For workers navigating rapid change, uncertainty has become the job – not an obstacle to it. Three HR voices explain what that means in practice
For Michelle Poffandi, head of people operations and advisory at Versent, 2026 has been defined by a corporate transformation few HR practitioners ever have to manage twice in three years.
Versent was acquired by Telstra in 2023, becoming a subsidiary after operating as a founder-led private business. It is now being sold again – this time to Infosys, which will hold 75 per cent of the business and operational control once the deal completes, with Telstra retaining a 25 per cent stake.
The result, Poffandi says, is a business with "multiple parent entities" and two distinct industrial frameworks running side by side: staff transferred from the former Telstra Purple business – now renamed Versent Group – are covered by the Telstra Enterprise Agreement, while Versent's original workforce sits under Modern Awards, with common law contract employees award-free.
It is a governance and compliance puzzle that underpins her nomination for Australian HR Manager of the Year at the HR Awards 2026 winners and excellence awardees — recognition she says came directly out of navigating this unusually complex year.
Protecting the judgement technology can't replace
Rather than resisting automation, Poffandi has built a framework she calls "tech-delivered, co-delivered and human-delivered" to decide what AI should own outright, what it should support, and what must stay distinctly human.
"Things in our business that we really want to protect is, you know, someone's having a baby – let's have a real-life conversation with them to congratulate and guide them along the way on this journey," she says. "Ultimately that's where our real value lies, in those opportunities."
That instinct echoes a theme running through recent coverage of AI's spread into HR decision-making, including analysis on why job losses don't tell the full story for HR leaders navigating an AI workforce reset, which argues persistent anxiety about opaque AI decisions can itself become a psychosocial hazard if left unmanaged.
Leading through self-doubt
For Andrew Horsfield, a consultant and author of Better, uncertainty at the top starts with the leader's own mindset. "The most effective leaders don't try and eliminate challenge, setback and struggle; they embrace and build tolerance for it in their teams," he said.
"Leaders need to trade conviction for curiosity and create environments where uncertainty promotes insights, ideas and growth. Great leadership is not eliminating uncertainty. It's learning to navigate it effectively."
Self-doubt, he argues, should be treated as data rather than a defect. "Self-doubt is often a positive signal a leader is pushing at the edge of their competence," Horsfield said. "The task isn't to eradicate it, but mobilise it. Seeing doubt as a teacher showing you the path to where you want to go" can turn it "into a playground for potential."
Left unaddressed, he warns, the risk isn't dramatic failure but "the quiet hum of discontent" – cultures where people's days "accumulate, but don't count for much."
Clarity is the antidote to silence
Communications expert Leah Mether says the instinct to project total certainty is the wrong one. "Leaders need to accept that navigating uncertainty is part of the job, not a problem to eliminate," she said.
"Share what you know, what you're doing about it, and what you don't know yet – and keep your message simple so people aren't left filling in the gaps." Combining "clarity, empathy and consistency," she says, steadies teams "even when the waters are rough."
The cost of getting this wrong, Mether says, is not neutral. "Avoidance doesn't make problems disappear; it makes them grow," she said. "When leaders don't address uncertainty, silence creates a vacuum and people fill it with rumour, fear and worst-case thinking… trust drops, resistance rises, performance suffers and good people start checking out."
For Poffandi, that means treating documentation and knowledge-sharing as a genuine risk control, not paperwork – after a critical staffing gap last December, her team is now using artificial intelligence to help capture step-by-step processes as work happens, rather than relying on any one person's memory.
As she puts it: uncertainty in HR is no longer an exception to plan around. "It's just all part of the job, I think, and all part of the fun."
