Maya Brings AI-First Thinking to Its Workforce

From recruitment and onboarding to employee engagement, Maya is extending its AI-first and experience-driven approach to the way it attracts, develops, and supports its people.

• AI-First Workforce: Maya is applying AI-assisted search, personalized outreach, data, and experience design across recruitment and employee journeys while keeping hiring decisions, accountability, and human judgment firmly with its people.
• Employee Experience: Beyond hiring, the digital financial services platform has redesigned employer branding, onboarding, and engagement to give candidates and employees clearer, more relevant, and more purposeful experiences throughout their journey with the company.
• Seven Recognitions: Maya's approach earned seven recognitions at the 2026 Stevie® Awards for Great Employers, including honors for employer branding, AI-enhanced hiring, onboarding, employee engagement, payroll, and people leadership.

The way a company uses artificial intelligence does not have to stop with its products and customer-facing services. Maya is bringing its AI-first and data-first philosophy inside the organization, using technology and experience design to rethink how it attracts, hires, welcomes, and engages its workforce.

For the Philippines' leading digital financial services platform, the goal is not to automate away the human side of work. Instead, Maya is using AI to reduce friction, support better decisions, and create experiences that are clearer and more relevant, beginning with a candidate's first interaction with the company and continuing into everyday employee life.

AI Meets Recruitment

One area where this approach comes into play is recruitment. Maya uses AI-assisted search to help identify candidates based on relevant skills and experience. AI-assisted outreach, meanwhile, supports more personalized conversations with potential hires.

Importantly, technology does not get the final say. Hiring decisions and accountability remain with recruiters and business leaders, positioning AI as a tool that can help people work more effectively rather than replace their judgment.

Carla G. Lanza, Chief People Officer of Maya, explained the thinking behind this approach: “For us, being AI-first is not about replacing human judgment. It is about using technology to remove friction, make better decisions and help people focus on work that creates value. We are applying the same attention to simplicity, relevance and experience that shapes our products to how we build our teams and culture.”

Beyond Hiring

Maya's workforce strategy also looks beyond the recruitment process. The company has redesigned the way prospective employees experience its employer brand, giving candidates a clearer picture of roles, expectations, and opportunities even before they submit an application.

That focus continues once employees join the organization. Maya's onboarding program provides structured support beginning with preboarding and extending through integration. Its employee engagement initiatives, meanwhile, are designed to connect teams more closely with customers, recognition, wellbeing, and the larger purpose behind their work.

Taken together, these efforts reflect an experience-driven approach that treats recruitment, onboarding, and employee engagement as connected parts of the same journey rather than separate HR processes.

Seven Stevie Awards

Maya's work in these areas earned seven recognitions at the 2026 Stevie® Awards for Great Employers, which recognize employers as well as human resources professionals, teams, achievements, products, solutions, and suppliers that contribute to creating great places to work.

The company received a Silver Stevie® Award for Experience-Driven Employer Branding. It also earned Bronze Stevie® Awards for Scaling High-Quality Hiring with Embedded AI, Engineering Engagement that Creates a BOLDER Culture, and Designing a Purpose-Driven, End-to-End Onboarding Experience at Scale.

Individual members of Maya's people organization were also recognized. Carla G. Lanza received a Silver Stevie® Award for Chief Human Resources Officer of the Year.

Andrea Agatha Pascual, Employee Engagement Manager, received the Gold Stevie® Award for Employee Engagement Professional of the Year, while Rose Ann Belangoy, Senior Lead for Payroll, received the Bronze Stevie® Award for Benefits or Payroll Professional of the Year.

More than 160 professionals worldwide participated in judging this year's honorees. Winners in the Employer of the Year categories were determined through a combination of professional judges' ratings and more than 178,000 public votes.

AI Across Maya

The workforce initiatives form part of Maya's broader adoption of artificial intelligence across its organization. The company has been an early pioneer in applying AI to digital financial services while emphasizing governance and human oversight from the outset.

Today, AI is embedded across areas including customer acquisition, personalization, service, credit, fraud prevention, operations, and talent. Through this approach, Maya aims to enable faster and smarter decision-making while keeping accountability, security, and responsible use at the center.

By extending the same AI-first thinking behind its digital financial services to the employee experience, Maya is showing how technology can also reshape the way organizations build their teams. The emphasis remains distinctly human: use AI to clear away friction and support stronger decisions, then give people more room to focus on work that creates meaningful value.