In June, BMO Financial Group took a bold step forward in employee experience by rolling out the Workday Self-Service Agent to all 55,000 of its employees in a single, well-executed launch. Speaking at the Rising community keynote, Sarah Clements, Head of HR Operations and Shared Services at BMO Financial Group, shared how the bank successfully brought AI-powered support to a highly regulated financial services environment.

For BMO, this deployment wasn’t a sudden pivot, but the natural evolution of a strategy built on a “Workday-first” philosophy.

A “Workday-First” Strategy Built on Trust

BMO’s approach to technology infrastructure has focused on simplicity and consolidation since adopting Workday in 2020. Instead of layering additional software wrappers over their core platform, BMO guided employees directly to Workday for their HR needs.

When evaluating AI capabilities, staying inside the Workday ecosystem was a natural fit. Because BMO’s data was already housed within a trusted, vetted environment, they avoided the security and privacy hurdles associated with exporting sensitive HR data to third-party tools. The Self-Service Agent was a natural starting point for employee engagement and offering better service quality.

Cross-Functional Governance and Policy Readiness

Deploying generative AI tools across a enterprise with 55,000 employees requires careful preparation, especially in banking. To ensure a smooth launch, BMO focused on thorough stakeholder alignment and content hygiene from the start:

  • Early Stakeholder Collaboration: The project team worked alongside risk, compliance, legal, IT, cybersecurity, and BMO’s responsible AI forum to clarify not only what the agent would do, but also what it wouldn’t do.
  • Refining HR Content: Before opening the agent to employees, the HR team reviewed policies, job aids, and procedures to ensure the underlying documentation could be easily interpreted by conversational AI.
  • Hands-on Testing and Advocacy: BMO brought HR Centers of Excellence and HR Business Partners into a pilot phase, allowing them to test real queries, refine response accuracy, and build enthusiasm for the change.

Getting Out of the “Memory Business”

The biggest cultural shift for BMO employees has been moving from traditional navigation to direct conversation. Instead of expecting managers and employees to remember exact form titles or search for archived policy documents, the Self-Service Agent allows them to simply ask questions in plain language.

This model is already solving routine administrative challenges. Routine tasks like generating employment verification letters for mortgages now take just a few conversational clicks. Employees can also ask nuanced payroll questions to understand tax changes or benefit milestones without filing a support ticket.

This shift has also transformed major HR cycles like performance reviews. Rather than sending out static PDFs and reminder emails, BMO embedded program guidance directly into the agent. Employees ask the agent for deadlines and instructions, allowing HR Business Partners to step away from administrative troubleshooting and focus on talent strategy and coaching.

Elevating the Employee and Manager Experience

By replacing transactional navigation with intuitive conversations, BMO is freeing up time for what matters most: helping employees support customers and enabling managers to have meaningful conversations with their teams. As Sarah Clements noted, technology should handle the background logistics so humans can focus on human connection.

Optimize Your Workday Ecosystem with Teamup9

Unlocking the full potential of your Workday investment requires more than technology. It takes clear strategy, clean data, and thoughtful change management. At Teamup9, we help organizations streamline Workday adoption, refine HR workflows, and prepare their workforce for the future of work. We set up the Self-Service Agent for organizations that want to increase their employee experience and deliver higher service levels.

Ready to transform how your organization interacts with Workday? Contact Teamup9 today to learn how our team of experts can support your transformation journey.