It’s no secret that Moderna is all-in on AI.
The biotech firm, which is perhaps best known for making Covid-19 vaccines, has partnered with OpenAI since 2023, and has designed more than 3,000 custom versions of ChatGPT to perform functions specific to the company, according to the Wall Street Journal.
And that’s not all. Its head of HR, Tracey Franklin, now oversees both HR and technology functions as Moderna’s inaugural chief people and digital technology officer. In its annual report last year, the company touted the fact that 4,500 of its employees “were actively engaged with AI tools each month.”
Of the “GPTs” Moderna has designed, those that fall under HR are the most popular among employees, according to the company’s VP, HR business partner for research and executive compensation, Hem Patel.
A “self-review GPT” that summarizes employees’ year-end performance reviews topped a list of most frequently used Moderna GPTs by number of messages and users as of March-April, according to figures shared by Patel at WorldatWork’s Total Rewards conference in Orlando on May 19. The second most-frequently used GPT was a US benefits assistant, which helps employees elect benefits like healthcare.
Patel told HR Brew that he hopes to better integrate in the future so employees can find answers to all their HR-related questions in one place.
Using AI for total rewards. Since Moderna partnered with OpenAI, the company’s CEO and executive committee have been pushing “to use GenAI in every part of the organization,” Patel said. “Total Rewards is no exception to that.”
In addition to the benefits GPT, Patel’s team launched an equity compensation GPT after realizing it was the program that the fewest number of employees understood, he said. Every employee at Moderna receives equity, and has a choice between selecting stock options or restricted stock units. This structure “brings with it a great lot of complexity,” meaning Moderna’s equity compensation team spent much of its time answering questions about the program, according to Patel.
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Now that AI handles questions on equity compensation, that team has seen “a huge decrease” in emails and service tickets with these queries.
HR employees also can use a job leveling GPT to determine where new roles should fall within the organization’s job architecture, Patel said. This is particularly useful for dynamic fields like oncology, where “we need to update jobs constantly.” The GPT is able to share its level of confidence that a certain job should fall at a certain level within the organization, providing some reassurance to those overseeing the process.
GPTs for a growing organization. Moderna has grown immensely since Patel joined the company in 2021, from 2,700 employees to nearly 6,000 as of December 2024. The company has also increased its global footprint, which means Patel’s team has been busy developing new benefits plans and compensation frameworks for employees based in other countries.
When Moderna was smaller, members of its HR team could afford to take the time to answer questions about things like equity compensation, Patel said. As a bigger company, their time is more finite, making AI-powered resources like these GPTs particularly critical.
Ultimately, Patel said he’d like the GPTs to handle 80% of inquiries related to the area of HR they cover. In the future, Patel hopes to launch additional GPTs that handle subjects where Moderna’s HR leaders tend to field high volumes of questions—a tool designed around tax season is one such example. He also hopes to explore ways to make the tools more integrated with one another.
“The next evolution for us is really just having them all sit in one place, so employees aren’t having to go through different doors, or open a different GPT, for questions on different topics,” he said.