Fernando Sanchez-Arias

Director, Learning Organisation (Former Chief People Officer)
The Home Depot

Fernando seeks to improve business and people strategy key performance indicators, leveraging his 20+ years of experience as a business and human capital leader in learning; organizational culture; talent acquisition and management; associate relations; diversity and inclusion; change and organisational effectiveness; and corporate strategic relations.

He held the role of the Chief People Officer at The Home Depot's Global Custom Commerce and is currently leading a project to develop people leaders for the overall enterprise.

Check out the incredible speaker line-up to see who will be joining Fernando.

Download The Latest Agenda

Conference Day One

Wednesday, May 22nd, 0019

9:15 The People Behind the Digital Revolution

People are a critical factor in your organisation success. Period! The success of any organisation’s digital transformation lies in the cultural and cognitive diversity of leaders and team members who can effectively interact to innovate and deliver better results to their customers. Getting your people to embrace the digital equivalent of the Industrial Revolution is daunting; however, your people strategists in HR and L&D can be the most powerful agents of change.

In this session, you will learn how big retailers such as The Home Depot are exceeding customer expectations of digital experience, as a result of restructuring and re-skilling their workforce through intensive hiring, training boot camps, the use of technology to power productivity and a company-wide mind shift.

9:45 [PANEL DISCUSSION]: Technology is radically disrupting HR. How does the function need to change in order to embrace this?

It’s never been a more exciting or challenging time to be an HR professional. Technology is bringing about seismic change within organisations and rapidly creating opportunities to engage with the workforce in new ways. How we collaborate and contribute, communicate, and learn is leading to new networked structures, ways of working and job fulfillment. However, when deployed without due consideration, technology can harm

work culture, breeding dissatisfaction and denting productivity.

This panel discussion will explore what changes will be key and how to carry out the transition to embrace the rapidly evolving technologies, business models, demographics, and workplace attitudes. We will look at questions such as:

· How should you frame your technology decisions?

· What are some of the business and human benefits to getting this right?

· What other factors must be considered if technology is going to truly enable positive change?

· How can co-creation be used as a lever to change?

· Who does HR need to collaborate with differently across the business?

· What new roles or skills are needed in HR?