A one-day summit for employers, HR professionals and workplace leaders preparing for the legal, cultural, and technological future of work.

📅 Tuesday 8 December 2026

🕤 9:30am–4:15pm

📍 IET Birmingham: Austin Court, Kingston Lecture Theatre

🎟️ £120 (inc. VAT per delegate (non-refundable) — light breakfast & lunch included - 10% discount until 21 August. When booking use promo code: MLSUMMITDEL

What is the Workplace Summit?

The workplace is changing. The decisions leaders make now will shape what comes next.

Employment law is entering a period of major reform.

Artificial intelligence is changing how work is carried out, how people are managed, and even how workplace disputes are presented and investigated.

Employees expect more from leadership, communication, culture, and wellbeing. Managers are being asked to lead through change that is arriving faster than many organisations can prepare for it.

Meanwhile, grievances are becoming longer, workplace conflict is becoming more adversarial, employment protections are strengthening and the consequences of getting people decisions wrong continue to grow.

The Workplace Summit 2026 brings the people responsible for UK workplaces together to address those challenges properly.

Hosted by Magara Law, this high-impact, annual conference will bring together employers, business leaders, HR and people professionals, legal experts, public-sector decision-makers and specialists in leadership, technology, workplace culture, and dispute resolution.

The summit will open with a civic address from the Lord Mayor of Birmingham, Councillor Zaker Choudhry, before a programme of keynote talks and practical sessions examining the forces that are already reshaping work.

This is not simply a conference about what might happen in the future, it is a day designed to help you make better decisions now.

Why the workplace summit (and why now)?

The hardest workplace problems rarely begin as legal problems.

They often begin with a manager who avoids a difficult conversation, a grievance that is allowed to escalate, technology introduced without proper governance, a policy that exists on paper but is not reflected in practice, or a workplace culture that changes gradually until senior leaders realise they have lost control of it.

By the time a solicitor becomes involved, organisations may already be dealing with damaged relationships, sickness absence, declining productivity, reputational risk, senior-management time, and the possibility of litigation.

The Workplace Summit moves the conversation forward.

Across one focused day, our speakers will examine the legal, human, operational, and technological questions employers need to confront as they prepare for the future of work.

You will hear from people who advise organisations, lead teams, resolve disputes, implement AI, develop managers, manage risk, and represent parties when workplace relationships have broken down.

More importantly, you will leave with ideas and practical tools that can be taken back into your organisation.

What will you gain from attending?

The Workplace Summit will help you:

prepare for significant employment law changes and understand what they mean in practice;

rethink how your organisation prevents and resolves workplace conflict;

understand the new risks surrounding harassment by customers, clients, contractors, and other third parties;

assess how AI will affect jobs, skills, recruitment, productivity, and workforce planning;

identify the management capabilities organisations will need by 2030;

strengthen leadership decision-making before workplace concerns become formal disputes;

learn from specialists working across employment law, government, technology, leadership, mediation, and organisational change;

connect with leaders and professionals facing many of the same questions.

You will not leave with another collection of vague predictions about the future.

You will leave with a clearer view of what is changing, where the risks sit, and what your organisation should do next.

Who should attend?

The Workplace Summit has been created for the people responsible for leading, managing, and protecting organisations and their workforces.

It will be particularly valuable for:

chief executives, managing directors and chief operating officers;

HR directors, chief people officers and senior people professionals;

NHS trust leaders and senior healthcare employers;

public-sector, local-government and Civil Service leaders;

board members, trustees and governors;

risk, governance and compliance professionals;

employee relations and workplace investigation teams;

learning and development leaders;

senior operational and departmental managers;

universities, colleges, schools and academy trusts;

charities, social enterprises and third-sector organisations;

founders and directors of growing businesses;

employers preparing for the next phase of UK employment law reform.

You do not need to be an employment lawyer or HR specialist to benefit.

Description supplied by the event organiser.