Blog / April 27, 2022

Introducing Moveworks for HR: The first AI solution that personalizes HR support

Varun Singh, VP of Product

introducing moveworks for hr

At Moveworks, our mission is to make every workplace the best workplace. For this reason, we empowered our platform to move beyond IT, starting last year. Since then, Moveworks bots worldwide have answered thousands of HR questions. Today, we’re excited to announce the next stage: Moveworks for HR, a sophisticated artificial intelligence solution built for people teams.

HR’s always been complex, but we have witnessed a sea change on an industry level over the last 20-plus months. HR teams have been put on the spot, responsible for creating the best places to work during a time of extreme unpredictability. They’ve had to develop health and safety protocols; address employee burnout and well-being; manage flexible and hybrid work logistics; and recruit, hire, and onboard. The list goes on. 

Even with increased investments in portals, knowledge bases, and other tools of the trade, HR is struggling. And employees… well, employees responded in kind, leaving their jobs in droves, frustrated by red tape.

To bring much-needed automation to overwhelmed HR teams, we’ve continued to invest in and develop our HR capabilities. As of today, the Moveworks platform helps focus HR teams on meaningful work, and employees get what they need by:

  1. Answering common HR questions instantly
  2. Accelerating support for even the most complex and delicate HR issues
  3. Increasing the ROI for existing HR systems

Answer common HR questions instantly

Employees have tons of questions. So many that HR teams spend more time bogged down by a queue of mundane issues than on the best part of their job — connecting with people. HR needs automation to manage the load, but even the most basic issues are nuanced, requiring solutions that differ from person to person.

Consider a common question about parental leave. There are dozens of ways to ask for information: I’m having a baby; my wife is pregnant; we’re expecting; there’s a bun in the oven. An HR professional would know exactly what the employee’s talking about and what they need. But a scripted chatbot? There’s no way the HR teams accounted for every possible keyword or phrase an employee might use.

answer common hr questions instantly Figure 1: HR support requires deep understanding and personalization. With AI, we ensure that every employee gets a custom-built response.

An additional complication is that the majority of HR knowledge is localized. If a Canadian and a Spanish employee ask the same question, they’re likely to need two different answers. This presents a unique challenge for automation. A hardcoded solution will lead both people down the same rabbit hole. Maybe one will get the answer they’re looking for, maybe not. 

Moveworks for HR uses conversational AI to deeply understand what an employee is asking for and who they are. With this context, our bot delivers a personalized answer entirely autonomously. Employees can check remaining PTO balances, inquire about benefits, review company holiday schedules — and get information tailored to their needs, immediately.

If your goal is always to let employees pick the benefits, schedule, and work arrangements that best accommodate their preferences, you need something that understands the subtleties of language — not a pre-scripted dialog flow. Employees are expecting human resources to be, well, human. The only way to automate HR is to understand that truth and create the conversational, personalized approach that people expect.

Accelerate support for complex issues

HR issues are rarely as simple as a question and an answer. Again, this is where the human element of human resources comes into play. Why have I been taxed so much? My job title isn’t right. I’m having trouble with a co-worker. None of these issues have a simple solution.

accelerate-support-for-complex-hr-issues accelerate-support-for-complex-hr-issues

Moveworks automates many issues all by itself, but some situations will always require a person to step in and help out. Our AI routes issues to the right specialist or manager for approvals to make this handoff seamless, even if the employee has no idea who that person is or what department they’re in. Employees can fill out forms directly on their chat platform. And it’s even possible to crowdsource support with our Channel Resolver.

The beauty of Moveworks is that — no matter the question — our bot can listen, understand, step in, and offer help, whether that help is completely resolving an issue or understanding the domain well enough to get an issue to the right specialist. Employees get the support they need, and HR professionals get questions they’re specially qualified to answer. It’s a win-win.

Increase the ROI of existing HR systems

Not all questions are related to employment, payroll, or contracts. In fact, one of the most common questions employees ask HR is: “What’s the wi-fi password?” Why? HR is often the first point of contact for employees who have questions about their work environment.

Employees aren’t thinking about complex backend reporting systems or the support org structure when they have a question. They just want their questions answered. A single company might have multiple HR information systems, in addition to other systems to deal with IT, finance, and facilities issues. And while some of these questions might not be HR’s personal responsibility, HR has to be prepared to help.

Instead of forcing employees to learn yet another system, Moveworks for HR offers a single place for employees to get help. Manage a life event, request an employment verification letter, find tax forms, approve expenses, and update healthcare benefits — our platform can help with all these use cases and more.

increase the roi of existing hr systems Figure 3: Moveworks for HR unifies existing HR systems to provide the best up-to-date answer or action.

Keeping track of all these disconnected systems is just as frustrating for HR teams. Manually updating a dialog flow every time you adjust the return to office plan is more trouble than it’s worth. HR teams just don’t have the resources.

HR teams can now plug Moveworks for HR into existing systems — like ServiceNow, Jira, Workday, SharePoint, Simpplr, Guru, Confluence, and more — and it serves up the best possible answer or action. And as new information is added, it’s automatically incorporated into Moveworks’ repertoire. Update the return to office policy? Moveworks knows, and next time someone asks, we surface the new policy, not the information from last week.

HR is complex — AI can make sense of it

Today’s HR departments — at least the forward-thinking ones — are looking for tools to simplify their workdays and their employees’ workdays.

The problem is that the complexity of HR makes it extraordinarily difficult to automate even the simplest of their responsibilities. The only way to untangle this complexity is with a genuinely smart AI. An AI that automatically incorporates new information, understands HR-specific terminology, and is empowered to act — whether that means completely resolving an issue or directing it to the right specialist.

Moveworks for HR uses layer upon layer of machine learning models to engage employees individually, letting them dictate the flow of the conversation. Our AI analyzes every request, weighing every possible response in real time — considering location, language preference, security permissions, and more — to decide and surface the best possible response for each employee. In short, employees ask for what they want, and they get it. Immediately.

It takes a lot of behind-the-scenes complexity to create an experience this simple. Anybody can throw together a bot that can deal with a couple of use cases. If you want a bot that does everything, you need real AI.

The future of HR is AI

All eyes are on HR leaders right now, many of whom have been tasked with reimagining the future of their company’s employee experience. But to create a culture that empowers and supports employees, HR needs to spend their time doing meaningful work and less time chugging through endless support queues. 

Here at Moveworks, we realize that every employee deserves to work at the best workplace. To build that workplace — where no employee is left behind — HR teams can’t rely on a solution that’ll only solve a narrow set of use cases. They need a comprehensive platform powered by AI. They need Moveworks for HR.


Let your HR team get back to work that matters with Moveworks — request a demo!

Table of contents


Subscribe to our Insights blog