Employee self-service is an increasingly important part of modern HR management.
Self-service capability allows HR functions to be handled directly by the employee and lessens the administrative burden for the organization.
Traditional self-service portals often only handle simple elements of the employee experience, such as leave requests, payroll inquiries, and benefit enrollments.
The traditional self-service portal is also comparatively less responsive and personalized. Today, artificial intelligence is changing the employee self-service experience.
AI is enabling faster and more intelligent automation of support, as well as data and information that drive insights.
The removal of this administrative burden is allowing HR teams to focus on the broader strategic priorities of the employee experience and changing the way employees interact with your organization, bringing a more seamless experience.
Over the past 20 years, employee self-service (ESS) has come a long way. ESS platforms have gone from being fairly rudimentary digital spaces for employees to view pay stubs or request time off to being dynamic systems used to inform complex HR tasks.
While the advent of ESS helped eliminate paper forms and allowed employees access to pay stubs, the systems were often slow, rigid, and either did not allow HR to connect with employees or required a person to connect with the employee to resolve certain transactions.
As organizations began to scale, ESS typically could no longer keep up with the demand for increasingly responsive, personalized, and intelligent solutions.
Key milestone developments include:
Employees could see payroll, request time off, or update their personal information. Capabilities were limited in their intended use and were reactive, time-based transactions for HR. This is the first step in an employee-first approach in HR tech.
HR began to engage with workflow to not just push notification approvals, but to automate basic notifications, approvals, and reporting by more complex rule-based automation workflows, which allowed for fewer errors, but still mostly transactional; however, by limiting automation as much as possible.
Self-service often became "mobile enabled," which allowed for the employee to use the ESS system on whatever device, from whatever time and place. Potentially creating more convenience for employees, but there was still a lack of personalization.
Nearly all ESS platforms today are powered in part by artificial intelligence.
Chatbots provide fast feedback and allow for the automation of redundant processes, and predictive analytics provide more insightful data to employees.
Natural Language Processing (NLP) ultimately provides an almost conscious, meaningful interaction with the ESS system for the employee. Essentially, moving employees beyond transactional to an adaptable platform where data can be produced and used.
As ESS has evolved in functionality and sophistication, it has evolved from a basic portal to a tool that reflects a shift in priority for HR, providing tools for convenience and employee experience to a strategic enabler for efficiency, employee satisfaction, and data-informed decisions.
AI-Powered Employee Self-Service (ESS) can provide tremendous benefits at the employee, HR, and organizational levels.
Automating repetitive tasks and providing immediate assistance allow organizations to create a more streamlined and interesting employee experience in HR.
Personalized employee experience: AI enables self-service interactions to be customized based on employee role, preferences, and behaviour,s increasing the potential for engagement.
Decreased risk, compliance: Automated workflows following HR processes provide consistent application of HR rules and regulations, and decrease errors and risk.
Targeted data-driven insights: AI can synthesize data of employee interactions, allowing HR to make decisions based upon insights into employee tendencies, i.e., identify trends with attrition or needs for training.
Accountability 24/7: ESS with AI can provide employees with HR services and support anytime, anywhere, aligning with remote or hybrid work models.
These, and many more examples, provide evidence of how AI-Powered ESS platforms are changing HR from a transactional structure to a strategic enabler, which can increase productivity and satisfaction throughout the organization.
Microsoft uses AI to improve its employees' experience in the workspace through Microsoft 365 Copilot to regulate the ease of business workflows in order to help improve productivity and overall experience.
The AI works with employees to better manage tasks, create content, and search for relevant data by providing the functionality to improve efficacy across the organisation.
1-2 hours saved per week per employee in AI-assisted workflows.
90% of employees indicated their work experience was improved and productivity was improved.
Better Collaboration: AI helps employees draft documents, summarize emails, and prioritize tasks.
Reduced Redundant work: employees spent less time on administrative work and more time on strategic work.
According to HR Future, Unilever has used AI chatbots in their onboarding process to offer guidance in real time, answer FAQ's, and help with paperwork.
This solution gave new hires a better onboarding experience and lowered the administrative work for HR teams.
20% quicker onboarding experience for new employees.
85% of new hires reported a successful experience.
24/7 support: New hires now have instant support at any time of the day or night.
Reduced workload for HR: HR was able to limit repetitive questions and manual follow-ups.
Data capturing and modelling from chatbot interactions are allowing us to improve onboarding on a go-forward basis.
CloudApper helped with AI-powered self-service kiosks (hrPad) that employees can access HR services at any time. These kiosks are designed to automate the employee experience with services like PTO requests, work hours monitoring, and benefits inquiries, which lessen HR task load while providing a better employee experience.
40 percent drop in HR help desk calls in the 3 months since deployment.
Employees can instantaneously check hours worked and PTO balances at any location.
Employer has improved employee experience by instantly (compared to prior) accessing HR services.
Operational efficiency as it relates to HR workload: HR teams spend less time answering routine queries.
Real-time data and insights help HR to improve processes based on information collected from kiosks.
AI will bring about a breadth of change in Employee Self-Service (ESS).
ESS will evolve from a system used to control employee transactions to a system that is a strategic partner on behalf of Human Resources.
By 2025, platforms will be even more user-friendly, personalized, proactive, and intelligent with the use of natural language processing and predictive analytics.
There will be hyper-personalization, providing recommendations for individual guidance of the employee's future on learning opportunities and career development that will increase employee engagement and retention.
Voice-enabled ESS will allow for hands-free access to HR services, making access to HR services more timely and convenient. Predictive insights will help HR proactively identify employee attrition, training needs, and overloads to where action can be taken quickly.
Integrated AI-based ESS (often called the Employee Experience Platform) will be the single source of truth for all employee-stakeholder interaction, and will be an alternative to silos of access to resources.
It will lessen administrative and compliance activities for HR Technology teams and help produce a more agile and productive workforce.
Organizations that adopt once these employees are active members of the workforce in late 2025 will have a competitive advantage in seeking out talent, markets, customers, etc., that have a clear advantage.
AI-Powered Employee Self-Service (ESS) is revolutionizing the way HR is completed through automation of repetitive and mundane tasks, and is providing personalized employee support, enabling data-driven and predictive HR decision making.
AI-powered ESS applications will enhance almost every part of the employee experience and employee engagement, and even compliance, starting with onboarding and ending with the employee termination process.
Organizations adopting employee self-service platforms powered by AI will gain a competitive advantage, as they will spend less time on administrative tasks, provide better employee experiences, and assist HR teams in focusing on developing a strategic HR lens for their organizations.
Therefore, the new agenda is for an intelligent, proactive, and employee-centric future for HR.
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