Engagement Isn’t a Feature, It’s a Strategy: Lessons from Large Organizations with Frontline Workers

20 Oct 2026
Case Study Theater 1 - Expo Hall
Case Study Session

AI can draft your policies, screen your candidates, and summarize your all-hands. What it can't do is make people feel heard.

Join Melissa Shelley Höjwall, Head of HR Tech & AI at Stora Enso, and formerly leader of the global HR Tech function at H&M Group, for a candid case study on keeping humans at the center of HR transformation. Drawing on digitalization journeys across fashion retail, packaging, forestry, and other industries, Melissa shares how global organizations choose and use technology to deepen engagement rather than automate it away.

Co-hosted with Samantha Hartlen Smith, People and Growth Talent Lead, Mentimeter North America, this won't be a lecture. The session runs as a live, two-way conversation powered by Mentimeter, where your questions and reactions shape the discussion in real time. You'll leave with a practical view of what belongs in a modern HR tech stack, where AI genuinely helps, and how to keep your people at the heart of it and know what to do next.

Speakers
Melissa Shelley Höjwall
Melissa Shelley Höjwall, Head of HR Tech & AI - Stora Enso
Samantha Hartlen Smith
Samantha Hartlen Smith, People and Growth Talent Lead - Mentimeter North America

Learning Objective 1

Evaluate HR technology through an engagement lens using a practical framework for deciding what earns a place in your stack, drawn from real build/buy/adopt decisions at H&M Group and Stora Enso.

Learning Objective 2

Identify where AI genuinely strengthens the employee experience and where it erodes it, so automation deepens listening and connection instead of replacing them.

Learning Objective 3

Apply techniques for turning one-way HR communication into two-way dialogue at global scale, modelled live in the session, so you experience the method, not just hear about it.

Access Level

Open to All Pass Holders