Chemist Warehouse partners with Insurgence AI on AI HR assistant
Shared inbox automation agent helps triage HR inbox and is freeing up advisors for high-level work and improving morale.
Chemist Warehouse has partnered with Insurgence AI on an AI-powered assistant to help triage 300 email queries it receives every week to its HR inbox.
With more than 30,000 staff and store owners across 500 outlets, six people were tasked with handling investigations, grievances and policy and award interpretations. Turnover was sometimes as high as 30 percent.
Looking to ease the workload, the national chemist chain engaged Insurgence AI to scope the situation.
“I wanted to address our work volume, business and employee needs, and create space for the team to undertake higher value work that would build their skills and increase enjoyment in their role,” said Melissa Bear, head of people and culture advisory at Chemist Warehouse.
The solution was AI HR Advisory running on Microsoft Azure AI Foundry with Power Platform, an enterprise-grand low-code AI and automation platform that integrates with Outlook.
“Within thirty seconds of a request reaching the national inbox, AIHRA is working hard in the background to draft a response. The draft waits for an advisor to review, and any relevant policies or forms are automatically attached,” she said.
It’s built to answer various low-to-moderate-risk questions around leave matters, probation periods, informal performance conversations and management of inactive casual employees.
There are two parts to each email draft created by the agent:
- An acknowledgement of the person’s situation and there is more room for the tool to give a natural sounding response in this element.
- A policy based response that is less deterministic and must comply with internal guidelines so the room for variance in language is limited.
It integrates with internal policies and procedures and external data sources such as Fair Work Australia to access award information and enterprise bargaining agreements.
“The tool can be configured to any corporate shared inbox with high-volume emails that are repetitive but still require a nuanced understanding of internal guidelines and third-party materials,” said Matteo Castiello, managing director for Insurgence AI.
During the development stage, Insurgence was embedded into the team to focus on both knowledge management and technical implementation of the AI solution.
“This model has been expanded into four other departments within Chemist Warehouse and has become a standard way for us as the AI partner of choice to engage with teams,” said Castiello.
After a 10-week development period, the tool was introduced and has continued to evolve with fortnightly iterations.
“We began with six high-volume requests and now the agent understands how to respond to over 15 topics and integrates into multiple data sources,” Castiello told CRN.
It’s estimated to save the team about 1,950 hours a year and every employee has been retained since the system went live.
Chemist Warehouse has accelerated its AI adoption roadmap and expects to continue looking for strategic deployments of AI across the business.
“The tool is being expanded across Chemist Warehouse into other teams that face similar changes to the HR Advisory team,” said Castiello.