Being a mutual, Royal London is owned by its members—they felt their recruitment ought to have a personalized touch. So in mid-2024, the organization decided to bring recruiting in-house and deliver a more high-impact, human experience. But the move in-house sizably cut the amount of people supporting Royal London’s recruiting, leading to a slow process with lots of bottlenecks.
An internal process audit led Royal London to discover their biggest time waster: Recruiters spent too much time manually scheduling interviews over the phone. In fact, it was taking Royal London three days to schedule a single interview. The mutual wanted to evolve in order to keep pace.
Getting to top talent first is really, really important. We needed to innovate.
Group Head of Recruitment
Revitalizing interview scheduling with AI.
To accelerate their interview scheduling with AI, Royal London implemented Workday Paradox Candidate Experience Agent.
Here’s how it works. After a candidate applies for an open role, a recruiter qualifies them and activates Peli, Royal London’s AI agent. Peli texts the candidate open interview times based on recruiter availability, and when a candidate replies with a time that works, Peli notifies the recruiter and places a calendar hold. If someone needs to reschedule, Peli is available 24/7 to handle that process with just a few more text messages.
Since going live with Peli, Royal London is scheduling more interviews than ever, strengthening the overall pipeline and improving their ability to hire the best people. It used to take Royal London three days to schedule an interview—now it takes 37 minutes. Talk about a competitive advantage.
“We’re able to interact with candidates in a way they want to engage,” said Group Head of Recruitment Richard Matthews. “The process feels much slicker, much more positive, and more forward-thinking than our competitors.”
We’ve increased flexibility within our scheduling process. We’re doing more with less.
Group Head of Recruitment
Automation refocuses recruiters and improves hire quality.
The opportunity to schedule faster doesn’t just mean that Royal London is hiring faster—it means they’re hiring better. With more candidates in the pipeline, recruiters can be more selective and focus on securing the best people.
“We have a much smaller team than our outsource model, but we’ve built up our capabilities much more,” said Matthews. “Because we can get people through quicker, we can make more informed decisions.”
Looking ahead, Royal London sees this shift as foundational to its long-term success.
We want to be around for another 300 years. Evolution is key to that goal, and leveraging AI is key to evolving.
Group Head of Recruitment