DisruptHR KW 8.0 recap: HR has moved past asking what AI is
Close to 300 HR professionals filled Maxwell’s for DisruptHR KW 8.0, and the talk about AI sounded different this year. The focus appears to have shifted from “what is it” to “what can it do for us, and how do we measure it.” H2R Business Solutions was there as a Prime Disruptor sponsor, and here is what we heard.
Date: October 22, 2026
Venue: Maxwell’s, Waterloo
“The end of HR: As we know it”
DisruptHR KW 8.0 took place on Thursday, October 22, 2026, at Maxwell’s Concerts and Events in Waterloo. This year’s theme was The End of HR: As We Know It. The evening brought together HR from across the Region of Waterloo for short talks, a panel discussion and a keynote.
Nine speakers took the stage: Aqib Zia, Dunja Vujovic, James Lord, Kiara Graham, Nathalie Blais, Neena Gupta, Rafat Haque, Toni Kay and Winnifred Anderson. Amy Davies moderated a panel with Zack MacPherson, Jacinta Grootjen and Michaud Garneau. Bob Egan closed the night with the keynote, and Carlos Benevides hosted. Zdravko (Zee) Gunjevic and the team at TextNow, the presenting sponsor, organized the event.
H2R supported the event as a Prime Disruptor sponsor and spent the evening mingling with fellow HR professionals and speaking with those who visited our booth, discussing what HR teams are working on now.
What stood out from the stage
The Band Advantage
Keynote speaker Bob Egan is a Hall of Fame musician who spent years touring with Blue Rodeo. He also holds a master’s degree in industrial and organizational psychology and has worked as a management consultant on employee engagement and culture.
His point was that motivation and employee engagement are overstudied and underused. Organizations measure them constantly, then do little with what they find. A touring band, by contrast, knows exactly what it is signing up for. Twenty hours in a van to the next gig. A rough hotel. Two thousand pounds of equipment carried up and down stairs to reach the stage. Everyone knows the hard parts going in, and they do the work together anyway.
Egan has turned that experience into a model he calls The Band Advantage. It looks at engagement through three lenses:
What musicians see
Trustworthy leadership, the big picture and their own path.
How musicians feel
Empowered, resilient and aligned.
What musicians do
Collaborate, connect and create.
Put together, those build a mission-driven culture where people want to do their best work. The lesson for HR is practical: be honest about the hard parts of a role up front, show people where they fit, and build teams that share the load.
“If this is the end of HR as we know it, I am all in.”
Bob Egan, keynote speaker
The nine lightning talks ran in the classic DisruptHR format: five minutes and 20 slides that advance automatically. The format forces each speaker to get to the point, and this year’s points were sharp.
Bring your own ideas to AI first
Kiara Graham, a talent and organizational development leader returning to the DisruptHR KW stage for a second year, spoke about cognitive offloading: how much of our thinking we now hand over to AI, including the work of generating ideas. She asked the room to picture two ways of working. In the first, you ask AI for ideas. In the second, you come to AI with your own ideas already in hand and use it to sharpen them.
The second approach keeps your judgement in charge, and any HR team can start using it on Monday. Draft the policy outline, the interview questions or the change plan yourself, then let the tool test and improve it.
“I found that incredibly insightful and practical in terms of how we can apply that to the real world and our work immediately.”
Brad Ratz, Director of Growth Strategy and Customer Experience, H2R Business Solutions
Leadership is about identity and relationships
Winnifred Anderson spoke about the role identity and relationships play in leadership, comparing leading a team to a marriage. Her people-first view of leadership was one of the most talked-about messages of the night.
Making learning stick
Aqib Zia focused on making training stick and building real capability. His approach uses hands-on activities with coaching in the moment, so people practise the skill rather than just hear about it.
What we heard at the H2R booth
The conversations at our booth told the same story as the stage. People were excited about what is coming in HR, and the tone has shifted.
AI came up again and again, but no one was asking what it is anymore. The questions now are practical:
- What can it actually do for an HR team?
- Where does it save time, and where does it add risk?
- How do we measure its impact on the business?
Here when something lands on your desk
A night like DisruptHR is a good reminder of how much in-house HR teams are already carrying. You may not need outside support today. Most HR leaders call us the week something lands that is better handled from outside: an investigation that has to run at arm’s length, a compensation review that needs a third-party perspective, or a leave with no one to cover it.
We add capacity and specialist support while you stay in charge.
- No contracts
- No surprises
- You keep the relationships
If something comes up later, you’ll know who to call. And if you know an HR leader who could use the support, send them our way.
Follow DisruptHR KW on LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook to hear about next year’s event.
