About

As AI agents and humanoid robotics move from science fiction to the boardroom, the traditional silos of HR and IT are beginning to crumble. Stuart Evans, Director of Future of Work & Digital Employee Experience at Rolls-Royce, believes we are witnessing a collision course that will eventually merge the CIO and CHRO into a single, unified role: The Chief Work Officer.

Moving beyond the "what" and into the "how," Stuart will detail the practicalities of the Rolls-Royce transformation, a journey that saw the organization shift from empowered, separate business units to a centralized, enterprise-wide operating model that treats people, AI agents, and robotics as complementary value-generating assets.

Areas of discussion will include:
• Board Buy-in & ROI: How do you build a business case for a model that views automation and people as a singular resource pool?
• Managing Resistance: How do you navigate the internal friction caused by consolidating 14,500 engineers and dismantling established divisional power structures?
• Strategy vs. IT: What does a digital strategy look like when it is led by business owners rather than the IT department?