Making Work Easier with AI - Live at Transform 2026

Thomas: 00:00:05

We're live here at Transform in Las Vegas and we are talking about

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Future Proofing HR.

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As always, I'm your host, Thomas Kunjappu.

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And I'm here with Conor Sweeney, who

is the VP of People at Form Health.

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Tell us a little bit about

Form Health before we talk

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more about Future Proofing HR.

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Connor: Yeah, absolutely.

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I've been with Form Health

for close to a year now.

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we are the national leader in

science-backed obesity, care

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management and Cardiometabolic health.

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So we are telehealth practice that

operates here in the United States.

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Thomas: That's amazing.

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Tell us a little bit about the

AI journey at your organization.

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Connor: There's a couple

different paths, right?

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And I think we've been talking a lot

about that this week where there is

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the what is the business doing from

a business model perspective, right?

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Around call it outward facing

technology, or in our case how our

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clinicians are engaging with the

tools and systems that they're using

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to provide care to their patients.

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And then the other track is what

are we doing to just make it

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easier for our employees to work?

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Thomas: Right?

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Connor: And for me, what's top of

mind for me is that second bucket.

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Which is, how do we just

make it easier to work here?

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One of the things that's been really

great over the last six months is

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we've really leaned into Agentic AI for

the purposes of knowledge management.

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So we implemented a system that you could

equate to call it an intranet, right?

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Something that we're

all very familiar with.

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But something that is far more advanced

where folks in our organization

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can go into this platform, type in

a question, and hopefully whatever

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they're looking for is provided to them.

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We use Guru as our platform and

it's been really successful.

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In healthcare there's a lot of

different policies and a lot

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of different intricacies to

ways of working and process.

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And so being able to provide employees

with a platform where they don't have

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to spend minutes to hour searching

through folders for things they can

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just ask the question and hopefully

get the result they're looking for.

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Has been really successful for us so far.

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Thomas: What was the impetus of working

on this particular project to begin with?

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What was like the the pain or

like the idea to prioritize this?

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Connor: I can't take credit because

when I stepped into the organization,

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our product team was playing a huge

role in putting this into place.

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But the impetus was really around we

are growing fast and we have really

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two different employee populations.

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We have folks that are patient

facing our clinicians that are

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really frontline every single day.

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And then we have the folks that

support the business, the G&A

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functions, marketing, commercial.

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The needs for those employees around

knowledge management are very different.

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And so when you think about just

slapping Google folders into a

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GDrive and saying best of luck.

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Go find what you need to look for.

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It's tough.

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You need to have something

that's more curated

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to what folks need within the context of

the work they're doing every single day.

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It was an efficiency play.

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It was a how do we make

it easier to work here.

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And also just how do we continue to lean

into Agentic AI opportunities to aid

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in our growth trajectory as a company.

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Thomas: I love that logic.

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Tell me a little bit about any of the

challenges or things that you learned

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on the execution of this project that

you had to overcome to get to the I

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don't know if the promised land is

you've arrived at it or maybe still

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elusive or it's an ongoing journey.

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But what have you learned so far

through the execution of this project?

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Connor: Like any cross-functional

project, it's the stakeholder

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management, stakeholder engagement,

setting expectations for what teams

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need to play, which role and what.

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When you're talking AI focused

knowledge management, there's a lot of

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governance that needs to be put in place

around is the information up to date?

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Are we feeding the system with

the right level of information?

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Or in many cases when we have folks

searching for things, it may not exist.

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So how do we drive accountability

on creating that SOP, that workflow,

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that policy, and how quickly can we

do it in a way that's responsible

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and gets folks what they need?

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I think the biggest challenge

is making sure that the accuracy

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of the content that lives in the

system is what it needs to be.

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We need the content to be

accurate in order for the agent

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to provide the information.

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But that takes time.

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It takes folks across every business

unit of the company to step in and

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say, yeah, of the dozens or hundreds

of policies or insight docs that we

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own, what's our cadence for making

sure that this stuff is up to date?

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Thomas: Yeah.

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It starts to expose I guess

organizational debt a little bit, right?

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About a hundred percent.

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With documentation.

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And it actually feels this

is a path people go down.

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'Cause you think about Agentic AI and

these digital workers is doing things

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for you, but then what feeds that?

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It's processes or documents.

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In this case, there's something

like underlying that which needs

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to be taken care of by the company.

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And it's exposes how well you

understand what it is that you wanna do.

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Because if you can't have a for example,

a new HR generalist or I don't know,

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if a product specialist is supposed to

help the operations team get trained

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up quickly on answering questions.

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How can you expect the AI to as well?

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It sounds like the big challenge

that was kinda like making sure the

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inputs for the AI were like accurate.

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And did you find it was any different if

you're documenting things for employees

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to look it up themselves versus for AI?

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Connor: Not necessarily, but I think at

the end of the day, it's having to work

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cross-functionally to create process.

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And I think, driving accountability

when there's multiple owners of

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something can be really difficult.

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We've lucked out.

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We have everybody that I work with

is the most amazing human on earth.

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it's not like it's a

particular challenge for us.

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But when you think about all the

things that come with growing a

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company that's moving really fast.

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Prioritization can be a challenge.

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I think the other thing that can be

challenging too is we're bringing a

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lot of folks on board over the course

of the months and years ahead, right?

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As our kind of company is growing, we need

to bring more people into the ecosystem.

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And these folks are coming from

oftentimes more mature, larger,

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more built out backgrounds, right?

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So their expectations of what

documentation looks like, what

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workflows look like is becoming

increasingly more And so what

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can we do to keep up with that?

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And I think that's for me and

other folks on my team, having

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backgrounds in larger company

environments has been really helpful.

