La Fosse is hosting Beyond Headcount Live, a free London event bringing together ten senior AI and technology leaders to help CEOs and business leaders navigate how AI will reshape their workforces in 2027 and beyond.
On 4 November, the panel will discuss the practical challenges of AI adoption, workforce planning, skills and organisational change before opening the floor to audience questions. Designed for senior leaders in technology and tech-enabled businesses, the event offers an opportunity to hear how others are approaching the decisions shaping the future of work.
What Inspired La Fosse To Create This Event, and Why Now?
We built the Beyond Headcount blueprint because we found ourselves having similar conversations with different leaders, all wrestling with the same uncertainty about what AI means for their teams – and we wanted to help.
But a written report can only do so much. Many leaders are looking for business-specific guidance and want to be able to talk face-to-face with those actually navigating these issues day-to-day.
November felt like the right moment, because most businesses are heading into 2027 workforce planning right now, and that’s exactly when this uncertainty will get expensive if it isn’t resolved.
Why Focus On Practical Decisions Rather Than Predictions About Jobs?
Predictions about job numbers make headlines, but they don’t help someone who needs to decide whether to backfill a role or not.
Also, every business is at a different stage in their AI journey, so broad predictions rarely describe the niche picture inside of an organisation. What is helpful is learning from other leaders facing similar challenges, capability by capability and team by team.
From our perspective, that’s a lot more useful than a number or prediction that comes with no sense of action or solution.
What Kinds of Questions Or Concerns Are You Expecting Attendees To Bring?
I’d expect a lot of questions about ownership of the AI transformation journey, a focus on reskilling and training, and questions about cost – as AI isn’t the free capacity some people assume it is.
My honest guess is most people have already started their business journey with AI and will be coming with a specific decision they’re stuck on, rather than a general curiosity about AI.
What’s the Biggest Workforce Challenge You See Leaders Grappling with Today?
Businesses are trying to run 2026 decisions through planning habits that were built for a much slower moving world. A yearly headcount review made sense when what a team did stayed roughly the same for that whole year.
AI has changed speed and capacity, but I don’t think most planning processes have caught up with that yet.”
How Can Companies Prepare When the Technology Itself Keeps Changing?
I’d stop trying to predict where the technology settles, because I don’t think it does settle, at least not for a while. It’s more about building a process that can absorb change and adapt flexibly as it happens instead. That’s a different way of working for most leadership teams than the forecasting they’re used to doing.
What Workforce Decisions Do Leaders Need To Make Now To Be Ready for 2027?
Get honest about exactly where your business has clarity and direction, and where it still needs refinement. Most leadership teams can answer that confidently for two or three areas of the business but are winging it everywhere else. It’s important to have an understanding of every business area and function before committing to anything – whether that’s a hiring plan, a training budget or investing in a new agent or tool.
Which Skills Will Become Most Valuable As AI Becomes More Embedded?
Judgement – the ability to know when an AI system has got something wrong, or missed something a human would have caught, will be most valuable. That takes real knowledge and a critical eye. As more decisions get delegated to these systems, attention to detail, adaptability and confidence will become more and more important
Are Businesses Focusing Enough On Reskilling Their Existing People?
Most businesses would say yes. But there are only very few that can evidence reskilling happening at any real pace once you ask for specifics. There’s a gap between what’s been signed off, what training has been delivered, and what people are actually doing differently day to day as a result. It can be hard to measure those gaps, but reskilling plans often look very different when they are actually rolled out.”
What Separates Organisations Succeeding with AI From Those Struggling?
The ones doing well ask what they’re actually trying to achieve before they pick up a tool. The ones struggling tend to go the other way round, they’ve got the tool and are looking for somewhere to point it. It sounds like an obvious difference, but it’s surprisingly rare to see it done in the right order.
If Attendees Leave with One Takeaway, What Do You Hope It Will Be?
I think they’ll realise that a lot of the workforce questions they’re stuck on aren’t really about AI at all. They’re about how clearly the business understands its own decisions, who makes them and why. Get that sorted and the AI questions tend to get a lot easier to answer.”
