How to enable self-service payroll for new hires (and transform onboarding with automated HR support)

A new hire’s first week should build confidence — not confusion.

Yet for many employees, their introduction to the company is a maze of forms, scattered systems, and slow answers about the one thing that matters most: getting paid correctly and on time.

In these moments, payroll becomes more than a process. It becomes like a promise — one that sets the tone for everything that follows. 

In a survey of over 1,000 newly hired employees, over 60% say onboarding impacts their long-term performance and engagement, and similarly poor onboarding experiences push almost half (48%) of newly hired employees to consider other job opportunities. 

It's not surprising. Most payroll onboarding processes are dependent on HR, IT, and payroll teams manually guiding every step, which slows down setup and risks manual entry errors that can compromise payroll accuracy. 

And when payroll accuracy is at risk, the fallout is widespread: Employees lose trust, productivity stalls, and compliance violations loom. 

Agentic AI-powered self-service can get to the heart of some of the issues that cause friction in the payroll onboarding process so new hires can get fast, easy access to the resources they need to be productive from day one. 

Manual payroll onboarding fails at enterprise scale

New hires come with a long, intricate checklist: set up direct deposit, fill out tax forms, collect contact information, and so on. 

For HR and IT teams, these tasks quickly become a repetitive slog, sapping time, energy, and resources they could direct toward more strategic work. The friction becomes readily apparent when you start to scale. 

But for new employees, these processes are often unclear and confusing, requiring constant hand-holding and guidance. With nowhere else to turn, fresh hires inundate HR and IT teams with repetitive payroll questions that drain productivity and delay setup. 

Fragmented systems create even more bottlenecks. 

New-hire information needs to transfer across HRIS, payroll, identity, and internal knowledge systems — accurately and securely. But collecting, logging, and sharing information across fragmented systems is labor-intensive, time-consuming, and error-prone. 

When HR or IT teams have to jump between channels or re-enter information, it slows down the entire onboarding process. But it also risks manual entry mistakes that can spiral into payroll inaccuracies with operational and compliance consequences.

What happens in payroll onboarding doesn't necessarily stay in payroll onboarding, and can impact the entire employee experience. Just a few onboarding errors can create big issues down the line: 

• Late, incorrect, or missing employee paychecks that hurt trust, employee engagement, and morale
• Missing tax forms or other compliance violations that lead to fines or legal issues
• Manual errors that increase rework for HR teams and stunt productivity
• Negative word-of-mouth that decreases retention and scares off new applicants

Why agentic AI-powered self-service is essential for payroll onboarding

Payroll onboarding is about a lot more than just paychecks. It touches every part of your business. When processes are manual, clunky, and confusing, the problems are quick to compound:

• Operations slow down when HR and IT are overwhelmed by repetitive questions.
• Compliance issues catch up with you when manual errors go unnoticed.
• Fragmented HR systems create chaos that could hurt employee trust, engagement, and retention. 

Upgrading manual processes to agentic AI-powered self-service can help reduce bottlenecks, mistakes, and confusion — so every employee can be more productive. 

That’s because agentic AI-powered self-service can understand complex, natural-language questions about pay, tax withholding, and benefits, then autonomously pull the right policies, forms, and system actions from HRIS/payroll tools in seconds, rather than forcing new hires to navigate multiple portals and menus on their own.

By automatically initiating workflows the moment a new hire joins your organization, AI helps transition payroll onboarding from reactive support to proactive employee enablement: 

• Knowledge retrieval reduces overwhelming requests: Instead of HR professionals wasting time answering the same questions over and over, some AI tools are designed to give new hires instant access to payroll onboarding resources and answer FAQs in real time.
• System orchestration connects fragmented systems: When agentic AI integrates HRIS, payroll, identity, and internal knowledge systems for automatic data sync, employees no longer need to waste time — and risk mistakes — jumping back and forth between channels. 
• Reasoning and multi-step planning prevent compliance risks: AI agents support compliance-aware onboarding workflows by executing predefined, multi-step processes, validating required inputs, and routing payroll information to the relevant integrated platforms.

