When Nortura decided it needed a new HR tool to support office and factory employees, who came from a variety of backgrounds and spoke different languages, it partnered with Capgemini to develop a Gen AI-powered chatbot that would be available 24/7. The result was Nora, which can be accessed from both laptops and mobile devices.

The origins of Nora

For some time, Capgemini and Nortura have enjoyed a close relationship related to different AI initiatives. During one of the many discussions that drove the exploration of potential use cases, the partners began considering the idea of an HR assistant. Initial discussions and prototyping showed promise, therefore, Capgemini and Nortura needed to determine how to move from a concept to a fully implemented solution, known as Nora, that would be available to the whole company, 24/7.

The first step was to create a demo and begin to build it with the company’s entire HR handbook, enabling the solution to answer any HR questions. Next, the project team delivered the technical solution to the business in the best way to ensure adoption. This required great change management processes and a clear and concise testing plan to ensure people use the chatbot once it was launched. In addition, the solution needed to engage a disparate community of factory and office workers among others. So, Nortura needed a platform that made the AI assistant as easy to use as possible. Accomplishing this meant providing a solution that was only the click of a button away for all employees. Meanwhile, Nora also needed to engage with employees whose first language was not Norwegian to ensure all Nortura employees could use Nora without issue.

How to successfully build and deliver AI to the whole business

Of course, planning and execution are vastly different.

The solution needed to integrate all content from the employee handbook, interpret tables, support follow-up questions and deliver direct links to relevant handbook pages based on user queries. In this way, Nora could provide seamless access to HR guidelines and policies for everyone, everywhere.

In addition, the assistant would need to ensure data security and perform at a high enough level to make an immediate impact, all while delivering a robust, scalable, and trustworthy solution that could handle the company’s evolving requirements. Meanwhile, the project team also needed to ensure that all data Nora could use was labelled as public and managed effectively.

To that end, Nora went through several test phases with super users, enabling agile development that could quickly respond to meaningful feedback. Throughout this process, Nortura’s HR team proactively updated the HR personal handbook and kept checking Nora’s response to key questions, which helped confirm that the solution could identify and use relevant information to answer queries. This approach ensured that Nora not only delivers reliable, user-friendly interactions but does so while meeting Nortura’s compliance and operational standards and communicating with employees in the desired manner. Answers are polite, consistent, and adhere to policies governing communication within the organization.

In addition, Nortura wanted the HR chatbot to possess a unique identity, with its own name and avatar, to enhance user engagement. In response, a designer was brought in to create a unique avatar and thus, Nora was born!

An AI tool for all

The project team met rigorous compliance, risk, and IT requirements while delivering a complex and custom AI solution that delivers value for the business. Nora went live in spring 2025 and therefore has been going strong for many months. Nora is available to all 4,500 employees anytime, anywhere, and in all relevant languages. The AI assistant answers about 50 questions per day and is always as polite and fact-based as one would expect from a good and well-informed HR employee.

“Nora does a great job every day of providing good answers to both simple and complex questions from our employees,” says Eline Sommerfelt Bårdstu, HR Director at Nortura.

Thanks to Nora, Nortura has expanded information access for employees both with and without access to a PC and, as a result, lowered the threshold for asking questions to HR. This leads to a better employee experience that simplifies tasks without compromising data security. 

But it’s not only the users that benefit. Having to answer less questions, the HR department itself has more time to focus on providing better support for employees. Managers save a lot of time as well given they were previously asked many of these questions before. There is also a consistency benefit in that everyone gets the same (and correct) answer instead of the quality of the answer depending on who was asked. 

And crucially, Nora has not replaced the connection between HR and the employees but created a new avenue for HR to communicate with all employees in a more autonomous way. 

Committed to continuous development

Nora is one example in a growing list of successful AI deliveries for Nortura, demonstrating the potential for AI-driven solutions to transform employee experience and operational efficiency. By embracing innovation, Nortura has become a more connected, efficient, and future-ready organization.

This is not the end of development for Nora, however. Since the initial launch, the project team has created Nora 2.0 by adding health, safety, and environment (HSE) data into the solution. Nora is delivering value now, being improved constantly and is a key example of how Nortura and Capgemini have delivered real value for every employee now and for a long time to come.