On October 21st more than 450 human resources (HR) professionals will gather to discuss the fundamental importance of trust building in a rapidly changing environment at the Ibec HR Leadership Summit in the RDS, Dublin.
The premier event on the HR and people leader calendar, the 2026 summit’s theme – Trust: The human capital imperative – will explore how HR leaders can build and protect that trust and why in a new technological age it matters more than ever.
“As organisations navigate relentless change, trust has become the foundation for strong leadership, engaged teams and sustainable growth,” says Ibec executive director, employer relations Maeve McElwee. “The challenge for HR leaders extends far beyond the traditional boundaries of people management at a time of heightened global volatility and accelerating artificial intelligence (AI) adoption. Cultivating internal trust is no longer just a cultural goal but a critical strategic shield against external instability and HR leaders are on the front line in that battle.”
AI, with its capacity to generate misinformation and deepfakes as well as to reshape roles and organisational structures, is at the core of this challenge, she says.
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“As organisations adopt AI there is a need to build confidence that the guardrails are in place to ensure its ethical use,” she says. “Employees need to be able to trust the AI they are working with and how their managers and leaders are using it.”
Interestingly, the impact of AI will probably make leadership more rather than less human as a result of something called the subtraction effect, according to keynote speaker Julien Jourdan.
Prof Jourdan is professor of management and human resources at HEC Paris, and his research examines reputation, legitimacy and other social evaluations of organisations. The subtraction effect, identified by Jourdan and colleagues in research carried out over the past 18 months, is the result of AI taking over elements of current roles and allowing leaders more time to devote to other aspects.
He contends that AI actually elevates the importance of leadership by taking over an increasing share of routine managerial work, from monitoring performance to co-ordinating workflows and generating analysis.
‘Why are employees turning to AI for advice and guidance instead of their managers?’
— Maeve McElwee, Ibec executive director, employer relations
In a world where machines can increasingly co-ordinate and control, the capabilities that matter most are the ones they struggle to replicate – creating trust, exercising judgment, developing people, shaping culture and setting direction, he says. “The organisations that succeed will not be those that simply adopt AI, but those that redefine leadership around what remains uniquely human.”
He explains that technology has been automating tasks and roles for a long time. “Look at the accountant’s role for example,” he says. “Thirty years ago, they spent a lot of their time doing things manually that are now automated, yet when you look at the jobs market today, accountants are among the most sought after professionals. It’s not that managers will be replaced by machines, they will be assisted. The job will remain. The challenge is to look at what is and is not being automated.”
And the question is what managers will do with the time freed up by the assistive technology. “There is a distinction between management and leadership,” he explains. “Management is all about co-ordinating, bringing order to complex and chaotic situations, setting up processes and procedures and make sure they are followed. Leadership is about creating change, setting vision, creating culture, making difficult decisions, liaising with stakeholders.”
But managers and leaders are usually the same people. And this is where the choice in relation to what to do with the time saved comes in. “You can use it to micromanage, bring in more procedures and so on, or to invest more time in leadership. This is the subtraction effect. The technology is augmenting people at an individual level by subtracting elements of their roles.
“Should you become better at micromanaging and doing things that can be done by AI or be stronger as a leader and spend more time with teams motivating them, building culture and networking with stakeholders?” he asks.
Another speaker at the summit, Marinela Profi, will address the issue of trust drift. “Why are employees turning to AI for advice and guidance instead of their managers?” asks McElwee, of Ibec. “Previous generations probably went to colleagues, but people are now asking AI for advice not just in relation to work but on personal things like what clothes to wear.”
But with AI tending to tell people what they want to hear, Profi will examine how this trust gap can be bridged.
“The mental health implications of overuse of AI and technology will be explored by Colman Noctor,” McElwee adds. “Trust is really important from a mental health perspective. How do you build confidence in the work you are doing, that the information you rely on is trustworthy, that it has been obtained ethically and responsibly? And how do we educate people to know when information may not be correct? We need to ensure people are able to spot hallucinations. We need to find new ways of training people and that brings us back to the National Training Fund. It’s more critical than ever to release money to organisations to train people not just on the technical aspects of AI but in the leadership and management aspects as well.”
To learn more about the Ibec HR Leadership Summit 2026, go to hrleadership.ie
