4 Use Cases How Chatbots Automate HR Communications

Nikita Borisenko
CEO of Loqos AI
November 19, 2023
HR departments face a lot of routine tasks, especially as companies grow and need to manage more candidates and employees. HR tasks spread out across the entire employee journey: filtering out job applications, conducting interviews, dealing with hiring paperwork, helping with onboarding, supporting during employment, and handling the offboarding process. With hundreds of employees and thousands of tasks, the challenges can be overwhelming.

The solution is [surprise-surprise] AI automation. AI HR Assistant to be precise. But why exactly? Because an AI chatbot is the most convenient way for applicants and employees to communicate with HR. Questions, documents, and all interactions can be easily organized within conversations, inside a corporate messenger like Microsoft Teams, Slack or any other.

For instance, according to Humanly research, a bot can save 62 hours for each open position by automating the hiring process. Moreover, bots don't cause rejection: a significant 60% of employees prefer using an HR chatbot for their needs (IBM Research).

How does AI HR Assistant work?

It operates based on rules predefined by the HR department itself. The best practice for an AI HR Assistant is a combo of patterns and LLMs to leverage the best of both worlds. For requests and corporate policies, this kind of chatbot will utilise predefined patterns to give precise information. And for more flexible scenarios it will use an LLM.

All the data an AI HR Assistant uses is sourced from internal software and customized scripts tailored to the company's specific needs. Truly a smart tool an AI HR Assistant works 24/7 and supports multiple languages, making it ideal for international teams.

To enhance the accuracy of responses, an AI HR Assistant learns from employee
interactions with each engagement. As users ask questions and send requests, the bot becomes more adept at understanding various intents.

It can all be implemented in 4 main use cases. Let's dive into the details.

1. Streamlining Applicant Communication: AI HR Assistant's Role in Recruitment Automation

Recruitment involves daily communication with dozens or even hundreds of candidates. Managing this manually can result in long response times, a high drop-off rate among candidates, and ultimately, recruiting agents may experience burnout.

AI Recruitment Assistant simplifies primary tasks by filtering out irrelevant candidates and guiding the most suitable ones to job opportunities. Here's how it works:

Screening: The bot asks essential screening questions and schedules appointments with suitable candidates.

FAQ: The bot promptly responds to common candidate queries, providing information about job openings, the application process, company culture, and policies.

Timely Updates: The bot automatically keeps candidates informed about their application status, interview outcomes, and next steps, maintaining their engagement in the process.

Feedback Collection: The bot gathers feedback from candidates after interviews, aiding companies in analyzing and enhancing their recruitment procedures.

Passive Candidate Warm-up: The bot collects contact details of passive candidates not currently ready to engage, possibly because they are employed and casually exploring open positions.

To maximise the efficiency the AI Recruitment Assistant should be connected to the HR webpage, LinkedIn, or another channel.

2. Onboarding Automation: The First Steps with the AI HR Assistant

Employee onboarding is crucial for businesses, aiming to show care for employees and speed up their integration into the company. A well-executed orientation process for new hires ensures they can navigate their roles seamlessly without bothering colleagues with basic questions or stressing about uncertainties in a new environment.

However, many organizations often view onboarding as a brief one-hour meeting or, worse, overlook it entirely. This approach is insufficient. The duration, efficiency, and satisfaction of a new employee's integration hinge on a proper onboarding process.
An onboarding chatbot streamlines this process by:

Must-read information: The bot offers a step-by-step company introduction and settlement action sequences, covering rules, salary account setup, and software access.

Paperwork assistance: The bot guides employees through paperwork, provides templates, and, in some cases, even detects errors.

Easy navigation: The bot simplifies access to various topics, including office information, perks, HelpDesk support, team details, products, and contacts.

Quick responses: The bot answers routine questions, such as "Where is the printer?" or "How do I access the gym membership?".

Career help: The bot creates a career plan for newcomers based on their skills and professional path.

AI Onboarding Assistant should be connected to the corporate messenger or the intranet portal to increase its usability.

3. Daily Routine Automation

Automation is very important for companies dealing with constant influxes of newcomers and multiple internal requests related to various aspects of the workflow: vacation and day-off requests, company news and policies, office information, team-building activities, and more.

Here are several cases showcasing how a workflow AI HR Chatbot can be helpful:

HelpDesk Assistance: The bot creates tickets and forwards them to the internal support team.

FAQ: The bot answers common questions about the office, global policies, etc.

Vacations and Business Trips: The bot provides current information about available vacation days and helps arrange business trips, vacations or sick leave.

Paperwork Help: The bot promptly assists employees with various documents and supporting materials, including employment contracts, company insurance policies, affiliation certificates, and professional fee summaries.

Reports Reminder: The bot notifies about upcoming reports, offers guidance on the required format, and receives uploaded reports.

Reimbursements: The bot processes receipts uploaded by employees and handles the entire process, including tracking expenses for the company.

Career Assistance: The bot recommends tailored courses for each employee based on professional preferences and career plans.

Moreover, the AI HR Chatbot covers outgoing messaging, which can be a stressful or irritating experience for some employees. HR Managers have to process and analyze all that data! Here's where AI chatbots come in handy:

Surveys and Polls: The bot sends surveys and polls, and then analyzes the obtained data.

Corporate Communication: The bot informs about upcoming corporate events or changes in the office.

4. Smooth Offboarding with Chatbot Automation

In today's world of remote work and limited face-to-face interactions, automated HR communications have become invaluable, particularly in the case of offboarding.
Imagine a system where every step of the resignation journey, from document retrieval to knowledge transfer, happens seamlessly. This automation not only saves time but also alleviates the workload of HR executives. How it Works:

• Document Retrieval: The bot sends employees all necessary documents for a smooth resignation process.

• FAQ: The bot provides clear answers to queries related to offboarding, ensuring understanding for everyone involved.

• Knowledge Transfer: The bot guides employees through the process of transferring knowledge, including project statuses and pending tasks, the bot facilitates a seamless handover.

• Access Closure: The bot assists in closing all accesses on the employee's last day, ensuring data security.

Before you start

AI HR Chatbot actively engages employees, guiding them through the employee journey and providing assistance whenever challenges arise, effectively minimizing distractions for HR and office managers. However, it's crucial to have the necessary systems in place. For instance, to facilitate onboarding, a well-prepared welcome kit and a streamlined paperwork system should be prepared in advance, along with an IT integration system for new employees.

As I consistently emphasize, companies must proactively embrace automation by studying and optimizing their processes, ensuring clarity and connectivity, and establishing comprehensive guides and knowledge bases that illuminate team workflows.

Once these foundational steps are taken, the automation of processes becomes more seamless. The organization possesses a deep understanding of its operations, equipped with structured data readily available for utilization. This is the opportune moment to consider the integration of a chatbot.

At Loqos AI, we specialize in AI automation such as creating AI HR Assistant. Feel free to book a demo to explore the possibilities.