Unlike standard software or static self-service portals, when properly configured, agentic AI is able to actively guide employees end to end, verify data, and update backend systems, which helps to reduce errors, speed time-to-first-paycheck, and free HR teams from repetitive case work. 

AI-powered self-service payroll onboarding can be especially impactful for large-scale enterprise teams managing thousands of employees. 

What self-service payroll onboarding should look like

AI-powered self-service payroll onboarding should lighten the load for HR and IT teams while supporting new hires from their first day. 

Here's what that might look like in practice: 

• Guided steps to welcome new employees and walk them through onboarding with clear instructions on how to set up direct deposit and confirm personal information. 
• Automated systems updates can collect data, like banking details and tax forms, and automatically sync it across HRIS, payroll, identity, and internal knowledge systems, without requiring manual intervention from HR or IT teams. 
• Natural language capabilities and access to knowledge bases to let employees ask AI questions in a chat tool and get instant, tailored answers instead of inundating HR teams. 
• Automated validations to help catch incomplete or incorrect data to prevent errors and ensure payroll accuracy on the first go-round. 

But not all automation enables self-service. Even after onboarding new automation tools, many organizations struggle to achieve true self-service because onboarding tasks still require manual intervention behind the scenes. 

Done right, self-service payroll onboarding should empower new hires to complete payroll setup in minutes, via guided steps and automated system updates. 

Leading orgs are already proving that, when AI agents take over mundane manual work, onboarding experiences become faster, less prone to errors and compliance complications, and all-around smoother for new hires:

• Procore deployed a conversational AI assistant, nicknamed Bolt, for on-demand support, enabling employees to get instant support with HR tasks.
• BambooHR also lightened HR workloads with an AI assistant, using it to automate the company's unique vacation reimbursement process and make submissions simple for both HR and employees. 

Learn how to use agentic AI to better onboard new hires and help employees be productive on Day 1.

Key payroll onboarding workflows to automate

Repetitive, high-volume tasks are prime candidates for automation, and payroll onboarding is full of them. Many organizations are using AI to take friction out of the process by simplifying data collection, guiding employees through each step, and moving information where it needs to go behind the scenes.

Adding direct deposit and banking information

Sharing banking details is often one of the first steps of the payroll onboarding process, and one of the most sensitive. Agentic AI assistants designed to use conversational prompting (rather than static forms) to collect banking details have the potential to take this step off HR's plate. 

The assistant prompts employees to provide banking details. Then, it automatically validates completeness and routes the data to the appropriate backend systems — without asking HR teams or employees to take extra manual steps or channel-swap. 

Some agentic AI platforms apply rigorous security measures at each step — like encryption and access controls — to ensure sensitive information is stored safely and remains compliant with privacy standards. 

Completing tax and residency forms

When your employees live and work in different states or even countries, payroll onboarding includes the necessary but sometimes tricky process of collecting tax and residency forms. 

Automated, AI-powered onboarding workflows can simplify the employee self-service (ESS) experience by presenting the right forms based on an employee's role and location, then guiding them through completion in plain language. New hires can find and fill out the forms they need without manual handoffs or waiting on busy HR teams for support — and they can do it in their preferred channel.

For example, a new hire can access an AI assistant through Slack, where conversational prompts collect relevant tax and residency information and then automatically route it to your team's HRIS or payroll system. 

Updating personal and employment details

Beyond financial information, the payroll onboarding process also collects personal details from new hires, like names, addresses, and emergency contact information. 

Some of this information may change over time, so employees need an easy, on-demand way to make updates after the onboarding process ends. 

Automated workflows put employees in the driver's seat with an employee self-service portal that lets them tweak personal and employment details whenever they need to, without bringing in HR for help. 

