In the latest edition of the CHRO Association’s AI Case Study webinar series, HR leaders at Prudential Financial discussed how the company has taken AI coaching from a six-month pilot to nearly 9,000 U.S. users in a little over a year.
Why it matters: Executive coaching has long been reserved for a small slice of senior leaders. Prudential is using Valence’s AI coach, Nadia, to extend coaching to the broader workforce and to free HR business partners for strategic work.
The program: Vicki Walia, Prudential Financial’s Executive Vice President and Chief People and Experience Officer, and Milena Gashkevich, Head of Talent Management and Development, described a rollout that began in late 2024 and opened company-wide at the start of this year. Employees have held roughly 98,000 conversations with Nadia. The tool sits inside Microsoft Teams, so employees don’t have to sign in to a separate site—“You don’t need to leave your regular workspace to go find Nadia,” said Walia.
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Prudential estimates the tool has freed about 10,000 hours of HRBP time. The company runs a lean “1+1” model of one senior and one junior partner per business.
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Usage spikes around year-end reviews. Preparing for difficult conversations turned out to be a heavier everyday use than the team expected. “This isn’t about ‘go create a coaching plan for yourself.’ This is ‘prepare for your year-end conversation, which you already need to have,’” added Walia.
How it works: Prudential loaded its culture expectations and its new performance management framework into Nadia, which turned the coach into a change-management channel. Nadia also sends participants follow-up prompts after leadership programs end.
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Employee relations, ethics, and safety issues remain in human hands. Prudential has also made clear that its output shouldn’t drive performance or employment decisions. “None of what Nadia puts out is meant for judgment in terms of making decisions,” emphasized Gashkevich.
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Conversation data stays with Valence. Prudential sees only aggregated themes, which it reviews quarterly.
CHRO considerations:
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Start with the need. Prudential framed Nadia as a “give” that extended the coaching opportunity to more people. “This was a give to our employees. This was absolutely something that we were doing for them,” said Gashkevich.
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Keep it voluntary. Tie the tool to work employees already have to do, such as year-end conversations, rather than creating new tasks.
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Measure the right outcome. Performance review completion rates rose at Prudential. Walia said the real goal is better manager-employee conversations, which she tracks through clarity, alignment and performance.
