.jpg)
Phenom, a leader in applied AI, has unveiled its 2026 Human Resources award winners at IAMPHENOM, HR's only conference dedicated to AI, automation and experience. Now in its fifth year, the Phenom HR Awards recognize companies, teams, and individuals who are hiring faster, developing better, and retaining longer with applied AI, spanning diverse industries including healthcare, retail, manufacturing, transportation, financial services, technology, and education.
Phenom announced its 2026 HR Award winners at its annual IAMPHENOM conference in Philadelphia.
The awards recognize organizations achieving measurable outcomes through applied AI, automation, and enhanced talent experiences.
Winners include Elara Caring, which reduced time-to-hire to 2.3 days using AI and voice agents, and The Aspen Group, which saved 747 hours through 156 automations with a 98.7% success rate.
Other notable winners include Thermo Fisher Scientific, BAE Systems, G42, United Airlines, and Bon Secours Mercy Health across categories such as Best Use of AI, Talent Team of the Year, and Employer Brand of the Year.
Individual achievements were recognized, including CHRO of the Year for Dallas College's Louis Burrell and Talent Acquisition Leader of the Year for Thales' Jim Shultman.
Partner awards were given to Coalfire, ServiceNow, and Deloitte Consulting for their contributions to enterprise transformation.
This year's awards feature expanded categories that reflect the rapid evolution of AI and automation, and the organizations achieving phenomenal results to successfully reach their hiring and retention goals.
Elara Caring faced a formidable challenge: hiring 17,000 caregivers annually while managing 80,000 interviews across 100 recruiters. By implementing a strategic, phased approach to AI and automation, they brought time from application to offer accepted down to just 2.3 days. Their journey began with a personalized career site featuring high-volume hiring workflows that immediately reduced their timeline to 2.7 days, delivering ROI that paid for the technology in 2.5 months. As volume expanded, they introduced assessments and deployed voice agent technology to handle repetitive phone screens. The impact was striking: 50% conversion compared to 35% with recruiter scheduling, 92% of interviews completed within one day, and 41% within just one hour. AI-interviewed candidates performed better, working their first shift sooner and logging 40% more hours than recruiter-hired candidates.
The Aspen Group (TAG) tackled high-volume hiring inefficiencies by implementing 156 active automations with a 98.7% success rate, saving 747 hours—equivalent to over 31 full workdays—in just 10 months. Their standout achievement was modernizing the Dentist candidate workflow from application through interview scheduling. When a Dentist candidate applies, the system promptly invites them to complete screening, organizes their responses, updates their hiring status, and enables interview scheduling with the appropriate recruiter. This eliminated the traditional waiting period, allowing candidates to self-schedule quickly while ensuring recruiters remain focused on thoughtful evaluation. Across the organization, automation supported more than one million administrative actions spanning email outreach, campaign management, and status updates.
Thermo Fisher Scientific's talent acquisition team redefined global hiring through a partnership-first approach that united technology, people, and process. Their innovative Phenom Champions program created a peer-led enablement network that turned adoption into cultural ownership, driving a 39% increase in recruiter actions and 490% surge in leads assigned to jobs. By expanding High-Volume Hiring across APAC, Denmark, and the Netherlands, the team slashed time to fill by up to 64% in Q2-Q3 2025. Applied AI delivered measurable efficiency gains: 8,500+ hours saved through automated interview scheduling and 928 hours through intelligent sourcing.
BAE Systems launched Career Connect, a virtual career center built on Phenom that empowers employees to own their career journeys. By creating a central hub where employees can explore opportunities, develop skills, and showcase their experience, the team achieved 87% employee engagement with Career Profiles and captured over 50,000 skills across the workforce. More than a third of total hires came from internal employees, while tens of thousands of referrals were submitted throughout the year. Through targeted campaigns like their "Mobility Moment" influencer series, BAE Systems built a culture where career development is accessible, engaging, and aligned with long-term talent retention.
G42's HRIT team rolled out a new ATS with Phenom Applied AI as the experience layer, creating an intelligent, unified infrastructure that enables Talent Acquisition to move faster and scale with precision. During the migration of over 200,000 candidate records, the team deployed a mitigation tool that resolved data issues and evolved the product for future large-scale migrations. They established bi-directional data flows, integrated analytics for real-time visibility, and solved complex technical challenges including calendar integration across multiple Microsoft tenants. The impact was substantial: 40% reduction in sourcing time, recruiter productivity doubled without added headcount, 25% increase in candidate engagement, and 30% reduction in administrative work.
Dutch Bros Coffee built an employer brand designed to inspire the next generation of Broistas who will drive their expansion to 2,029 shops in 2029. Through authentic storytelling across their career site and targeted Talent Community campaigns, they created an experience that attracts the right talent while setting realistic expectations about their "hustle with heart" mindset. Customized automations helped close a critical communication gap that previously left 500,000+ applicants without updates on their application status. In just five weeks, they filled 97% of frontline roles and 80% of shop leadership roles before their grand opening and achieved 14,000 Talent Community members, 1.1 million career page views, 41,000+ completed applications, and 3,100+ hours saved within the first three months of go-live.
