Ulta uses software to navigate complex, location-specific California employment laws
Rachel Williamson · How A Beauty Company Built An AI Agent — With Rachel Williamson and Josh Siebert · Jun 8, 2026 · at 6:44
Rachel Williamson, VP of People Strategy at Ulta Beauty, explains why AI automation replaced static printed employee handbooks across their retail workforce.
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“The California laws, from an employment perspective, vary sometimes by county, by city, and so we can put that into a system and that With ServiceNow, and it can tell that you live in this city, in this state, so this policy applies to you. So when you're asking it a question of how much PTO do I have, it knows specifically, okay, this all applies to you as an individual, where if you put that in a handbook, That's a piece of paper. That is, it's not a dynamic response, right? It's a one-size-fits-all, stagnant, it's gonna die, you know, it's so hard to maintain.”
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