The AI Workforce Redesign Hackathon 2026

Are you ready for the future of work?

The hard truth of 2026 is that AI adoption is no longer a technology problem; it is an organizational design crisis. Middle managers are bottlenecking adoption. Junior talent pipelines are collapsing. Productivity gains are being lost to “shadow” admin, and Legal is terrified of autonomous bot liability.

Rapid adoption of AI tools introduces significant legal, ethical, and psychosocial risks. Without clear, cross-functional governance, companies expose themselves to severe compliance breaches

"No single domain can act in isolation in an agentic AI world—not technology, operations, talent, customer, finance, risk, or legal. This means that cross-functional collaboration—typically collaborating across silos—isn’t sufficient for enabling successful agentic AI contributions at scale.

Systemic codependency, in which progress in one area is only possible through alignment and shared ownership with others, is needed. Each part of the enterprise is a mutually dependent driver of AI-enabled progress" Deloitte

Welcome to The AI Workforce Redesign Sprint—Australia’s first dedicated, hands-on cross-functional, strategic lab for corporate teams.

WHAT YOUR TEAM WILL DO

This is a high-intensity, immersive simulation. Each company will be represented by a cross-functional team of HR, AI, Legal, Risk, Governance or any executives they would like to nominate. Each company team will be assigned a specific industry challenge with rigid constraints, and a critical workforce crisis. Size of these companies will be revealed on the day based on the companies in the room. Teams have a full day to debate, design, and deliver a pack consisting of three tangible artifacts:

• Part A (Strategy): A definitive decision on the path forward.

• Part B (Operations): The operational workflow, policy, or checklist.

• Part C (Communications): The exact script to sell this change to a skeptical workforce, union, or board.

At the end of the day, each company team outlines the first few decisions they’d make, the likely resistance, and one early success metric, as part of a 90 day “reality check”

THE EXECUTIVE SPRINT CHALLENGES

Corporate teams will choose to tackle one of the following high-stakes simulations during the day:

1. The “Junior Void” Simulation

Major Bank | Hybrid | Heavily Regulated (APRA)

The Crisis: AI agents now do the data entry and compliance checking that 200 Graduates used to do. Line managers are refusing to hire entry-level staff because “the bot is faster.” You risk having no senior leaders in 5 years.

The Full-Day Deliverables:

• Strategy: The “2027 Rotational Model”—mapping a 12-month Grad journey without manual data entry tasks.

• Operations: The "Synthetic Training Wargame"—one fully specified simulation a Grad must pass to prove risk comprehension, including the scenario, the decision point where they can fail, and what an assessor accepts as a pass.

• Comms: The “University Recruitment Pitch”—redefining the value proposition for Gen Z talent.

2. The “Shadow AI” Risk Simulation

National Healthcare Provider | Extreme Patient Privacy

The Crisis: Doctors and Admins are using public AI tools to write patient notes because internal systems are ancient. A total ban has failed, creating a massive unmanaged legal risk.

The Full-Day Deliverables:

• Strategy: The “Risk Triage Framework”—categorizing data into Red (Air-gapped), Amber (Sanitized), and Green (Open).

• Operations: The “Amnesty Process”—drafting the “Safe Harbour” declaration form for staff to report tool usage without penalty.

• Comms: The “Chief Medical Officer’s Video Script”—explaining the shift from “Ban” to “Manage” without compromising patient trust.

3. The Productivity & Union Simulation

Large Logistics Co. | Blue & White Collar | Unionized

The Crisis: The Copilot rollout resulted in a 20% efficiency gain. The Union has issued a notice demanding to know if this means 20% fewer jobs next year. Trust is plummeting.

The Full-Day Deliverables:

• Strategy: The “Reinvestment Model”—defining exactly where saved hours go (e.g., Safety, R&D) if not to headcount reduction.

• Operations: The "AI Clause Term Sheet"—the commercial terms your organisation would take to its lawyers: what job security is being guaranteed, for how long, in exchange for what, and the two things you will not commit to under any circumstances.

