Anglicare Sydney starts using AI in HR operations

Anglicare Sydney is starting to use artificial intelligence in its human resources operations, with initial applications in the areas of recruitment, onboarding and job coaching.

Chief people and customer officer Yvette McDonald told the Workday Elevate summit that AI promised to remove “frustrations and frictions” on staff, freeing them “to either lead their team or care for our clients and residents.”

The not-for-profit has diverse operations but they include retirement living, housing and community services.

“The kind of use cases we’ve implemented and are exploring [with AI] are in recruitment,” McDonald said.

“When I started [at Anglicare] three years ago, it would take us 42 days to hire somebody. Now it takes us 10 to 13 [days], and there was one time where we did it in six [days]. 

“The challenge for the team is really to [bring] hiring [times] for our volume roles down to seven days, and we’re pretty excited about that possibility.”

McDonald said that AI is also being used as part of on-the-job coaching for leaders.

In addition, the not-for-profit is “exploring what’s possible to tighten up our onboarding process” with AI. 

“We think there are lots of opportunities there in our shared services space and in our onboarding processes, again to free people up to do the work they love to do,” she said.

Anglicare Sydney has been live with Workday’s human capital management (HCM) system for a bit over a year.

“We went live June 17 last year,” McDonald said, adding the date “is emblazoned in my memory.”

It previously ran HR using spreadsheets, a payroll system and “good will”.

“We were constantly responding and reacting to things,” she said.

“We’ve implemented a number of the modules [of Workday] and it’s transformed how we work. Our recruitment times are much shorter – the industry turnover was 40 percent three years ago, and our turnover is in the low teens now. 

“It’s been quite transformative to help us move from being really reactive to forward planning, to be able to forecast recruitment now, to be able to succession plan, have really good conversations around performance and salary reviews, and really align performance to roles much more easily.”

McDonald predicted that future work in the HR space could see the not-for-profit focus on more deeply understanding its 5500 employees, and the skills they possess and want to develop.

“At the moment a lot of the rostering that we do in our aged care business is based on role, but we know that there’s a global shortage of nurses and we know that our workforce is also ageing, and so I think there’s a time coming in the near future where we won’t be necessarily rostering on a role basis but on a skills basis,” McDonald said.

“For example, [this could mean] ensuring that we have x number of people on shift that can do wound management or dispense medicine. 

“That’s the kind of agility that we’ll need to move to as we manage a critical skills shortage in the industry.

“That’s the next thing for us to have a think about, and there’ll be lots of benefits as we transition our workforce into thinking about developing skills capability rather than going up a traditional ladder in a job family.”