AI Freed Up Capacity — We Redeployed It
The Context
Like many large enterprises, this financial institution had embraced AI-based recruitment tools — automating CV screening, interview scheduling, and candidate communications.
The automation worked. But the unintended outcome? It freed up almost 40% of the HR and recruitment team’s daily workload. Senior leaders were under pressure to reduce costs. The easy answer? Cut headcount. But the CHRO pushed back. These were great people — skilled, loyal, and values-aligned. What the company needed wasn’t a redundancy plan…It was a redeployment plan.
The Challenge
- HR and recruitment teams had less work, but weren’t at fault
- Leadership didn’t want to “reward” automation success with layoffs
- Reassigning these people internally would take time
- There was no business case yet to reinvest freed-up capacity elsewhere
- Attrition was already high — morale was at risk
The Solution
Shared Workforce Group provided an outcome-led, people-first solution.
Here’s how it worked:
- We ran a rapid maturity and role alignment review across the freed-up team
- We moved qualifying individuals into the Shared Workforce pool
- They were matched to non-competing organisations needing recruitment support (e.g., startups, scaleups, and regional clients)
- SLA-based recall was built in — should hiring volumes spike internally
- The income generated was used to:
- Offset tech investment costs
- Reward top performers with increased earnings
- Fund reskilling for long-term capability uplift
The Results
- No redundancies — every redeployed team member retained
- £420k / $500k cost impact offset within 4 months
- Employees gained cross-industry experience
- Employer brand strengthened internally and externally
- Internal AI adoption increased, as people saw it was not a threat
- Shared Workforce model adopted in 3 other back-office functions
