In late November, we were among over 500 delegates that took part in HR Tech Fest in Melbourne. The big idea behind Tech Fest was to challenge HR norms, and disrupt how we do things. The content was developed through brainstorming by 80 tech innovators from NZ and Australia.
The focus was on the future of work being dynamic, flexible, team based, collaborative, perpetual beta, global and that the workforce (not the HR function) should benefit from HR technology. So it was suggested that People Technology or Workforce Technology was in fact a better term than HR Technology (maybe they need to rethink the name of the conference!).
We learned a few new phrases and had many ‘aha’ moments over the course of the two days jam packed with speakers. But one of our favourites was the idea of “geeking out”. This was about identifying a new topic of interest to a group of people in your organisation and then getting that group together in a room talking about the topic, so that they can geek out together. It’s engaging and fulfilling for your people and good for business. And so we can confidently say that we completely geeked out for two whole days at HR Tech Fest!