Anthony Rice
Co-Founder | PeoplePartners
Anthony Rice is a recognised speaker on workforce design, organisational scalability, and the future of work. Over the past 24 years, he has built and scaled 6 businesses, including multiple 8-figure ventures, giving him first-hand experience of the operational challenges that come with growth.
As Co-Founder of PeoplePartners, Anthony has spent almost two decades working alongside Australia's vocational education sector, helping PTEs and RTOs redesign how work gets done. Through this hands-on work, he has seen first-hand how regulatory complexity, funding requirements, compliance obligations, and workforce pressures shape the way PTEs and RTOs operate. His work focuses on workforce design, organisational structure, global talent, and operational scalability — supporting leaders to reduce execution bottlenecks, strengthen their teams, and prepare for the AI era.
Featured in Inc. Magazine for his insights on workforce design, Anthony has worked with more than 500 organisations across Australia, New Zealand, North America, and beyond. His presentations combine practical experience with fresh thinking, challenging conventional assumptions and leaving audiences with simple, actionable frameworks they can immediately apply within their own organisations.
11:35 am
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12:20 pm
Batten 1
Breakout Session - Workforce Design for the AI Era: Why You’re Optimising the Wrong Thing
In a regulated education environment, complexity often grows faster than revenue. As PTEs scale, roles become broader, leaders remain trapped in execution, and margins tighten even when enrolments continue to grow. Most organisations respond by hiring more people, implementing new systems, or embracing AI. But what if those solutions are optimising the wrong thing? In this practical and thought-provoking session, Anthony Rice challenges one of the biggest assumptions in organisational design and introduces a different way of thinking about workforce capacity, scalability, and the future of work. Using real education-sector examples, attendees will leave with practical ideas to rethink how work is designed, where AI fits, and how to build organisations that are more scalable, resilient, and better prepared for the AI era.