He pointed to the rapid changes of the past decade, from Brexit and Trump to the rise of populism and cultural division, illustrating how these global forces now shape our everyday lives and workplaces.

Although the session leaned more towards political commentary than practical advice, Robinson offered a glimmer of optimism. His core message was that leadership, in government, business, or daily life, depends on clarity of story. Organisations, he said, lose direction when they forget who they are and what they stand for. Leaders who focus on values, empathy, and narrative are the ones best equipped to navigate uncertainty.

Key takeaways for L&D in charities:

• Uncertainty is the norm. Plan for change, not stability.
• Stories shape strategy. Every organisation needs a clear, unifying narrative.
• Stay connected to people. Leadership starts with listening, not broadcasting.
• Beware assumptions. The world rarely behaves as experts predict.
• Hold on to hope. Progress often feels messy, but small, consistent action still matters.