• Comms: The “Town Hall FAQ”—answering the 3 hardest questions, including “Will I be fired?” and “Do I get paid more?”.

4. The New Performance Metric Simulation

Professional Services | Billable-Hours Business Model

The Crisis: Juniors are using AI to do 10 hours of work in 1 hour. If they bill 1 hour, the firm loses money. If they bill 10, it’s fraud. The old KPIs of “Speed and Volume” are broken.

The Full-Day Deliverables:

• Strategy: The "Outcome-Based Billing Model"—pricing one nominated service line on value delivered rather than hours worked, including how you price the same engagement in year one and year two once AI has compressed it further.

• Operations: The “2026 Promotion Scorecard”—defining the 3 new non-utilization KPIs for a Senior Associate.

• Comms: The “Client Pitch”—the script explaining to a client why fees remain the same while time-to-completion drops.

5. The Fluid Talent Simulation

National Retailer | Hiring Freeze | Low Margins

The Crisis: Marketing has automated heavily and has idle staff. Supply Chain is drowning. You need to move people, but middle managers are hoarding talent and refusing to share resources.

The Full-Day Deliverables:

• Strategy: The “Internal Gig Marketplace”—the SLA outlining who pays the salary and who holds performance rights during a talent swap.

• Operations: The "Rapid Reskilling Bootcamp"—the day-by-day outline of a 2-week crash course to make a Marketing Coordinator useful in Supply Chain, and the standard they must meet on day 10 to be deployed.

• Comms: The “Internal Campaign”—framing a horizontal secondment as a promotion rather than a punishment.

6. The “Agentic Architect” Simulation

Insurance | Rigid | Legacy Job Architectures.

The Crisis: The leadership team has greenlit a move from "Chatbots" to "Agentic Workflows"—autonomous AI agents that can execute multi-step processes across the entire Claims function. However, the rollout is stalling. There is no clear roadmap for which sub-functions to pilot first, and the workforce is terrified that "working alongside agents" is just a polite term for being replaced. We are facing a "capability chasm" where staff know how to prompt AI, but have no idea how to manage, audit, or collaborate with an autonomous digital workforce.

The Full-Day Deliverables:

• Strategy: The "Agentic Priority Matrix"—the scoring rubric that determines which sub-functions of Claims are prioritised for rollout, with complexity, risk and ROI as its axes, applied live to name your first pilot and your last.

• Operations: The "Orchestrator Pathway"—the 3-step roadmap taking an employee from GenAI User to Agentic Orchestrator, defining at each step what they must be able to monitor, direct and validate without help.

• Comms: The "Role Evolution Manifesto"—the message to the Claims function explaining what "working alongside agents" actually means for their job, answering the fear that it is a polite term for replacement.

7. The "Invisible Redesign" Simulation

Stalled Pilots | Spending Under Review

The Crisis: Your organisation has run AI pilots. Some were demoed to the board. None reached production, and the CFO has frozen further spend. But the work changed anyway. Staff have quietly rebuilt their own jobs around personal AI accounts, completing in hours what their position descriptions budget in days, and have told no one. Job descriptions, performance measures, promotion criteria and next year's headcount plan all describe work that is no longer done that way. The workforce has redesigned itself: without permission, without governance, and without the organisation capturing a single hour of the capability.

The Full-Day Deliverables:

• Strategy: The "Adopt / Reverse / Stop Rule"—the decision rule your organisation will apply to informal AI redesign, and the single commitment you will make to staff in exchange for honest disclosure.

• Operations: The "Role Reset"—the rewritten position description and performance measures for a role where AI has already absorbed 40% of the task list, including an explicit statement of what the freed capacity is now for.

• Comms: The "Manager's Script"—what a line manager actually says to someone whose job has quietly changed: how you ask what they're really doing, what you promise them, and how you stop it landing as an accusation.

  
  

8. The "Who Goes First" Simulation

No AI Policy | Board Mandate, 90 Days

The Crisis: The board wants "our AI strategy" within 90 days and has handed it to the CIO. There is no policy, no budget line, no owner outside IT, and no baseline of who can already use these tools. The trap is not technical. The moment you name the first workflow, you have named the first people whose jobs change—and you have no criteria for choosing between them. Six weeks ago the board chair told a journalist that AI would not cost anyone their job at this firm. Staff have read it, and do not believe it.

