QLD Brisbane Network

EOY Wrap-up: Top Trends in Employment Law and HR for 2026 into 2027 — what you need to know

Join us at Clayton Utz for drinks, canapés and a look at what’s coming.

Most employers don’t get caught out by the reform they never heard of. They get caught out by the change they heard about, filed away, and never diarised.

2026 has been a heavy year — not because of one landmark piece of legislation, but because of the sheer volume. A steady run of award variations, new obligations, and court and Commission decisions has quietly reset what’s expected of employers across redundancy, performance management, pay compliance, flexibility and psychological safety. Very little of it arrived with a headline. It arrived in instalments, across different functions, and landed on whoever happened to be paying attention.

2027 keeps that pace up. And it does so while the workforce underneath is changing in ways the compliance calendar doesn’t capture. Employee turnover has fallen to its lowest level in three years, which sounds like good news until you need new capability and can’t hire it. Skills shortages have shifted rather than eased, and in South East Queensland the infrastructure pipeline is about to compete hard for the same people everyone else needs. Organisations are deploying AI at scale while the research consistently shows that most are not yet converting it into anything measurable.

This session pulls those two threads together — what the law now requires, and what’s actually happening to Australian workforces — in a practical format you can act on before the new year.

What we’ll cover
Christy will take the employment law side: the cases and legislative changes that have genuinely changed how we manage people, what employers most commonly get wrong, and what’s queued for 2027. The focus is on decisions with day-to-day operational consequences rather than a legislative recap.

Claire will cover with the top HR and workforce trends heading into 2027, grounded in current Australian and international research rather than prediction — including what the data says about mobility, capability, work design, AI adoption, psychosocial risk and the obligations arriving from Europe and the US well ahead of any Australian equivalent.

What you’ll take away

• A clear picture of the employment law changes and decisions that matter most heading into 2027, and what each one requires you to actually do

• Where the common compliance exposures sit, and the practical steps to close them before the new year

• An evidence-based view of the workforce trends shaping 2027 planning, and where the opportunities sit for organisations willing to move early

• Context for your own workforce strategy, benchmarked against what Australian and international employers are reporting
   

  Target Audience  

  HR and people and culture practitioners, business leaders, executives and managers with workforce responsibility. The content is pitched to be useful across industries and organisation sizes, from small employers without dedicated HR through to large and complex workforces.

   

  Other Event Information 

• You will obtain 2.5 CPD points for this forum.

• AHRI Member Fee – $20

• Non-Member Fee – $25

• Session timings:
  Registrations 5:00pm-5:30pm.
  Presentation and Q&A 5:30pm – 6:30pm.
  Drinks, nibbles and mingles 6:30pm-7:30pm (Please advise any dietary requirements)

   

Registration Information

Registration close: Monday 23 November

Having trouble registering? Contact Us or phone 1300 811 880.

By confirming your registration, you agree to AHRI’s Event Terms & Conditions.