Onboarding in the AI Era

AI is changing how new employees find information, understand their role, build relationships and begin contributing.

But organisations are still working out where AI genuinely improves onboarding, where it adds little value, and where human interaction remains essential.

On 21 October in Sofia, Bulgaria, Vesela Koleva and Stavros Stavru are bringing together eight practitioners from eight organisations for a small, invitation-only conversation about what is actually happening in practice.

No presentations. No product demo. No sales pitch.

Just real experiences, different perspectives and a chance to compare what we are learning.

The 3Cs of Onboarding

We will explore onboarding through three outcomes.

Clarity

How can AI help new hires understand the organisation, their role, expectations, priorities and the information they need?

Where is it helping people get to clarity faster, and where can it create more noise or false confidence?

Connection

How is AI affecting relationships, belonging, culture, values and the way new employees learn how people actually work together?

Where can technology help, and where does meaningful connection still depend on people?

Contribution

How can AI help new hires begin doing useful work and creating value sooner?

Where can it support performance, judgement and problem-solving, and what still depends on context, collaboration and human experience?

What we want to learn together

Across all three areas, we will compare:

• What have we tried?
• What appears to work?
• What appears not to work?
• Under what conditions?
• What is worth testing next?

You do not need a polished success story.

An experiment that failed, something you are unsure about, or a question your organisation has not yet solved may be just as valuable.

What you will get from the conversation

Compare where you stand with peers

See how other organisations are approaching AI in onboarding and where your own thinking and practice sit in comparison.

Take away practical ideas

Hear real examples, challenges and experiments that may help you rethink or improve your own approach.

Help shape the practitioner conversation

The insights from the roundtable will be used to prepare a short public report on AI and the 3Cs of Onboarding: Clarity, Connection and Contribution.

The report will bring together anonymised and aggregated observations from the group: what appears to work, what does not, where confidence is still low, and what organisations may want to test next.

With your separate permission, your name, role and organisation may be listed as a roundtable participant / expert contributor. Your individual comments will not be attributed to you.

Build relevant connections

Meet a small group of people dealing with similar questions from different organisational perspectives.

Who is this for?

We are inviting people who have a strategic perspective on onboarding or employee experience and some practical exposure to AI.

You do not need to have “L&D” or “onboarding” in your title, and you do not need to personally run the onboarding process.

What matters is that you:

• influence how onboarding or employee experience develops in your organisation
• have enough practical experience to discuss what is working and what is not
• have experimented with, considered or encountered AI in this context
• are willing to exchange experiences openly with peers

To keep the conversation small and useful, there will be one participant per organisation and only eight participant places.

If there is more interest, we may organise another conversation rather than make this group larger.

What will happen on the day?

No slides or preparation are required.

We simply ask you to come ready to share one real experience, experiment or question.

The conversation is private. The learning can be shared.

The working conversation will be audio-recorded and transcribed so that Vesela and Stavros can prepare the practitioner report.

The recording and full transcript will remain private and will not be published.

The public report will use anonymised and aggregated insights. Individual comments, company examples or quotations will not be attributed without separate permission.

Participants will have an opportunity to flag factual errors or anything that could unintentionally identify them or their organisation before publication.

Participation in the public list of roundtable contributors will also be optional and agreed separately.

About the hosts

Vesela Koleva

People development practitioner with extensive experience in onboarding, learning and employee development.

Stavros Stavru, Ph.D.

Co-founder of AhaPlay, working on the gap between organisational decisions and coordinated team action.

AhaPlay is supporting the event and covering the hosting costs. There will be no product demonstration or sales presentation.

Event details

Date

Wednesday, 21 October 2026

Venue

+tova, Sofia

Arrival

09:00

Roundtable

09:30–12:00

Networking and close

12:00–12:30

Participants

8 invited practitioners + 2 hosts

Participation

Free

Language

Bulgarian

The question behind the conversation

As AI becomes part of onboarding, how do we help new hires reach Clarity, build Connection and begin making a Contribution, and where is AI actually helping us do that better?