Leading Your Workforce in an AI-Driven World: Takeaways from Outsmart 2026
Outsmart 2026 recap of Visier's annual people leaders conference. This year's key themes: AI in workforce strategy, building business cases for AI investment, and core updates to Visier Workforce AI.
This month, we welcomed 350+ attendees in the Visier community to Palm Springs for our 13th annual Outsmart conference. It was a jam-packed two days as HR innovators, people leaders, and others gathered to learn more about how to tackle today’s most critical workforce challenges.
The conference was a mix of inspiring keynotes, practical and hands-on workshops, peer roundtables around a variety of topics, and perspectives, where panelists shared their own story and journey upfront before diving into moderated group discussions. Things got started at the Executive Forum Welcome Dinner, where attendees rode to dinner in vintage convertibles at the Dinah Shore Estate.
To close out the event, attendees dined poolside and took in a special performance by the Aqualillies. And of course, there were plenty of selfie opportunities (and mini-versions) of the custom art piece from Palm Springs-based artist Josh Agle AKA Shag.
The biggest takeaway? The future of workforce strategy is not coming. It’s already here, and those who haven’t been paying attention are already behind.
Keynotes we can’t stop thinking about
Cassie Kozyrkov, CEO of Kozyr, opened the event by doing what she's built her career on: demystifying AI for leaders who need to make it actionable. Cutting through the AI hype, Kozyrkov delivered a practical approach to adopting AI responsibility while elevating human potential.
After Kozyrkov’s opening, we’re now tempted to pick up our own copy of “Never Lead Alone” thanks to the keynote from author and entrepreneur Keith Ferazzi. He explored how AI is reshaping organizations across the world of technology and of management.
Our main takeaway from his session, aptly so, is that no one should navigate this shift solo. Whether you’re a people practitioner or a technical builder, you must take this opportunity to find your counterpart and together, build the bridge to embracing AI.
So take a look around and think about who those bridge-builders are in your organization.
Is it your CHRO? Your VP of Talent Management? Or your IT leaders?
AI here, there, everywhere
Our attendees can’t stop thinking about how AI is impacting their day to day and quite frankly, neither can we. That’s why the biggest theme of this year’s Outsmart was around AI, and particularly how AI is affecting workforce strategy and transformation at all levels.
We explored:
The practical implications of AI
Emerging risks and opportunities of AI
Operating shifts many businesses are considering within their AI environments
How to lead responsibly in an increasingly AI-enabled environment
AI and your … budget
Securing investment in AI transformation requires more than vision. It requires a business case that can withstand financial scrutiny.
Attendees heard from executive leaders who have already made that case successfully.
The through line: CFOs and CIOs want proof, not potential.
The organizations winning these conversations are the ones that have learned to speak in terms of measurable business impact, risk management, and a credible path to value realization.
AI and your… workforce insights
The era of static dashboards is over. Sessions throughout Outsmart explored what it looks like to move from data collection to real-time, AI-powered decision-making—and what it takes to make agentic AI work at scale across an enterprise.
The answer lives in the architecture: reliable data foundations, validated workforce context, interoperability across HR and enterprise platforms, and governance that builds trust without slowing the business down. Ryan Wong, CEO of Visier, gave us two important things to think about in the year (and years!) ahead:
First things first is, if you are a people analytic team and your sole focus is delivering insight, to your organization, we really implore you to move from, delivering insight to deliver impact. And there's so many examples of our current customers who are doing that.
There is a different from just creating dashboard and reporting tools and serve your business to really solve for a business, challenges. And the second thing is, start thinking about how the workforce transformation is impacting your own business and how can you be part of the conversation. The workforce transformation is guaranteed coming to your organization, whether you like it or not. So, how are you a part of the conversation, or can you arm your leaders to be having that conversation?
Organizations that have cracked the code are moving from pilots to measurable workforce outcomes.
AI and your…core HR workflows
Workforce AI is reshaping how HR operates, prioritizes, and makes decisions at every level.
Sessions on talent decisions, manager enablement, and continuous workforce planning all pointed to the same shift: leading organizations are embedding AI directly into core HR workflows rather than layering it on top of existing processes.
That means connecting recruiting data, skills intelligence, succession pipelines, and business forecasts into systems that help leaders make faster, smarter trade-offs across the full employee lifecycle. And it means building the leadership capability to sustain those changes once they're in place.
A look at what’s ahead for Visier Workforce AI
Chief Operating Officer Steve Holder started out his session with a Visier-infused dad joke: If an insight falls in the forest, does anybody hear it?
Collective groans aside, what quickly followed was an in-depth look at the new vision of Visier Workforce AI, connecting practitioners from insight to impact through a 5-step process fueled by Visier’s Workforce Intelligence Platform: Understand. Plan. Recommend. Activate. Improve.
As Holder said, “...there's a massive opportunity for all of us as HR, HR leaders, transformation leaders, PA practitioners, whatever your function is, to actually drive the adoption of decisioning driven by AI in a constructive, trusted, secure, ethical way. And that is the opportunity that presents itself with us, what we're here to talk about."
This is our opportunity as practitioners, as leaders, to use AI to bring that additional context and insight to help the employees and help the leaders make better decisions.
Then, Chief Strategy Officer Dave Weisbeck gave the audience a sneak peek at what’s to come with Visier Workforce AI and how it brings the three “W’s” of Workforce Insights, Workforce Plans, and Workforce Programs all in one place.
And, last but not least, Chief Evangelist and Talent Strategist Paul Rubenstein wrapped up the session with a helpful framework for people analytics leaders to bring to their CHRO to design, plan, and operate within their workforce (all at the speed of AI).
Calling AI “both the disrupter and the enabler,” Rubenstein offered insights on how HR has to change and how the audience fits into the future of work.
The key takeaway for me? CHROs need to start operating like their CFO counterparts with a new workforce rhythm that anticipates change at the speed of business, and this is where AI can help lead the way.
Drumroll please: Announcing the 2026 Vizzie award winners!
Every year at Outsmart, the Vizzie Awards recognize Visier customers doing extraordinary things with workforce intelligence. This year's seven winners span first-year implementations to decade-defining platform buildouts and AI benchmarks that changed internal strategy to cross-functional partnerships that moved millions of dollars.
Read winner snapshots and relive the award ceremony in our 2026 Vizzie winners blog.
Stay tuned on our blog as we’ll be going in depth on key sessions in the coming weeks.
