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Employee-Led AI Transformation Saves New York Life Employees Nearly 3 Hours Per Week and Lifts Innovation Scores 8 Points

  • AI tools save NYL employees nearly 3 hours per week on average, with over one-third saving 3+ hours weekly
  • +8 points increase in team focus on improving products and processes, reaching 87%
  • 40,000 AI licenses distributed and 10,000+ individual GPTs created by employees within one year

What Was the Opportunity?

In 2025, New York Life faced a challenge shared across industries but amplified by the scale and regulatory sensitivity of financial services: how to turn enterprise AI investment into productive daily use without straining employee experience or creating uncontrolled risk.

External research from Perceptyx framed the context. Despite heavy AI investment globally, only a small percentage of employees reported actively experimenting with it. One in three believed AI was negatively affecting culture or felt their organization lacked a clear adoption strategy. Satisfaction with change management had declined for the second consecutive year. Employees were not rejecting innovation; they were evaluating how it was being introduced.

Internally, the 2025 Pulse Survey showed a workforce committed to innovation but under pressure. 83% of employees reported feeling empowered to make team-level decisions that improved customer experience, and 87% said they were energized by finding new ways to improve products and processes. Qualitative feedback, however, surfaced concerns about competing priorities and change fatigue.

Early AI pilots sharpened the picture. New York Life launched controlled pilots of Enterprise ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot with 250 employees in each cohort. Demand immediately outpaced supply, and waitlists became oversubscribed. Among pilot participants, frequent users reported 94% optimism about AI's productivity impact versus 69% among less frequent users. They were also more engaged overall: 74% versus 69%. The pattern was clear: when employees experienced AI as empowering and aligned to their work, engagement rose.

Then a more urgent signal emerged. Through collaboration with OpenAI and analysis of aggregated usage trends, New York Life identified growing interest in generative AI tools across the workforce. To meet that demand safely, New York Life needed to figure out how to accelerate an enterprise-controlled approach that strengthened privacy and security guardrails and created a shared learning environment, where employees could share what worked, accelerate adoption of best practices, and co-design responsible innovation.

The core challenge became: how do you scale AI in a way that builds trust, reinforces culture, mitigates risk, and enhances engagement while employees actively shape the journey?

What Was the Solution?

New York Life made a deliberate design choice: AI would not be introduced as a standalone technology rollout. Instead, the company built a unified system for modern work that linked disciplined problem-solving with AI-enabled acceleration. Two integrated enterprise initiatives drove the approach.

Continuous Improvement (CI) established shared routines and problem-solving discipline, equipping employees to identify root causes, simplify work, and push decision-making to the right level with the customer at the center. New York Life introduced monthly pulse surveys during CI deployments through Perceptyx to identify where behaviors were strong and where strain was emerging. Results were released to managers immediately, forming the basis for weekly huddles and showing employees that their inputs were being heard and acted upon.

Ignite AI was the enterprise-wide strategy to responsibly scale AI capabilities across the entire workforce. Rather than limiting AI to pilots, New York Life provided all 12,000 employees with enterprise access to a secure instance of ChatGPT, eliminating the cybersecurity risks of uncontrolled public account usage. Microsoft Copilot was rolled out across the internal Microsoft suite. Every employee received an Ignite AI performance goal for the year, signaling that AI adoption was not optional or experimental but integral to how work gets done and how performance is measured.

The two initiatives shared a common objective: empower employees to simplify work, solve the right problems, and deliver better outcomes for customers. CI identified the workflows creating the most friction; Ignite AI gave teams tools and guardrails to improve them. Senior leaders across functions jointly sponsored the effort with shared accountability for adoption, employee experience, and business impact.

Ignite AI was guided by a three-part change management framework: Mindset, Skillset, and Toolset. Leaders set the tone early, reinforcing that AI was about experimentation and that everyone had a role in shaping how it improved work. The company launched tiered learning journeys, interactive discovery sessions, and hands-on labs tailored by role. A 200-person AI Influencer network was embedded across functions to share credible use cases, model experimentation, and reinforce responsible behaviors in day-to-day work. Adoption was reinforced through habit-building tools, recognition for experimentation and impact, and clear expectations from leaders.

Across both CI and Ignite AI, communication and enablement were shaped directly by employee feedback. Monthly pulse surveys guided where the company needed clearer prioritization, stronger leadership reinforcement, or more practical examples. Leaders, HR, and Employee Experience partners reinforced a consistent narrative through town halls, dashboards, peer-led sessions, and storytelling that highlighted teams using CI and AI to simplify processes and improve customer experiences.

What Was the Impact?

Within one year, culture and behavior indicators improved significantly. Team focus on finding new ways to improve products and processes increased 8 points to 87%. Customer-centered decision-making rose 7 points to 83%. Team adaptability increased 5 points to 85%. Open, honest communication improved 3 points to 74%. Willingness to challenge the status quo rose 3 points to 64%.

Teams that had fully implemented CI demonstrated even stronger outcomes: 91% focus on improving processes (versus 86% for teams not yet implemented), 89% actively simplifying work (versus 83%), 86% prioritizing customer impact (versus 83%), and 85% treating unexpected outcomes as learning opportunities (versus 80%).

By the end of 2025, nearly 40,000 AI licenses had been distributed across multiple tools and user populations, with AI access embedded into new employee onboarding. Employees created more than 10,000 individual GPTs to support daily workflows. A monthly Ignite AI survey launched through Perceptyx measures adoption and impact in real time. Employees report saving nearly 3 hours per week on average using AI tools, with more than one-third saving 3+ hours weekly.

Adoption and confidence continued climbing: 76% regularly using AI tools, 74% feeling confident applying them, 73% reporting clear leadership expectations, 66% saying AI significantly enhances productivity, and 65% actively reimagining aspects of their work. Proprietary tools including Service Sage, Claims Genie, and GuideMe helped service representatives and agents streamline steps, reduce rework, and deliver more seamless customer experiences.

One employee captured the shift during an Ignite AI session: "It feels like I have a partner helping me think through my work. I spend less time drafting and more time solving."

Listening data also shaped the 2026 strategy directly. Because employees reported readiness for deeper integration (76% regular use, 74% confidence) and asked for practical, role-based learning with clearer links to daily workflows, New York Life is shifting from broad awareness to persona-based enablement, hands-on labs, and workflow-integrated use cases for 2026.