UNLEASH America 2024 expert takeaways: Moving from theory to practice on AI

We are three weeks out from UNLEASH America: The International Festival of HR – and what an incredible event it was.

AI was top of the agenda at this year’s Las Vegas show; there was barely one session across the three-days at Caesar’s Forum that didn’t mention automation in some form or another.

In fact, The Wharton School’s Ethan Mollick’s Day Two opening keynote was entirely dedicated to AI and its potential to transform the world of work.

He declared “AI is fundamentally a people problem”, and HR’s role is to create a culture of innovation and experiment with AI (within the appropriate guardrails of course).

Now a fortnight out from the show, the UNLEASH Editorial team is reflecting on the event, and the main lessons learnt from our 200 speakers.

Our star-studded line up included HR leaders from huge organizations like the US Chamber of Commerce, Pfizer, Coca-Cola, HPE, Microsoft, Crocs, and the FBI, but also NBA legend Magic Johnson, as well as leading academics and HR analysts.

We were honored to have 30 analysts in attendance at UNLEASH America 2024 – as experts in their field, we were keen to speak to them and find out their main highlights of the show. What are the themes shaping HR in 2024 and beyond?

From fear to optimism around AI

Speaking exclusively to UNLEASH in Las Vegas, Kathi Enderes, SVP of Research at The Josh Bersin Company, shared that her highlight of the show was seeing the conversations about AI shifting from fear to optimism.

“A year, a year and a half ago, there was lots of fear, there were lots of HR people saying this coming for our jobs, it’s going to do all of our work.

“But now I see more optimism. The genie is out of the bottle, we have to do it, and we have to do it right.”

As a result, her favorite session from the show was a main stage panel session, moderated by Singularity University’s Gary Bolles, featuring her boss Josh Bersin, Natalie Wintermark from Glamox and Microsoft’s Amy Coleman.

I thought it was so powerful because there was talk about AI, but the talk was less about the technical capabilities of AI, and it was much more about what can HR do to capture opportunity of AI [and what] can we as CHROs or HR leaders do to actually get started with that”.

Enderes is really clear that HR has “to take a leadership role to help the organization capture the benefit of AI”.

The good news is that “HR people seem to be much more ready” this year – their job now is support employees in using AI in the right way.

Lighthouse Research & Advisory’s Chief Research Officer Ben Eubanks agrees that the practicality, not just the theory of AI, was on show at UNLEASH America 2024.

“When I speak on AI I always go for practical, not just theoretical, and it’s what I heard from several attendees”; they liked all the sessions, including the keynote with Bersin, Coleman and Wintermark, which shared practical Gen AI examples.

Valoir’s principal and CEO Rebecca Wettemann also notes that there was lots of learnings “about the practical application of AI”, and “how important thinking about the human factors is when planning an AI strategy”.

The quality of conversations between HR leaders

Beyond AI, Eubanks is very impressed that at UNLEASH America there is so much “’how to make it work day-to-day’ content”, which is so much more valuable to the HR leaders in attendance than general case studies.

“I had the opportunity to moderate an incredible panel that was an audience favorite between the head of people analytics at Protective Life and one of their top HR executives.

“The focus was on how to make analytics a working partnership among the two related but different personas. We had to cut off the questions from the audience because there were so many!”

Eubanks continued: “Frank, open sharing was a breath of fresh air over some case studies that can be too sanitized or high level to be practically useful”.

Enderes agreed that the high quality of the content and speakers is what makes UNLEASH America different.

Valoir’s Wettemann echoed this: “The highlight of the show is the conversations – whether it’s one-on-on or the panel conversations, whether it is reconnecting with old friends, learning about emerging technology areas, or finding new connections, the collaborative environment of UNLEASH makes it special.”

She continues: “HR has so much on its plate right now that day-to-day management can be overwhelming.

The conference gives HR leaders a chance to take a step back and gain perspective while connecting with other HR leaders.”

The investor view on UNLEASH America 2024

Startups have always been a huge part of the UNLEASH ecosystem – for the past decade, we’ve had a startup competition on-site at our shows, and we are thrilled that it keeps getting better and better every year.

In fact, for Enderes from The Josh Bersin Company, the Startup Award this year was a huge highlight, and something that makes UNLEASH unique.

Enderes was on the judging panel, alongside Sadie Bell from HPE, CareerXroads Chris Hoyt and Cornerstone’s Mike Bollinger.

Also joining the panel were two investors – Jim Holzer, managing partner at Drake Star, and Ben Visser, CEO at allygatr.

Our investors are an emerging part of our UNLEASH community, we were so pleased that 34 joined in Las Vegas this year, and, for the first time, we decided to also delve into their thoughts on the show.

Speaking exclusively to UNLEASH, Drake Star’s Holzer also noted that the quality of conversations at UNLEASH not just between HR leaders, but more broadly with vendors, investors and the wider HR tech ecosystem as well.

I’m a big fan of how UNLEASH has something for everyone (vendors, practitioners, and investors) and all are well represented”.

Novacap partner Kristin Smith also shared her highlight of UNLEASH America was “connecting with HR leaders and getting their views of the latest technology and challenges they are facing where technology could help”.

Both investors shared that AI was the key theme of the conference – for Holzer, it was the power of AI “to take talent acquisition into the next generation”, plus the power of tech integrations to help HR leaders analyze huge data sets (with the help of AI), while Smith picked out the Vendor Summit panel featuring Enderes and the chief economists of Indeed and Glassdoor.

“As a total nerd, I always love a good set of charts and graphs and I particularly enjoyed the analysis Indeed performed on which professions Gen AI was able to replace at a good or excellent level of proficiency.

“Software Development was at the top of this list, but HR was not far behind!”

Of course, this investor and analyst takeaway roundup wouldn’t be complete without a mention our super-star closing keynote: Magic Johnson.

The energy he brought to the UNLEASH America main stage was electric – he was funny, engaging and inspiring all at the same time.

Feeling the FOMO? Don’t miss the opportunity to join us in Paris for UNLEASH World in October!