WorkBuzz Live! 2024 - Reflections

Last Tuesday was a personal highlight of my year as we hosted WorkBuzz Live! 2024. This year’s conference was our biggest yet, bringing together 130 HR professionals and people leaders from over 60 organisations, for a day packed with knowledge-sharing, networking, and inspiration.  

When I founded WorkBuzz six years ago, we set the vision to help improve the working lives of one million people.  This goal remains our north star, and as a VC-backed company, we track almost every metric imaginable. Yet, sometimes, those numbers can feel abstract. It’s being at an event like WorkBuzz Live!, seeing so many of our clients in one place, hearing how WorkBuzz has helped them build strong cultures, and seeing their excitement for our latest product innovations is what makes our work feel truly meaningful.

Here are my three key takeaways from the event:

1.      A Collaboration Mindset is Key in a Multigenerational Workforce

Our keynote speaker, Rebecca Robins, shared powerful insights from her brand-new book, Five Generations at Work: How We Win Together, For Good, on the evolving dynamics of generational diversity. With five generations now working together, HR leaders must navigate this multigenerational workforce by embracing a collaborative mindset. The key is focus on what truly matters and leveraging the strengths of each generation, perhaps by organising reverse mentoring, especially given the explosion of AI. By fostering collaboration, we can create environments that harness the unique perspectives and skills of every generation to drive success in the modern workplace.

2.      Wellbeing Must be Embraced Holistically

In our panel session this year, featuring clients from San Carlo, Reconomy, and Constellation Cold Logistics, we explored insights from the 2024 State of Employee Engagement report. Wellbeing has risen to the top priority, but the focus has shifted away from burnout and stress, which were previously the main concerns driven by the challenges of the past five years. Now, it’s about adopting a more holistic approach. For frontline organisations, where work is fast-paced and demanding, this shift is especially critical. It’s employers who embrace the diverse needs of a multigenerational workforce who will come out on top and build a more motivated and resilient workforce for the future.

3.      Practical AI Use Cases Are Here

With the explosion of CGPT-3, it’s only natural that business leaders want to adopt AI to improve productivity and business performance. The crux, however, is identifying practical use cases, rather than investing in AI because of the hype. In employee listening, one of the biggest pain-points our clients face is the “results crunch”.  People leaders, often promoted to a supervisor role because of their technical skills, are time-poor and overwhelmed by survey data. Whilst most HR teams would like to coach their managers on connecting the dots, identifying where to focus, and how to engage their teams, they often lack the capacity to do this at scale and make a real impact.

At WorkBuzz Live!, our CTO, Lewis North, unveiled WorkBuzz’s first step towards solving this issue. Based on over one million hours of our own employee engagement experience, our new People Science AI product summarises feedback for busy managers, guides them on where to best focus their attention, and what steps to take–it’s like having a dedicated coach by their side. In a world first, we also announced our AI-powered Video Summaries for executives, which go beyond just summarising open text comments. WorkBuzz People Science AI looks at outliers, key trends, and what factors truly drive the most engagement before recommending where to focus on improving–all delivered through engaging video-based summaries. Given the pace of change and innovation, we will continue to invest in WorkBuzz’s People Science AI and partner with clients in 2025 to shape its evolution.

When it Comes Down to it, Nothing Beats Face-to-Face

A few years ago, we ran WorkBuzz Live! as a hybrid event after the pandemic, but it didn’t really work. While, yes, it’s convenient–no one enjoys traveling in the dark and rain, and technology lets us join from anywhere in the world–but it doesn’t compare to the real experience.

WorkBuzz Live! is all about building relationships, fostering community, and reconnecting with old friends. It’s the informal conversations during breaks, sharing thoughts on presentations, and getting to know how others are navigating common challenges that bring us together. That’s why we’ll be back in London next year for our best-ever WorkBuzz Live! event. Our internal debrief is on Wednesday, and we’re already on a mission to innovate and improve as we look ahead to 2025.