An advanced agentic AI assistant can power automated workflows to:

• Update legal names
• Collect address changes
• Adjust emergency contact information

Answering payroll FAQs

While filling out all the forms, it's normal for new hires to have questions. But without automated systems in place, answering these FAQs can create extra work for HR and IT teams and drag out onboarding beyond initial setup. 

With an agentic AI assistant, employees can get instant omnichannel support that lets them self-serve answers to onboarding questions when and where they need them, like: 

• "When do I get paid?"
• "Where do I update my banking information?"
• "How do I access my pay slips?"
• "How can I find information about PTO policies?"
• "Where can I find my timesheets?" 

How Moveworks enables self-service payroll onboarding

Moveworks uses logic-based workflows, automated triggers, and on-demand support to empower new hires to be independent (and productive) on their very first day. 

Collect payroll information automatically

Instead of clicking through complex forms, new hires can simply follow conversational prompts in an AI chat to complete required payroll steps and submit information about tax forms, banking information, and other employee details.

For example, the AI assistant might welcome a new hire with a message like: 

"Good afternoon! Let's get you ready to get paid. I'll walk you through direct deposit and tax forms in a few quick steps. 

• First, do you want to use direct deposit or get a paper check? 
• What bank account should we use to pay you? 
• Did you already complete your W-4 form, or should we do that?"

As the new hire answers each question, the assistant uses logic-based workflows to check input formats, validate each input, and then automatically send employee data to relevant backend systems. 

The Moveworks agentic AI Assistant supports seamless employee self-service, but it's not calling all the shots. Organizations maintain control over payroll and onboarding prompts through configurable workflows.

For example, HR and IT teams can use Agent Studio (Moveworks' full-stack agentic AI developer platform) to choose which information is collected, along with how and when the assistant nudges employees with prompts. 

Trigger system actions across HRIS and payroll platforms

After initial onboarding, employee information needs regular oversight and updates to stay current.

Moveworks is designed to connect to existing systems, like Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, and ServiceNow, to provide configurable multi-step workflows to update records automatically with minimal manual intervention from your HR team. 

To set up automatic record-update triggers, HR and IT teams configure custom low-code workflows in Agent Studio designed to listen for specific events and then automatically update the appropriate record in HRIS and payroll systems. 

These workflows should define: 

• What specific event should trigger the workflow, e.g., a new-hire record in Workday or a status change in the onboarding checklist. Next, Moveworks can trigger system actions across HRIS and payroll platforms to update and verify records.
• What the assistant should check, e.g., missing direct deposit details or address information. Then Moveworks can nudge employees to provide missing information.
• What updates to execute automatically, e.g., routing approvals or data syncing across systems. 

Provide real-time guidance and support

When joining a new company, it's normal for employees to have plenty of payroll questions. But when HR teams are already swamped with regular service delivery, it can be hard to keep up, leading to long delays. 

During initial onboarding steps and beyond, Moveworks can provide on-demand answers to common payroll questions by retrieving information from your connected knowledge sources

Using LLM-powered knowledge retrieval, the assistant instantly fetches relevant information from connected internal systems and knowledge bases to respond to new hires' FAQs with consistently high accuracy. 

With quick, easy access to information that solves their problems, employees can pivot back to the task at hand without turning to HR for extra support. This can reduce the number of helpdesk tickets and smooth out onboarding friction so new hires can get up and running faster.

Discover how Moveworks' agentic AI Assistant empowers every employee to get the right answers, right when they need them.

Remove friction from the onboarding process

For payroll onboarding, accuracy and speed determine success. Manual processes, which are slow and error-prone, just can't keep up with enterprise-scale demands. 

Moveworks supports a smoother, more intuitive ESS setup for the entire enterprise onboarding process — not just payroll — keeping repetitive admin work off your HR team's plate. With automated workflows, system integrations, and intuitive, conversational prompts that guide employees through upfront paperwork, Moveworks can help new hires hit the ground running. 

Schedule a personalized demo to see what Moveworks can do for your onboarding experience and beyond.