What is the Future-Ready Talent Management Programme?
The talent context has changed. Has your approach kept up?
Many organisations have extensive talent activity, yet still struggle to build the capabilities, critical roles and adaptability their strategy requires. Future-Ready Talent Management helps talent leaders start with business strategy, focus investment where it will create the greatest value and develop a more dynamic, evidence-led approach to talent planning.
Re-think talent
for a new context
Connect talent strategy directly to business outcomes
Navigate AI, skills and workforce transformation
Build actionable plans for future workforce success
How future-ready talent management is different
Many talent approaches were designed for a more stable and predictable world. Our starting point is that improving existing processes is not enough. Talent management must begin with business strategy and help the organisation build the critical capabilities, roles and adaptability needed to deliver it.
| Move away from… | Move towards… |
|---|
| Optimising talent processes | Solving critical business problems |
| Annual plans built around a single forecast | Iterative planning, scenarios and continuous adjustment |
| Planning around existing roles and headcount | Planning around future work, capabilities and critical roles |
| Starting with existing people and talent pools | Starting with strategy and the work to be done |
| Using AI mainly to automate HR processes | Using AI to reshape work, insight, careers and capability |
| Talent owned by HR | Shared accountability, led by the business and enabled by HR |
What Will This Programme Help You Do Differently?
Programme participants will be able to:
- Have a strategic workforce conversation with your CEO, rather than presenting another talent dashboard.
- Identify the capabilities that business strategy depends on, rather than relying primarily on job structures and succession categories.
- Translate business uncertainty into specific talent risks, choices and investment priorities.
- Challenge talent activity that consumes resources without improving business performance.
- Help leaders take greater accountability for talent, with HR acting as an expert enabler rather than process owner.
- Assess how AI will reshape work, careers, leadership and development across your organisation.
- Build an actionable plan for a live organisational challenge, with six months of application and follow-up support.
- Build relationships with peers facing similar talent challenges and opportunities.
Who Should Enrol?
This programme is for senior talent and HR professionals who are expected to connect talent decisions to business strategy, influence senior leaders and address capability or workforce challenges that cannot be solved through existing talent processes alone.
If you are working at talent strategy level, are actively involved with talent, and/or interact with senior business stakeholders across more than one people process area, this programme will inform, challenge and develop your talent thinking and practice.
It is not designed as an introduction to talent management or a technical course on individual talent processes.
Cost
CRF Member: £1,750 (+VAT)
Non-Members: £2,625 (+VAT)
Online Programme Dates
- 17 – 19 November 2026
- 9.00 – 12:30 GMT each day
- 6-month follow on session – TBC (3 hours online)
The Programme in Detail
This programme is run online across 3 half-day sessions with a 3 hour follow on which takes place 6 months later. The programme will address:
- Understanding the New Talent Context
- Business disruption, workforce trends and changing assumptions
- Re-thinking Talent for the Modern Organisation
- Careers, workforce flexibility, talent markets and capability-based thinking
- Connecting Talent Strategy to Business Strategy
- Strategic workforce planning, scenario thinking and risk-based approaches
- Turning Insight into Action
- Practical and innovative talent solutions that balance business needs with affordability and execution capability
- Doing More With Existing Talent
- Talent mobility, skills, redeployment, reskilling and longer careers
- Generational Change and the Future Workforce
- Adopt a critical lens to understand evolving employee expectations and identifying opportunities for connecting different workplace generations
- AI and the Future of Talent
- Implications for careers, leadership, capability development and the HR function
- The Future Talent Function
- Developing the capabilities required of modern talent professionals
- Personal Action Planning and Six-Month Application Journey
- Translating learning into measurable organisational impact
6-Month Follow-On Session
Most programmes finish when the classroom ends. This one does not. After the three focused half-days of research, challenge, practical tools and peer discussion, participants are then given six months to implement their action plan against a live organisational problem. The cohort then reconvenes to share progress, test decisions, receive expert and peer challenge and determine the next phase of implementation.
“The program was filled with actionable, practical advice designed to improve the cohorts ability to make meaningful change in a simple, but effective way. Nick leveraged his considerable experience working at the highest levels in both HR and consultancy to listen to our challenges in a safe space, offering guidance and encouragement. The small group environment offered everyone the opportunity to contribute, ask questions and share challenges – the group follow up was especially useful. Subsequently the group has stayed in touch and been supporting each other outside of the Program.”
– Past Delegate Feedback
This programme is led by Prof. Nick Kemsley Associate, CRF
The programme has been co-designed and led by Prof. Nick Kemsley for over 7 years.
Nick has spent the last decade helping global organisations challenge talent systems built for a more predictable world. His work focuses on the questions many talent functions avoid: which capabilities genuinely drive strategy, where talent investment fails to create value, how AI changes jobs and careers and how leaders become accountable for talent.
He combines experience leading regional and global talent functions with nearly 15 years advising C-suite teams and HR leadership teams.
Research: Future-Ready Talent Management
CRF’s work considers what our response should be as the pace of change in the business and geopolitical context continues to accelerate. Weak global growth, trade wars, geopolitical instability, regional conflicts, an ageing and declining working population, political polarisation and large-scale technological change are fundamentally changing the landscape for talent management in organisations. In this…
If you are interested in finding out more about this programme, group rates or would like to have a conversation around custom learning for your wider HR function, please contact Rosanna Neary or click the button below:
