On June 20-22 we will be hosting Irresistible 2023, The Global Conference for HR Leaders And Their Teams, at the USC campus in Los Angeles. And here is why I encourage you to join us.

The theme this year is all about “Redefining The Irresistible Organization,” with a focus on understanding and delivering a new breed of people strategies for a new and different labor market.

As you know quite well, the economy has created a paradox.

On one hand, we have a very competitive labor market and employees continue to recover from the pandemic. Turnover remains high and even companies like Starbucks, Apple, and Amazon face unions, high levels of attrition, and employee demands for flexibility and better wages.

On the other hand, every company now faces pressure on margins, growth, and productivity. So CEOs and CFOs are talking about “doing more with less,” implementing performance management, and possibly reducing headcount in non-strategic areas. (And HR, by the way, is often considered one of these “non-strategic” functions.)

This leaves us in a dilemma. How do we transform our HR teams even faster, focus more deeply on the company’s transformation agenda, and simultaneously improve employee experience, better implement AI and talent intelligence, and get behind the company’s productivity agenda?

Quite frankly, it demands a new role and operating model for HR. And that’s what we’re going to talk about at the conference.

Here’s what we have planned.

First, this is a small intimate conference, limited to only 450 senior HR leaders, located in the gorgeous informal setting of the USC campus. Every session, special event, and activity will encourage collaboration, discussion, and learning.

Our keynotes will focus on transformation. This year we’ve invited the CHROs of Rivian, Moderna, Mastercard, USAA, MetLife, Shell, Liberty Mutual, and many of the most interesting and dynamic companies in the economy. In a series of fireside chats these leaders will discuss their secrets to transformation, their HR operating model, and how they recruit, retain, and upskill their entire HR teams.

Our four tracks are led by more than 30 hand-selected HR practitioners from global leaders like Baker Hughes, Cisco, Lixil, L’Oreal, TomTom, MGM Resorts, Microsoft, Omada Health, and Shell.

• Track 1 focuses on “Redesigning Work” and modern organization design for growth. We’ll discuss the hot topics of hybrid work, goals and accountability, and how some companies have avoided layoffs by redesigning how teams, organizations, and leaders operate. We’ll also explore our new research on goal setting and performance management.
• Track 2 focuses on “Retaining and Engaging Talent.” In these sessions we will discuss innovations in recruiting and selection, new models of talent mobility and horizontal career growth, pay equity and rewards, and new models of people analytics to help identify new drivers of culture, engagement, and retention.
• Track 3 focuses on “The Skills-Based Enterprise.” We’ll dive into the topic of skills, and show you how highly successful companies are building skills-based recruiting, learning, mobility, and pay programs. And we will explain the new technologies of Talent Intelligence and AI-based skills inference, teaching you how this changes the way you think about capabilities.
• Track 4 focuses on “Leading the Systemic HR Organization.” This CHRO-only track will focus on how companies are redesigning their HR operation, reskilling the HR team, and rethinking the entire operating model for higher value and deeper focus on company transformation and growth.

We have some special sessions on AI and technology. We have a team of experts from Microsoft, OpenAI, and USC joining us to show you the newest innovations in AI and I promise to give you a whole new perspective on GPT4, Generative AI, and the important role this new technology platform will play in HR. (Professor William Swartout from USC will show you how Generative AI is changing the movie industry.) And I will release our new research on the role of AI in the HR landscape.

And there’s more.

If you are a Josh Bersin Company Corporate Member, your team will be invited to join us at a special offsite where we visit one of the world’s premier digital entertainment companies. They will share their business and talent strategy, tour you around their offices, and introduce you to their senior executives for Q&A and partnership. And members of our Talent Innovation Council will also meet to talk about new ideas in talent acquisition and internal mobility.

We will also have many education offerings. In addition to the workshops, roundtables, and keynotes we are holding a special session on Thursday to teach attendees about “how to operate as a strategic consultant.” We are bringing special content from The Josh Bersin Academy out for you, so selected attendees can join a Masters-level class in problem solving, talent intelligence, and Systemic HR solutions.

Like last year, top media outlets like Forbes and the New York Times covered Irresistible because of the future-focused and cutting-edge outcomes discussed in every session. We will have selected press covering the event – so you will be able to contribute to the news in real-time.  

And then there’s lots of fun to be had. We will be going to the USC Olympic Coliseum for a special party. We will also be going to the California Science Center – home of the Space Shuttle Endeavour – for a special awards ceremony. There we will introduce three of our HR Heroes for 2023, highlighting some of the global HR leaders who are leading us through these changing times.

And best of all: you’ll meet with our team, our partners, and your friends. This is not a vendor conference and there’s no expo hall – the program is dedicated exclusively to HR leaders. 

Please join us, I look forward to our time together. Last year’s attendees called it “perfect” – we just call it Irresistible.