Building Disruption-Ready Field Teams: The Workforce Conversation Defining 2026

Technology gets the headlines. People do the work. Every senior field service and asset management leader speaking at FSM Summit ANZ 2026 returns to the same point: transformation fails when the workforce isn't ready — and succeeds when frontline capability, culture and confidence are designed in from the start.

The 17th Annual FSM Summit ANZ at Royal Randwick Racecourse on 26–27 August 2026 dedicates significant program space to the workforce conversations Australian field organisations need to be having right now.

Why Workforce Resilience Is the 2026 Frontier

Three workforce pressures are colliding for Australian field organisations:

• Skills shortages across trades, engineering and technical roles, with no easy supply-side fix in the medium term
• Rising operational unpredictability — severe weather, supply chain volatility, regulatory shifts, customer expectation churn
• Increased digital complexity asking more of frontline workers in less time, with rising mental load and fatigue risk

The leaders responding well aren't choosing between safety, capability and wellbeing. They're treating them as a connected system.

The New Era of Field Service Leadership

Samuel Pickering, General Manager Operations and Maintenance Delivery at Transgrid, headlines a featured panel on The New Era of Field Service Leadership — building capability, culture and confidence at the frontline. As customer expectations rise and frontline roles become more digital, mobile and complex, the panel explores how leaders are supporting teams through change, strengthening culture and building consistent delivery capability.

Samuel also returns on Day 2 with a quickfire on Future Ready Teams — how organisations are building flexibility, strengthening communication and supporting workers to make confident decisions under operational pressure.

Winning and Retaining the Next Generation of Field Talent

Catherine Macdonald, Field Experience Product Lead — Field Services Group at Telstra, joins a Day 2 panel on attracting and retaining the next generation of field workers. The session digs into what motivates the next generation of field technicians, how roles are evolving in a digital environment and what development pathways keep people engaged.

This is now a survival-level conversation for any field operation depending on a trades or technical workforce — and a strategic differentiator for those getting it right.

Wellbeing, Safety and the Modern Workforce

Workforces across asset and field environments are reporting higher fatigue, greater mental load and rising safety risks. A featured Day 2 panel — Wellbeing, Safety and the Modern Workforce — explores how leaders are building stronger safety culture while genuinely supporting wellbeing. Topics include:

• Technology-enabled safety — wearables, AR, smart tech in high-risk environments
• Psychological safety as a leadership discipline, not a compliance line
• Remote support models for dispersed and lone-worker teams
• Fatigue management in 24/7 and high-demand operations

Preparing for the Unexpected: Disruption-Ready Field Teams

Unplanned outages, severe weather, customer impacts and supply delays disrupt even the best planned schedules — especially across regional and remote Australia. A Day 2 keynote on building disruption-ready field teams explores scenario planning, flexible resourcing, rapid mobilisation and the real-time visibility needed to minimise downtime and community impact when conditions shift.

It's followed by a practical scenario-based workshop — Designing Disruption Ready Teams — where participants identify gaps in their current response capabilities and explore approaches to improve readiness, communication and coordination during unplanned events. It's one of the most concrete capability-building sessions on the program.

Beyond the Tech: Leading People-Centred Change

Eric Cheng, formerly Enterprise Architect Digital at Komatsu Australia, joins a Day 1 panel on closing the gap between digital strategy and onsite execution. A complementary Day 2 quickfire — Beyond the Tech: Leading People Centred Change — reinforces a hard-earned lesson: transformation rarely falters because of technology. It falters because organisations underestimate the cultural and human shifts required to make change stick.

The Field Leaders Sharing Their Playbooks

The 2026 program features a depth of field leadership voices rare in Australian industry events:

• Catherine Macdonald and Kylie Lanham (Telstra)
• Samuel Pickering (Transgrid)
• Sergio Perez (CitiPower and Powercor)
• Matt Grant (Ausgrid)
• Stever Arndt (Sodexo)
• Sam Hewson (Suntory Beverage & Food Oceania)
• Scott Edwards (Vault Pressure Control)
• Annie Smith (Ventia)
• Mohomad Bostaki (Fleetwood)
• Karun Naidoo (Weir Minerals)

Make 2026 the Year You Invest in the Workforce, Not Just the Tech

If frontline capability, safety culture or workforce resilience is a 2026 priority, FSM Summit ANZ is the room.