Grede’s Vision for Innovation in Workforce Development
Grede, a leader in producing highly engineered ductile, gray, and specialty iron castings with thousands of team members, plays a vital role in supporting the automotive, commercial vehicle and industrial markets. But for a company built on precision and innovation, some challenges in workforce development lay in streamlining communication, retaining new hires, and ensuring every employee feels supported and connected. From navigating open enrollment to collecting meaningful feedback through surveys to checking in with new hires during their first 90 days, barriers stood in the way of fully engaging their workforce.
Matt Hladki, Chief Administrative Officer at Grede, saw these barriers as opportunities to foster deeper connections and create a more inclusive workplace. “We wanted to meet our employees where they were,” he said, “and remove the friction that kept them from starting and continuing to work for Grede.” His top goal is “to make it easy to work for Grede.”
In 2024, Grede partnered with Mainstay to introduce “Mo”, a conversational AI agent designed to simplify processes and empower people to thrive.
Meet Mo: A Conversational AI Agent
Mo is much more than a chatbot: it’s a conversational AI agent designed to engage users through meaningful, personalized interactions on a device they’re already using: their cell phones.
Using coaching science and human-centered design, Mo simplifies complex processes and proactively addresses barriers, texting users with proactive guidance and responding 24/7 to their questions. For Grede, Mo represented a chance to create a smoother, more engaging employee experience.
Hladki and his team designed Mo to enhance—not replace—human connection. As a result, Mo provides another way to “deliver timely, personalized support” while building capacity for team members to focus on more strategic, higher impact initiatives.
Changing Mindsets: A Team’s Journey
“At first, there was skepticism and apprehension,” Hladki admitted. “The team felt like if they weren’t spending time directly answering routine employee questions regarding policies, benefits, and other standard employment information, they weren’t contributing. In addition, there was apprehension of technology replacing their jobs.”
However, as they began to integrate Mo into their workflows, the team quickly realized how an AI agent could amplify their impact. By letting Mo handle routine inquiries, they created time to focus on higher-value tasks, like designing programs to improve employee engagement and strategizing more effective talent development initiatives.
Breaking Down Barriers with Mo
One of Grede’s big barriers involved the annual all-employee engagement survey. Employees were hesitant to provide the last four digits of their Social Security number and 4-digit birth year as an identifier to access the survey.
The team assumed many employees wouldn’t know their employee ID, so they selected 8 digits that almost everyone knows, but this requirement created unnecessary anxiety and led to lower-than-expected participation. Another challenge was getting the survey link directly to hourly employees since they don’t have email. Grede previously provided posters with a QR code for them to scan. This created an extra step vs sending a direct link to each employee.
Mo offered an elegant solution: deliver both the survey link and the employee’s unique ID directly to them within the text conversation. By directly sending the link to employees and replacing sensitive information with a seamless, personalized experience, Grede saw a 30% increase in year-over-year survey participation.
“Mo didn’t just send reminders—it sparked meaningful dialogue and showed employees that their input mattered,” Hladki said.
4 Success Stories
- Boosting Onboarding Success
New hire orientation is a critical touchpoint, yet many new employees were missing key details or even skipping sessions altogether. Mo stepped in to provide timely reminders, detailed instructions, and quick answers to common questions, ensuring that new hires arrived fully prepared.As a result, orientation attendance rates increased, and feedback from new hires reflected a smoother, more supportive process. In addition, Grede saw a 20% improvement in retention among Maintenance new hires during their first six months of employment, a powerful early indicator of Mo’s impact on the employee experience.
- Improved Open Enrollment
Benefits Open Enrollment is an annual process that normally takes several weeks to complete and requires numerous follow-up reminders from human resources team members to ensure no one is missed.By letting Mo communicate open enrollment dates, location-specific materials and deadlines (with personalized follow up reminders), Grede shifted their onboarding process to require significantly less intervention from on-site HR personnel.
- Improved Video Engagement
Grede’s communication team regularly creates engaging videos but, before Mo, didn’t have a way to directly send them to hourly employees. Grede’s YouTube channel saw a huge spike in views, subscribers and engagement since they began texting their videos directly to all employees for initiatives such as Employee Appreciation Day, Manufacturing Day, and plant spotlight videos.
The result is that thousands of team members are aware that Grede’s YouTube channel exists and actively watch the videos. - Reducing Costs by Replacing Home Mailers with Mo
Whenever a new General Manager joins a Grede plant, team members receive a one-pager that introduces the new GM to them. The plant used to print and mail this to employees’ homes, but now they use Mo to text employees with an introduction. This dramatically decreases both time and cost to gather home addresses, print, and mail the information.
Scaling for the Future
With so many successes under their belt, Hladki and his team are looking ahead to even greater possibilities. They plan to integrate additional data sources and expand Mo’s capabilities to anticipate employee needs and offer more proactive support. From simplifying benefits education to enhancing internal communications, the future looks bright.
“We’ve only scratched the surface of what Mo can do,” Hladki shared. “The potential to keep driving engagement and creating a better workplace is promising.”
Lessons Learned
Grede’s journey with Mo underscores a powerful lesson: the greatest value lies in empowering people to think strategically. By offloading routine tasks to an AI Agent, Grede’s HR team unlocked new ways to connect with employees and drive meaningful outcomes.
“Mo gave us the space to focus on what truly matters—building a culture where people feel supported and inspired,” Hladki said.
Explore the Possibilities
Discover how a conversational AI agent can help your organization drive engagement and achieve its goals. Reach out today to learn more.