United Airlines achieved full adoption across 150-200 recruiting team members by building a true innovation partnership where continuous feedback shaped product evolution in real time. Rather than accepting tools as-is, United co-developed a new scheduling solution that replaced their legacy third-party system and integrated interview management directly into their ecosystem. The impact was immediate: 10,000 hours saved per quarter through automated scheduling, a 750% increase in interviews scheduled, 30% faster screening completion, and a 12% increase in completed applications. United expanded high-volume hiring from zero roles to full deployment across Customer Service, Ramp, and Intern positions, achieving significant cost savings while finalizing a three-year partnership commitment.
Bon Secours Mercy Health faced a critical challenge: fewer students entering healthcare programs while demand for clinical professionals continues rising. Their solution was to build an innovative early-talent strategy that identifies students earlier, nurtures them intentionally, and creates clear pathways from classroom to career. By streamlining early-talent recruitment through CRM capabilities, the team now tracks every touchpoint from first interaction to first role, guiding students into clinical support positions and shaping them into future nurses, technologists, and clinicians. This scalable model doubled hires from career fairs, increased saturation at target schools, and reduced time to fill.
Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System, an integrated healthcare delivery organization with 10,000 team members, transformed talent acquisition by implementing a comprehensive AI-powered solution across their entire hiring lifecycle. From requisition and intake through screening, interviewing, and final offer management, they deployed an expansive suite of products tailored to meet the complex demands of healthcare recruiting. The implementation drove increased traffic to their career site and significantly improved the hiring manager experience through streamlined requisition approvals and single sign-on capabilities.
Honda launched intelligent automation and advanced analytics to streamline recruiting tasks, reduce time-to-hire, and elevate satisfaction for candidates and hiring managers. Their newly launched career site delivered over 500,000 visits generating 1.9 million page views and driving 117,000 apply clicks. Beyond digital presence, Honda implemented event functionality that empowered teams to connect with talent through meaningful, data-driven outreach. Since launch, they've hosted 158 recruiting events drawing more than 5,200 attendees, converting this engagement into 3,475 new CRM profiles and 1,798 job applications directly attributed to event participation.
Jim Shultman, Head of Talent Acquisition – Americas and Global Head of TA Operations at Thales, was named Talent Acquisition Leader of the Year for leading the company's transformation from manual recruiting processes to a modern, technology-enabled talent acquisition model. He championed the global rollout of automation and upskilled recruiters in CRM capabilities, analytics, and data-driven engagement.
Astraea Lilley, Director, Talent Management at Alight Solutions, received Talent Management Leader of the Year for tackling a CEO mandate to improve employee engagement scores around career growth. Lilley led the implementation of Career Compass, a career pathing solution that tied together Alight's learning management system, mentoring program, and internal careers site for the first time.
H. Louis Burrell III, Chief Human Resources Officer at Dallas College, was named CHRO of the Year for transforming HR from a transactional service unit into a strategic, data-driven partner. His two-year enterprise-wide modernization initiative built one of higher education's most advanced, AI-enabled recruitment ecosystems, achieving a 26.5% apply-click rate, increasing candidate volume by 660%, and reducing time to fill by 50%.
Amanda Medina, Manager, Employer Brand at Michaels, received Talent Marketer of the Year for crafting a streamlined candidate journey by blending the employer brand with automation and personalization. Through implementation of a new CRM and a seamless careers website, she optimized the experience for future talent while ensuring the brand remains centered on team members.
Coalfire was named Public Sector Partner of the Year for serving as a strategic force multiplier throughout Phenom's Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) journey. Coalfire worked side by side with Phenom's teams to interpret evolving requirements, make smart architectural decisions, and design controls that would withstand the highest levels of federal scrutiny.
ServiceNow received Innovation Partner of the Year for their partnership focused on accelerating enterprise innovation. Phenom received early access to ServiceNow's AI Agent Fabric and synchronized Phenom's Intake Agent with ServiceNow's orchestration agent to accelerate the job request-to-interview workflow.
Deloitte Consulting LLP was recognized as Advisory Partner of the Year for the second consecutive year for being a catalyst in advancing enterprise transformation across industries. Deloitte expanded Phenom expertise across its organization and partnered closely with Phenom's teams to guide complex talent modernization initiatives.
"We know where AI and automation make the biggest difference in HR, and so do these winners," said Christina Brown, Vice President & General Manager, Global Customer Value at Phenom. "They applied the technology where it mattered most for their specific needs and delivered what every business is chasing: faster hiring, lower costs, longer retention and a better experience."
To learn more about winners of the 2026 Phenom HR Awards winners, click here.
About the Phenom HR Awards
The Phenom HR Awards are the premier recognition program celebrating organizations that demonstrate excellence in transforming human resources through innovative applications of AI and automation to create an unrivaled experience for all talent stakeholders. For more information, visit here.
About Phenom
Phenom is an applied AI company with the only AI infrastructure built specifically for HR. Powered by Engines that harmonize data, Ontologies that guide every decision, X AI that hyper-personalizes experiences, Agents that work alongside teams, Phenom's platform uses industry and business context to automate workflows, eliminate busywork, and enhance every experience while remaining compliant. Driven by a purpose to help a billion people find the right work, no other company is as dedicated to helping organizations hire faster, develop better and retain longer.
TechIntelPro empowers B2B technology decision-makers with the latest industry trends, deep insights, leadership perspectives and actionable intelligence to drive both organizational and professional milestones—and thrive on the tech pulse.