Cera, one of the UK’s largest home care providers, Cera, has developed an AI recruitment agent, ‘Ami’, and is licensing it across the health and care sectors in a bid to tackle widespread staffing challenges – from recruiting urgent temporary staff to manage NHS winter pressures, to growing the care talent pool, addressing long-term workforce shortages.
Since Cera rolled the agent out to speed up recruitment across its own 10,000-strong frontline workforce earlier this year, Ami has cut the company’s recruitment screening costs by two-thirds, saving each human recruiter using it two days per week. The agent has also doubled the number of job offers Cera makes for the same recruitment marketing spend – while cutting the time from application to offer by one-half.
Cera is now taking the agent to market – licensing it to other health and care organisations in a bid to solve the staff shortages facing the sector, as well as transforming recruitment for large employers across other frontline industries.
Cera is an innovator within home care, known for developing its own AI tools to improve prevention and productivity – from a Falls Prevention AI which cuts falls by 20% to a Hospitalisation Predict-Prevent tool which prevents more than half of avoidable hospitalisations.
Cera has now turned its focus to healthcare staffing – co-developing and rolling out AI recruitment agent Ami earlier this year to transform recruitment across its frontline workforce of 10,000 carers and nurses. Cera receives high volumes of applications, attracting 1 million carer and nurse applicants over the past two years – so an efficient recruitment process is vital for the company to identify and swiftly hire high-quality candidates.
Ami is warm, personable and conducts realistic, human-like interviews – screening and assessing candidates for eligibility, boosting their interest in the role and engagement with the recruitment process, and giving them a rating out of 100 across areas ranging from attitude to experience – before booking them in for an interview with a human recruiter. Ami has a
candidate satisfaction rating of more than 99% – with less than 1% of applicants asking to be transferred to a human.
Ami cuts the time from application to first interview from days to seconds of receiving their application – with research showing 73% of candidates prefer to be contacted at the point of application, rather than at a later date. After conducting an initial phone interview to assess candidates’ eligibility, Ami immediately identifies suitable hires and books them in for a second interview with a human. Unlike human recruiters, Ami is able to interview hundreds of thousands of candidates simultaneously, drastically speeding up the hiring process.
At Cera, Ami has cut the total time from application to offer by one-half compared with human recruiters, doubling the number of job offers Cera makes for the same recruitment marketing spend.
Given the success Ami has delivered for Cera, the company is now making Ami available to other health and care employers, aiming to tackle widespread staff shortages across health and social care.
The social care sector alone faces a current workforce gap of 110,000 people, with almost half a million new social care workers needed by 2040 to meet the needs of a rapidly ageing population – as revealed in Skills for Care’s recent annual State of the Adult Social Care Sector and Workforce Report. Healthcare faces similar shortages, with the NHS Long-Term Workforce Plan of 2023 citing shortfalls of up to 360,000 healthcare workers by 2036.
Ami excels at health and care recruitment – but can also be bespoke-built and tailored to the challenges and needs of other sectors and organisations. It excels as a recruiter for employers of large-scale essential frontline workforces, across sectors such as hospitality, retail, manufacturing and construction. Ami is available for license by any employer globally, and a number of large employers are already expressing interest in using Ami.
Dr Ben Maruthappu, Founder & CEO of Cera, said: “Recruitment and staffing remain major challenges for health and social care. In contrast, Ami transforms this challenging process, taking the time from application to first interview down from days to seconds, and significantly boosting the speed and likelihood of a successful hire. Ami is yet another striking example of how AI can revolutionise health and care – redefining efficiency, significantly reducing costs, and freeing up valuable human time so each worker can have a far greater impact.
“Following an outstanding track record internally over the past six months, we’re delighted to make Ami available to other large employers. We hope Ami will be successful in attracting and recruiting tens of thousands of new workers into health and care to support our ageing population, as well as revolutionising recruitment for large employers across many other sectors.”
Martin Hao, Chief Executive Officer of Ami AI, who has led the development of Ami and will now be responsible for taking it to market, said: “In a world of off-the-shelf AIs, Ami’s complex architecture, drawing on multiple AI models, makes it extraordinarily reactive, human-like and warm, and we’ve seen it swiftly builds an exceptional rapport with candidates. Customers agree Ami is the most natural of all AI recruiters they have come across.
“This Ami is a health and social care expert – built for compliance with the Care Quality Commission, and to help health and care employers recruit outstanding candidates. But what makes Ami stand out is that it can be bespoke-built for any sector or organisation – helping to solve the specific staffing challenges of that environment. Ami is designed to be onboarded as an actual employee, not as a tech platform, and given complex staffing challenges to solve from Day One.”
Ami is the latest in a suite of innovative AI products Cera has developed to solve challenges in care. These include a Flight Risk AI which identifies staff at risk of leaving, prompting managers to intervene and boosting staff retention by 22%; as well as AI Care Avatars which enable Cera to deliver high-quality training at scale, in multiple languages and locations – overcoming inequalities in outcomes both for those receiving care, and for staff looking to progress in their careers.
Case studies
Darren Griffiths, aged 57 from King’s Lynn, used to work in the pharmaceutical industry, but has recently found his calling as a carer thanks to Ami AI. “I’ve made a big career change as I head towards my late 50s – not a million miles from retirement – and I wanted something different from the corporate world I’d been in for 25 years, something closer to people receiving care. It was a fairly giant leap, but that first interaction with Ami gave me a warm feeling about the move I was making.”
Caireen Daveron, aged 59 from Rochdale, worked in care in her 30s, but then spent 15 years working as a homelessness officer before taking early retirement. She’s now back in the care sector and thriving after being recruited by Ami AI. Caireen said: “I wasn’t even planning to have an interview that day — I’d just clicked a link my daughter sent me — and suddenly Ami, this AI recruiter, was talking to me. It felt surprisingly natural, not intimidating at all, and it actually gave me the confidence to go for it. I’m not sure I’d have applied otherwise, but now I’m back in care and I absolutely love it.”
Further quotes and interviews available on request.
Image depicts Ami interviewing a candidate