Bunnings is piloting AI to better understand its 55,000-strong workforce, creating development and career pathways to keep talented people in the business.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Head of remuneration, people systems and services Jeff Rodway told a Workday Elevate summit that the retailer is \u201cfull-on into [a] great technology revolution\u201d in its people and culture operations.<\/p>\n
This is backed in part by a \u201csignificantly increased\u201d investment in Workday, which has doubled the number of software tools that Bunnings can access, including newer AI software.<\/p>\n
Rodway said the retailer wanted to position itself to staff as a \u201cplace to build a career\u201d, but lacked insight into the skills, capabilities and aspirations of its people to make that happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe number one reason for people leaving Bunnings was to go somewhere else and build a career,\u201d Rodway said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe really value tenure, and we love people with experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile we\u2019ve got good retention [rates for staff], there were lots of good people who would leave, but we also know we\u2019ve got lots of good people that we know nothing about.\u201d<\/p>\n
Central to building this understanding is Workday Skills Cloud, which runs on the vendor\u2019s AI technology, which it calls \u2018Illuminate\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur skills journey is still in its infancy,\u201d Rodway said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve run a couple of pilots that have been successful. We\u2019re really understanding how Skills Cloud works.\u201d<\/p>\n
The company is also using Talent Optimization and HiredScore – the latter to match existing staff to open jobs, or to build talent pools of previous candidates or applicants that could be reapproached when new opportunities arise.<\/p>\n
Combined, the technology is expected to \u201csignificantly reduce time-to-hire and associated costs\u201d with constantly looking externally for staff, Rodway said.<\/p>\n
Rodway also flagged future implementations of two analytics tools – People Analytics and Prism Analytics – to help business and HR staff respectively understand the workforce.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor so long, I think in many ways, particularly around people-related decisions, it was about who you know or gut instinct. We\u2019re way too big for that,\u201d Rodway said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want our leaders to be taking [data-driven] action and making Bunnings a better place to work.\u201d<\/p>\n
AI chatbot for staff<\/p>\n
AI is not only being used behind the scenes to aid people and culture processes, alongside the business\u2019 understanding of the workforce.<\/p>\n
Staff are also being given access to an AI chatbot that can help with operational queries such as leave entitlements, policies and procedures, so that these types of questions \u201cdon\u2019t need to be answered by a person.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rodway noted that this represented a marked change for staff and for the Bunnings culture, which has traditionally emphasised \u201crelationships\u201d and \u201cwho you know\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of a sudden, we\u2019re now asking our team to go and self-serve,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s actually a better experience for self-serve \u2026 but it is a bit of a change. People say, \u2018It\u2019s not the way we used to do it. It\u2019s not really Bunnings\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rodway said it would take time to build internal faith and trust in AI-powered tools and capabilities.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe really need to be clear about our position with our team in terms of how we see AI being used in the business,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no doubt that AI is going to play a massive role in Bunnings, like it is in most organisations. We talk about it as removing the friction from everyday work, so how do we drive operational efficiencies and productivity through AI?<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom a people and culture perspective, we\u2019re very excited about the possibilities, ultimately really to make more inclusive management decisions, [and] to further reduce our time-to-hire.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe work we\u2019ve already done with Workday has focused around some of those things.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bunnings is piloting AI to better understand its 55,000-strong workforce, creating development and career pathways to keep talented…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30276,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-30275","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}