Right-Sizing Work: Matching What Matters to the Capacity You Actually Have

Today's leaders are facing a difficult reality: growing expectations, leaner teams, and workloads that continue to expand faster than organizational capacity. But workforce sustainability is not simply about having fewer resources; it’s about making intentional decisions around what work truly matters.

Not all work creates equal value. In pressure-filled environments, the organizations that struggle most are often not the ones with the fewest resources, but the ones that have not made clear decisions about which work deserves their people’s time, energy, and focus. When everything is treated as a priority, nothing truly is.

That shift in thinking is at the center of one of Talent Summit 2026’s most practical breakout sessions: “Right-Sizing Work: Balancing Workload, Capacity, and Sustainability.” Through a candid fireside-style conversation, two Hawaii HR leaders will explore how organizations are moving past reactive overload toward a more deliberate approach, one that aligns the work that matters most with the capacity to deliver it.

Manu Bermudes, Vice President of Human Resources at Hawaii Gas, and Stevette Santiago, Chief Human Resources Officer at UHA Health Insurance, will speak to what that process actually looks like from the inside: how leaders identify what to protect, what to deprioritize, and how to have honest conversations with their teams about capacity without losing focus, connection, or trust.

Attendees can expect a grounded discussion on clarifying priorities when demands compete, managing team capacity with both operational and human considerations in mind, and building the kind of organizational resilience that comes from clarity rather than endurance. This is a session about decision-making under constraint—and how Hawaii leaders are using that constraint as an opportunity to build smarter, more sustainable organizations.

If you lead a team or set organizational priorities, this conversation was built for you.

Talent Summit 2026 takes place Friday, June 26, from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at the Ala Moana Hotel.