The Full-Day Deliverables:

• Strategy: The "First Cohort Criteria"—the weighted rubric that selects which roles are redesigned first, and the stated reason for the strongest candidate you deliberately did not choose.

• Operations: The "Transition Definition"—the future-state description of the selected role, the one-page readiness diagnostic for the people currently in it, and the named support pathway for anyone who does not clear it.

• Comms: The "Why You, Why Now"—the message to the first cohort, and the harder message to everyone not selected, who will immediately want to know whether that is good news or bad.

None of the above challenges of interest to you? Drop us an email with a challenge suggestion and we will include it in the mix! Feedback welcome: muneesh@humanityinbusiness.com.au

THE AGENDA: YOUR FULL-DAY SPRINT

This is a highly collaborative event. We provide the frameworks, the facilitators, and the high-stakes environment.

Every table builds its scenario from the real roles and constraints the people in the room bring with them. You leave with something you can apply on Monday, not a solution to a case study.

08:30 AM

Registration & Coffee

09:00 AM 

The Briefing: Unpacking the Crisis

The Lead Facilitator outlines the state of the market, the rules of engagement, and assigns your table its specific Org Profile and Crisis.

09:30 AM 

Sprint Phase 1: Strategy & Alignment (Part A)

Debate the dilemma and lock in your strategic direction. What is the business case?

11:00 AM 

Morning Tea & Networking

11:30 AM 

Sprint Phase 2: Operational Design (Part B)

Move from theory to practice. Draft the checklists, SLAs, and policies required to make your strategy legally and operationally safe.

1:00 PM 

Working Lunch

02:00 PM 

Sprint Phase 3: The Comms Plan & Pitch Prep (Part C)

How do you sell this to a union, a board, or a terrified workforce? Write the scripts and prepare your final A1 Solution Poster.

03:30 PM 

The Showdown: 3-Minute Pitches & Live Voting

Pencils down. Each team gets strictly 3 minutes to present their “Battle Pack” to the room. Once all pitches are complete, the room participates in a live, peer-to-peer vote to select the most actionable, scalable, and human-centric solution for each challenge.

04:30 PM 

Winners Announced

The winning company teams are crowned.

05:00 PM 

Event Close

Who Should Attend?

This working event for business leaders, who hold the mandate for change, including:

• Chief People Officers/ HR Directors

• CXOs, CIOs, CTOs, Heads of Data & AI

• Chief Operating Officers

• Chief Transformation Officer

• Heads of Workforce Transformation & Strategy

• Heads of Organisational Development (OD)

• Heads of Workplace Relations

• Heads of Legal

• Heads of Risk & Governance

  
  

Event is limited to only 10 tables/teams, on a first come, first served basis.

By working colleagues from other functions and listening to solutions from other industries, your team will walk away practical tools for your workforce roadmap that your stakeholders have co-designed and agreed upon—effectively compressing months of meetings into a single day.

You can attend as:

Company table of 6: Early Bird till August 15: $2000 inc GST ($3000+GST after): Create a team of cross functional colleagues or stakeholders to work on a challenge together. Diversity of skills is welcome to ensure success. At least one executive would need to have a Tech/AI background and one executive take the role of moderator of the group as well.

OR

Company Team: You can attend as a smaller group and we can either give you your own table or seat you with other attendees so you can collaborate with other organisations. Book the relevant number of tickets and then drop us an email after booking.

OR

If you would rather attend as an individual, we will be hosted at a mix table to collaborate with other organisations.

Early bird: $400 inc GST till August 15. $500 from August 16.

Not for Profits: $300 inc GST.

If budget is an issue, you are welcome to pay by donation. Get in touch!

The winning team will be featured and recognised on LinkedIn. A judging panel to be appointed shortly.

Get in touch as a Sponsor if you want us to invite executives to your table.

FACILITATORS: