Reworked TV
- AI as an evolution, not a revolution – AI is a natural progression in business and technology for Cox Automotive, similar to the adoption of EVs. It’s now integrated into both operations and HR processes, beyond IT and engineering.
- Governance and cautious adoption – Cox Automotive has an AI council and hub to set guardrails, ensuring data security and responsible use. HR professionals are encouraged to experiment within these boundaries, building “AI muscle memory” gradually.
- Balancing AI with the human element – While AI can enhance efficiency, HR leaders stress the importance of preserving empathy, connection and trust in people-related interactions, especially in coaching, advising and combating workplace loneliness.
Cox Automotive's Colletta Bryce joins the show to discuss her early wins with AI in HR, how she's working on building her muscle memory with AI experimentation and the interactions she won't hand off to AI. In her position as head of HR business partners, Colletta and her colleagues are deep in the discussions around talent development, talent procurement and identifying future skills gaps. Siobhan and Colletta discuss the questions she asks when introducing AI to a process and how she's not ready to hand writing off to an algorithm any time soon.
Editor's Note: Reworked's 2026 Reworked IMPACT Awards are now open! Our Employee Experience Leader of the Year award has split into two categories: Workplace Technology Leader and Workplace Culture Leader of the Year. Additional categories recognize practitioner and vendor innovation in employee experience. Know someone who deserves recognition? Apply today!
Table of Contents
- An Evolution of Cox Automotive's AI History
- Using AI to Crunch Voice of Employee Data
- Building an AI Muscle Memory
- Cox Automotive's AI Council
- Teach Employees to Fish With Self-Service Tools
- Combatting the Loneliness Epidemic When AI Is on the Rise
- Be Open to Possibility
An Evolution of Cox Automotive's AI History
Siobhan Fagan: Hi everybody and welcome to Three Dots. I'm your host Siobhan Fagan, editor in chief of Reworked.
We've been talking to a lot of IT people in the last few episodes, discussing some of the more technical challenges of AI. I thought it would be great to get the HR point of view into this conversation. And so today I am really happy to bring in Colletta Bryce. She is a senior leader in HR at Cox Automotive.
Welcome, Colletta. Thanks for joining us.
Colletta E. Bryce: Siobhan, thanks so much. Absolutely delighted to be here. And yes, you talk about the HR aspect, so definitely not technical.
Siobhan: We are definitely not going in the weeds, which believe me is my sweet spot too. Talk to me a little bit about your role at Cox Automotive, Colletta, because it's not just that you're an HR leader, you have a very specific job title.
Colletta: Absolutely. So the technical title is ABP HRBP. So I'm an HR business partner leader. And I lead a team of HR business partners who partner with our businesses. So in particular for my role, I partner with our retail solutions business. So it's really our whole digital platforming system and our relationship with our dealers and how they transport cars through that system out to the consumer.
I also support our corporate strategy group that sets the overall strategy for Cox Automotive.
Siobhan: You've got pretty clear insight into where Cox Automotive is right now in its own AI journey. Can you talk a little bit about where you are, what sort of rollout you've done at this point, or if you're still in the planning stage?
Colletta: You know, it's funny because I did a little bit of historical work into how long has this AI stuff been around? Because, you hear about it, but then it hadn't been so fully engrained in everything you do. When I went back to look at some of the history, I saw something that said 1950s when it first got started. And we're just getting here.
Everything is an evolution. And so I think we're now at a juncture where there's no turning back now. When I think about our evolution as a business from a Cox Automotive standpoint, or really just in the automotive industry, the whole thing around EV batteries, electronic cars and things of that nature, I'm thinking, you know what? Those things were probably in somebody's thought process many moons ago.
And we're just evolving to now where it's prevalent and smacking us right in the face. I think that's what's happened here with us and AI — again, it's an evolution. You hear it everywhere here now, it's not just in IT or just in our product and engineering group. It has really infiltrated itself into how we do work and business and life every day.
From a company perspective, on the more technical side, you will find us doing more generative AI and agentic AI, which are real swanky terms that I don't have a full grasp of yet. But understanding that parts of our company have gone further down that road because it really is about, How do we impact our customer? How do we make their lives better and easier every day utilizing this great tool?
From an HR perspective, again, we say HR — human resources. So as much as AI is playing a role in how we do business every day, that human aspect still has to remain to some degree. You don't want to get rid of it totally, because we are dealing with people.
We want to figure out with AI, how do we make our jobs easier and how do we make our employees' lives easier too? Self-service is a huge thing that we've iterated over the years now. You know, it's no longer the HR person who does any and everything that a person could need in their evolution at a company. The question is where can you take opportunities to do some self-service?
And so through our HR portals and similar, we have created opportunities for people to do more self-service. And I think as AI continues in that realm, there will be more opportunities for that too.
Even now, we are putting job descriptions [into AI] and saying I need this job, give me a description. And my gosh, what we're getting versus banging our heads against the wall trying to figure out, now, how do I do this? How much writing do I have to do before I can come up with something that even makes some sense? It at least gives you a good base and then you can build from there. So we've used it in that way as well.
I'll stop and take a breath for a minute if you wanted to expand on anything or ask another question.
Using AI to Crunch Voice of Employee Data
Siobhan: I love where you started. I love the fact that you acknowledged, because a lot of times when we're talking about AI, we're thinking this all sprang up a few years ago in the form of generative AI and now agentic AI. But it's been around for forever. And so you have that history and now you're taking it to that next iteration. So I love that you started there, that you put that context in there.
It sounds as if because you have that history, you're also just looking to see where you can actually fit it in, in a lot of different places, where it can help. And so I think it would probably help us if we could split the conversation a little bit between how you and your HR business partners are looking to use AI in your own day to day, but also how you are leading those conversations or involved in those conversations with how it's going to impact your employees and then downstream your customers.
So why don't we start first with you and HR, which you've already touched on a little bit. You're talking about how you're using it for job descriptions. Are there any other places where you're testing AI's use to improve your own day-to-day?
Colletta: We have our voice of the employee survey that comes out every year — we had one back in the spring. And so when you're looking at the verbatim comments, there could be essentially thousands of rows of comments in a document. And so now we ask AI to go and summarize this for us and tell us what people are saying. I'm not sure if I can do that just by looking at it. I can upload this into AI and ask for it to do it for me.
It gives us big buckets of summary and things that we need to focus on. We used that for a number of our readouts with our businesses this year. And it was amazing because it really helped us to synthesize thoughts and then to focus on those areas that really had the biggest hair on them.
Siobhan: You're talking about synthesizing this huge amount of data. Can you share with the audience how big Cox Automotive is? How many employees are we looking at?
Colletta: We've got about 30,000 employees in Cox Automotive. So brands that people may be familiar with are Mannheim, our auction business, Kelley Blue Book, AutoTrader, Dealer Track ... all those very historical names that over time have become a part of what we know today as Cox Automotive. Cox Automotive is right at 11 years as an entity itself, but made up of a lot of different very historical, very productive brands over time.
Siobhan: Yeah, 30,000 people is a lot of responses in a survey that you do not want to have to go through manually. So I can imagine that obviously makes sense for an AI application.
Colletta: Absolutely brutal. Yes, it does.
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Building an AI Muscle Memory
Siobhan: When you were first playing with these tools, because obviously you're not only responsible with bringing the employees along for the ride, but you're learning at the same time.
Colletta: Absolutely, I'm still playing.
Siobhan: We all are every day, believe me. So I just wonder how you worked that into your daily practice. How did you personally start exploring AI? How did you start hitting your head against the wall of what it could do for you and where it maybe didn't make sense?
Colletta: Yes, I'm really an infant in some of this. I am probably seen by most people as long in my career, I've been doing this for a long time. So when the whole AI concept came out and it was like, We're going to use this guy, so get ready. I looked at it and I referred to it as a yay-boo.
So it's like, Yay! this is exciting. And I'm a curious person to begin with. So I can't wait to get in and play in it. And then the boo part for me is as cool as this is, it's only as cool until somebody comes in and tries to mess it up through some con game or making the process feel like it can't be trusted. And that becomes the boo part for me because somebody's always trying to figure out how to muck something up. And so for me, it was like, I'm not sure how much I want to put in there.
And then from an HR perspective, it's OK, what are the easy wins I can get? When you start looking at job descriptions and reports that you have to write, and fortunately, from a Cox Automotive standpoint, we're in a pretty controlled state. So it got me feeling a little bit more comfortable with information that we could actually utilize AI for. I'm trying to get more comfortable with it as we go along.
So when I learn something and my team kind of laughs at me, I get really tickled and I'm like, My gosh, let me show you what I learned today. If nothing else, coming into it with a level of excitement. I still keep one eye open, but letting them know about what I've learned. That gets them excited. But some of them are probably way more skilled at this than I am. And so I've got folks that I can call on the ready to say, OK, I'm trying to figure this out. Can you get me there quicker?
Because it takes time. And that's the other thing: It takes practice. It takes time. It takes using the tool as often as you can. You know what they say about that whole muscle memory thing: If you're not working it, it's not going to work. So what can you do bit by bit?
Our tools now for a part of our population is such that now every time I hit a button, something comes up and says, Co-pilot can do this for you. And so I have to actually stop and think, Do I want co-pilot to do this for me? Because I enjoy writing, so somebody offering to write my messages for me ... I can write my own. I can get it done in a couple of minutes. And then I'll go back and say Can you make this sound better for me? And so it's all about utilizing it to augment day-to-day responsibilities, looking at it to interpret data. I love data, but then I always want to know what's the story behind the data.
I mean, I leave the data to those great analysts and business intelligence folks, but I always want to know what's the story? What is it really saying to us as laypeople, day to day? And sometimes AI is helping to provide that for me in the absence of a person actually saying, Let me tell you what this says.
Cox Automotive's AI Council
Siobhan: You said something earlier that I want to return to, which is what HR stands for — human resources — and keeping the human in these conversations. So putting on your HR business partner hat and you're leading all these other HR business partners, what role do you play? What role do all these HR business partners play? Are they in the proverbial room when these decisions are being made about how to use AI, where to roll it out and things like that? What kind of questions are you grappling with?
Colletta: A lot of that's happening across the enterprise. So there's a very centralized process, and folks who are probably more astute as to what this will look like for us in the future are making those decisions. I'm on the back end from an implementation standpoint. This is where we're going as a company. And then it is, Here are some tools and tricks of the trade and guidelines and things like that that we need to adhere to in order for it to function well and do what we want it to do.
At the end of the day, we're on the implementation side of it. And then we are free to go and explore. Anytime we have thoughts about how it could be done better, there is somebody always willing to listen to us.
Siobhan: So it sounds as if you have, at the enterprise level, this governance structure. So you have that peace of mind that these processes are in place. You said that it was locked down so you don't have to worry about the data going out, which does give you that freedom to explore and to test on your own side.
Colletta: Yes, we have an AI council that helps to provide information to us to say, This might be proprietary or sensitive information that we may not want to share. So as we think about all these ways to use AI, there's always a big brother internally that's telling us whether we should go forward or not. We've got an AI hub for the company that provides guidelines around all the tools and resources that are at our disposal. Very cautiously, it says, don't go outside of this realm.
We can't put any generative AI product on our systems, it's very, very controlled. So as much as that provides a whole lot of comfort for me, I'm still always thinking, OK, is this the information I want to put in here? It does have you really think and be conscious because from an HR perspective, we protect a lot of pieces of data and information that we wouldn't want to ever get to the wrong hands.
Siobhan: Speaking to building those muscle memories, I think that's a good muscle memory to have and a responsible one to have, because you have the security in the current situation, but who knows down the line? It's just a good practice to bring outside of your day-to-day work habit.
Teach Employees to Fish With Self-Service Tools
Siobhan: Have you seen any kind of difference? You were talking about the self-service tools that you give to employees now and some of the other ways that you're incorporating AI into their day-to-day. Have you noticed the interactions with employees and you on the HR side changing in any way as a result of these tools? Do they have different expectations of you? Do they come to you less with certain things, but then come to you with more important things?
Colletta: It's a really good question because, not only just with AI, but anytime we have added certain self-service tools to our systems, it depends. And it's funny because even as HR business partners, even for ourselves, it kind of depends.
Because for a lot of us, and particularly if you've been in this space for a long time, the thing that really gives you your jazz and your lift is the ability to help people. Anytime somebody reaches out and says, Can you help me do this? typically we're the first to go, Absolutely, let me help you do this.
And so now as our roles continue to get more and more strategic, it is, Let me help you fish versus feeding you. Again, because our workforce is comprised of multiple generations, people are on their own interesting journey. Where AI is either, I'm gonna let you young people take care of that. I don't have time for that. Let me just get my manual meat and potatoes and help me get there faster. And then you've got your generations of folks who are like, I can figure this out on my own. I don't need you. And so you've got that realm in which we have to work through.
We always provide the same tools and resources to everyone to have the same experience. And some folks will call and say, I got this. And some folks will say, I tried it and I don't like it, help me. And so that's what we're dealing with. But I think we're moving more people towards it all the time, but always understanding that some will need to be a little bit more handheld.
Siobhan: Has your day to day changed with the introduction of some of these tools?
Colletta: Honestly, I would say not overwhelmingly. There will be a couple of things that I can tick off here and there, but not what I would say, I'm so involved in a consistent manner that it's making what I would consider leaps and bounds differences. I think it could, but not yet.
Siobhan: That opens me up to my next question because we hear a lot of talk about what AI can do, what AI promises to do. And I know that you're early on your learning journey and all that, but have you seen some of these AI promises for what it could do in HR specifically? And where do you think that gap is between the reality and what the promises are at this point?
Colletta: Honestly, within my purview, because again, there could be some things happening above me that are spectacular and are getting closer and closer to that promise. For me, it's been probably more limited, but I have hopes that it will be able to do all these wonderful things and probably things that I've not even conceived of yet. So I really feel like we're just babies in the space. So we go at it cautiously, simply by byproduct of our roles as HR and really the container of information that we have to hold day to day.
Combatting the Loneliness Epidemic When AI Is on the Rise
Siobhan: When you think about the different applications that you're using, you're applying it to the job descriptions and you're applying it for the employee surveys, and it's great because you've got the human in the loop. You always have somebody reviewing it, do you see areas where you just don't think AI belongs in your specific realm?
Colletta: I think it will have limited usage in some data and analyzation, particularly when you're dealing with the people aspect. Now, raw data that's not tied to a person per se, it could probably be limitless in what it does. Once you start to attach people to that, probably not as much. Again, just trying to protect the integrity and make sure that from an ethical and transparency standpoint that we're always above board.
When we're talking about the person-to-person touch around coaching and advising, you may use it to get your words right, to have that tough conversation or to make that presentation. But at the end of the day, you're going to need that person behind it that's going to deliver the message and that we're showing levels of empathy and feeling and emotion that come with that type of exchange. I don't think we're gonna be able to do that in an agent or a bot and be effective.
Needless to say, we've worked in a world over the last five or more years where personal touch and connection got removed. Trying to get back to that has been a challenge at best. And so for me, it's like, please, let's not go create something where it allows us to further separate ourselves from that human aspect and that human touch that I think we're always going to need. As wonderful as AI is, I think on the other end, you're going to have some human that's got to be a part of shepherding this group.
Siobhan: I love that you raised that because I think it's a conversation that HR people need to be leading because we have seen these levels of disengagement rising in Gallup every year. It's just like the roller coaster keeps going down. We've got the loneliness epidemic, with that report a few years ago.
Colletta: Yes, Dr. Vivek Murthy, former Surgeon General. I'm a huge fan of his.
Siobhan: That report that he came out with was quite notable because it was the first time that somebody in the Surgeon General office took on this problem of the workplace and the loneliness epidemic and specifically putting it in the workplace setting. For people to be thinking about AI in that light, what kind of questions do you think would be good for all of us to be asking? I mean, in terms of keeping that human element, making sure that we're not making certain situations worse and only using the AI to enhance certain connections, I guess.
Colletta: Needless to say, there'll always be the list of all the good things that it can do. And not that it has to be a list of the bad things, but I do think it always warrants: What is it that we're looking to get? Is it an efficiency play? Is it an effectiveness play? How does this touch our people? How do we want it to touch our people? And then how will it touch our people? And are they the same? Are they the same message?
So it could be that the intent is good, that it touches our people in the right way, but what would the impact be if it really does? It's not a judgmental thing if we're being objective about it, but I think it behooves us to have the conversation around what do we gain and what do we lose and what are the trade-offs?
What are we actually willing to do either to gain on the best upside or to lose minimally, that still gets us to the best outcome and not only just for the business, but the people who help the business run every day. Because one of the things when I talk about our roles as HR business partners is it's our goal to help our business be most successful through its most valuable asset. And that asset is our people.
Siobhan: It's a message that can stand to be repeated over and over again. And it's not necessarily that you are taking away from AI or saying it can't do things. You're just treating it as the tool that it is and asking how it can be doing things that are additive and helpful, how you're applying it, basically. So that absolutely makes sense. I don't think that looking at it with a critical eye means that you're criticizing.
Colletta: Absolutely. And particularly from a Cox perspective, it always gets down to how does it impact our people.
Siobhan: When you think about the role of the HR business partner, the role of HR more broadly in the next three to five years, where do you see it going? Where do you see all of this kind of leading us to?
Colletta: When people talk about HR, I think it's a lot broader than people normally talk about it because within HR, there's not just your generalist role, your payroll functions, your employee resource center functions, your employee service center. It's all the operations that go underneath that, both from a technical perspective as well as a consultation perspective. So it's really broad.
Our operations groups are always looking at how do we do things better? How do we do it faster? How do we do it more efficiently? Which is where I think AI probably will show up well and help to meet the promise of the future.
For some of our roles, they get more strategic. How do you help transform organizations to meet the various needs of the business? So as AI continues to be prominent, we should be looking at it from an organizational standpoint to say, OK, number one, do we have the right workforce in place that helps us to realize all of AI's potential? Because somebody's got to know something, we can't all just evolve with it. And then what can you teach? What do you have to buy? How do you help your current workforce to get better at it?
Our company is doing an amazing job of is giving us resources and tools to help us make ourselves better. But we know too, that there's going to be a level of expertise that will be necessary to infuse into the organization. And so I think as business partners and strategic partners, we're working with our businesses every day to talk about what does that look like? And then how do we help them to really transform it into something that is efficient, effective and pretty doggone special.
Siobhan: I love that you checked me there with my question because I was basically asking you to pinpoint the wettest part of the ocean. How is HR gonna change? You're like, well, Siobhan, let's just narrow this down a little bit.
Colletta: Well, and not even from a correction standpoint. It's just, when I talk to people about HR, I think they have a very narrow view of what HR is. And to me, HR involves talent management and talent acquisition. So even from a recruiting standpoint. So there are just so many things associated with it. Because again, I take that human resources part really seriously, and it's pretty broad.
Be Open to Possibility
Siobhan: If you were to share one piece of advice for people out there who are potentially looking to get into being an HR business partner, what would you share?
Colletta: You gotta be ready for it. Because the old adage is what's the best part of your job? It's the people. And what's the part that's not so good? It can be the people.
You take on a lot of the company's culture. We're culture bearers. And the way that the company goes is how we help to lead through the businesses that we support. We feel ourselves connected to it as much as we do anything because it is a part of us. When you are dealing with people, you take all that on. So it's the good, the bad, and the ugly. It is not always for the faint of heart. It looks really cool. And when people say, HR, people are like, what a cool job. Most days, yes, it is. And then there are those days. But I don't think I know a job yet that doesn't have both the highs and the lows.
It definitely is an opportunity to be an influencer, to help our businesses be successful through our people. And that is really understanding what it takes to win and what do our people need to help them be best positioned.
Siobhan: Is there anything that we didn't touch on today that you would like to bring up?
Colletta: I always tell people be open to the possibility. There's a lot coming at us each and every day from a technological standpoint, from a culture standpoint, and we just ask that people be open to at least receiving and then making their own judgments.
Siobhan: I love it. That is a great note to end on. So Colletta, I want to thank you so much for joining me and for telling us a little bit about the work you're doing over at Cox Automotive.
Colletta: Thank you. It's a lot of fun and I couldn't do it at a better place. I enjoy the opportunity to engage with you, Siobhan. Thanks so much for the invitation.