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Thomas: That's awesome.

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So scaling up like in this environment.

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Let me ask you about the future then.

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So you've kinda worked on

this project, what other

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kind of things are you looking at next

as you're thinking about growth and

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like investment in this direction?

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Connor: Shout out to my

talent acquisition team.

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Because a big search for me here

this week is really thinking

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about how we use AI to manage

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top of the funnel optimization and

how do we give our strategic talent

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partners more time to do strategic work?

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Being a telehealth company and being

one that's growing really fast,

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we've got a lot of folks, doctors,

APPs, registered dieticians that are

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applying to work in our organization.

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Not a bad problem to have, but

when you think about the amount of

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documentation that our TA team needs

to look for to ensure that we don't

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have bots applying for roles to ensure

that the licensing and credentialing

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expectations are where they need to be.

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Thousands and thousands of

resumes is a lot for a small

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but mighty team to go through.

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I think what's been great about this

week is seeing that there's a lot of

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really good momentum around how AI can

play a role in helping to manage the

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optimization of like top of the funnel.

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How we get TA teams spending less time

screening and kind of more time advising

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and working with hiring managers.

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I'm really looking forward to that.

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Thomas: That's a great, like a use case.

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Glad you found some

potential partners here.

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Are there any other major takeaways

for you from the conference so

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far or like thematically things

that you're taking back to your

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team as you walk away from Vegas?

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Connor: I'm so proud of what HR

leaders across all the industries.

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Like how we are working with

our organizations on what is

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a rapidly evolving situation.

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If I think about just even being here last

year or the year before, the conversations

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that we were having around adopting AI

and kind of infusing later-stage kind of

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technical innovation into our companies,

it was very different than today.

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Me being able to sit down with

a group of heads of HR or CHROs

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and they're like, yep, I now own

this aspect of our AI strategy.

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Or, hey, my Head of People Ops is

now fully in control of this piece.

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And so I'm really happy to see that

there's emphasis on leaning into people

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teams as that strategic partner to kind

of bring some of this technological

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evolution to life to make it easy

for our employees to do their job.

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I'm proud of what kind of cross

industry wise we've empowered HR leaders

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to do over the last couple years.

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Thomas: I love that.

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And you're starting to see some of

those results come in terms of the

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ownership within the organization.

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So last question, we always

talk about Future Proofing HR.

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Maybe you're getting to that a little

bit with this last answer, but how

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do you think about within your own

organization, future proofing the

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HR function and ensuring that you're

relevant and thriving in the age of AI?

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Connor: Yeah.

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I mean, look, I would say we're off

to a good start, but like any company,

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there's a lot of opportunity for us.

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I talked a little bit earlier about

the way to optimize TA functionality.

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And the intersection of how that

can be aided with the AI technology.

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I'd say the second piece is look as a

healthcare organization, there's a lot

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of aspects of compliance and kind of

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regulatory implications that

are always top of mind, right?

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Things are always changing.

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And so if you think about the role of

an HR ops leader or a payroll leader,

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folks within my own team that are just

trying to keep up with the expectations

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of wow we have employees in 30+ states

and the regulations around how employees

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get paid or the different trainings

they have to take or the licensing

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and credentialing processes that

are applicable to those states, like

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that stuff changes a lot.

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And so I think there's a tremendous

opportunity to lean into technology

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and AI to help us have a better

understanding of what's ahead.

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I think people teams for decades have

been plagued with like reactiveness.

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Thomas: Absolutely.

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Connor: I think AI gives us

potentially a leg up on how can

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we be more proactive, right?

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So not us finding out and this is made

up example, but not us finding out,

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hey, wow we've been non-compliant with

these three or four things over the

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last 12 months and we had no idea.

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But more so hey, if we don't do this

now 18 months from now, we're gonna

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run into some compliance issues.

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And I think there's some

really cool technology out

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there that can help with that.

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Thomas: When you say reactive to

proactive, what comes to mind for

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me is more the burnt out HR like

payroll specialists or generalists

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who is like reacting to like tickets

or their work queue constantly.

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And so they can't actually

focus on the thing that could be

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strategically adding value, like

absolutely 18 months down the line.

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So yeah, big opportunity there to

upskill, reskill and leverage AI to

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change what people are doing every day.

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I love hear these insights and

the idea that HR leaders are

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really leading in playing a key

role in AI transformations within

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organizations, including at Form Health

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. Connor: That's right.

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Thomas: How can folks follow your

journey or stay connected with you Conor?

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Connor: I love LinkedIn.

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It's like I spend more time on LinkedIn

than any other social media platform.

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and it's not just because I've got

lots of people that I greatly respect

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that I think share all the insights.

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But to me it's where a lot of really

good information is being shared.

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I also just selfishly having

been doing this for a while.

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Love to see the progress of folks

that I've worked with in the past.

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Please, feel free to add me on LinkedIn.

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Always happy to chat,

coffee, wine, whatever it is.

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Thomas: Wine today...

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Connor: But that's wine today.

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Might be coffee tomorrow.

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There you go.

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Definitely will be coffee tomorrow.

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Thomas: So great connecting with

you Conor and great talking about

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what you've been doing there with

AI initiatives at Form Health.

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And for everyone out there, this

has been another micro episode of

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Future Proof HR as we figure out a

way to all thrive in the age of AI.

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Thank you so much.

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Thomas Kunjappu: Thanks for joining

us on this episode of Future Proof HR.

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If you like the discussion, make

sure you leave us a five star

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review on the platform you're

listening to or watching us on.

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Or share this with a friend or colleague

who may find value in the message.

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See you next time as we keep our pulse on

how we can all thrive in the age of AI.

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