Automated HR Help Desk: A One-stop Solution for Support Services Implementing an automated HR Help desk enables employees to get their HR issues resolved within seconds.

Employees are an integral part of any organization. Employers should recognize this and work hard to take care of employee needs. Employee support services go a long way when it comes to employee satisfaction. It's important to recognize, too, that employee needs are everchanging. Today, employees require personalized support and quick resolution to their problems. But it is often difficult for HR professionals to cater to all needs at once.

Implementing an automated HR help desk within your organization may help. Simply put, an HR help desk is a digital representation of your HR department. It allows your employees to resolve their HR issues quickly or obtain further assistance from dedicated support agents. The help desk also serves as a link between HR managers and employees. Finally, it allows an organization to take care of all the major needs of their employees and ensure that their work experience is not hampered in any way.

Related: Using HR Help Desk to Enhance Employee Productivity and Experiences

Major benefits of an automated HR help desk

Here are some key benefits of an HR help desk, proving that it is a one-stop solution for your employee support services:

1. Increasing employee engagement
   We no longer live in an age where employees are happy just because of money. As employee needs have changed, so has the definition of employee engagement. Today, employees need seamless employee support to feel genuinely driven towards the work they do. An HR service desk allows you to do so in the best ways possible. It helps you listen to your employees' queries and provide them with solutions that work best for them.

2. Increased employee retention
   If an organization cannot solve employee issues, those employees may jump ship within the first few weeks of joining. An HR help desk allows you to cater to your employees from the moment they are recruited and onboarded within your organization. If all their needs are met and they are provided with seamless HR assistance, employees are more likely to stay with your company.

3. Higher employee productivity
   When employees are engaged and love what they do, they give 100% and work hard to meet organizational goals. This leads to increased productivity and dedication and ultimately allows your organization to flourish.

4. Effective onboarding
   Onboarding employees is one of HR's most challenging activities. An HR help desk can streamline the onboarding processes and ensure employees are happy in their new workplace. From providing them with the right digital devices and setting up new email accounts to getting their confusions resolved, an HR help desk is a one-stop solution to most onboarding challenges an organization faces.

5. A portal for addressing employee issues
   An HR help desk often acts as a single-point contact between an employee and HR professionals whenever they encounter any issue — dealing with an injury, workplace harassment, or another important.

6. Leveraging your HR operations
   An HR help desk is designed to provide a helping hand to HR professionals regarding company policies and procedures. It allows you to take your HR operations a notch higher by reaching out to your employees and providing digitized help to them. This increases the value of the services provided by your HR department.

How to optimize your HR help desk

Despite all its benefits, traditional HR help desks are no longer relevant in providing holistic support to your employees. Instead, they often provide generic solutions to issues and delayed support to employees.

Related: 4 Building Blocks for a Successful Remote Employee Onboarding Process

As a solution, organizations are switching to the modern HR help desks powered by artificial intelligence (AI). These services use AI to understand the context of the issues faced by employees and provide them with personalized solutions. This allows you to optimize your knowledge base and provide exceptional support for every employee.

The modern HR help desk automates several processes and deals with all your employees on a single unified platform.

Here are some of the important ways in which you can optimize your support services with the help of a modern HR help desk:

1. Integrating with collaborative platforms
   The significance of collaborative platforms has increased considerably over the last few years as working remotely has become more prevalent. These platforms help organizations function virtually and allow employees to collaborate with their peers on a centralized platform. By integrating the modern HR help desk with the collaborative platform used by your organization, you can make things easier for both employees and HR managers. This allows employees to seek answers and resolve their issues while working without switching to a different platform. On the other hand, it helps HR managers handle processes like recruitment, onboarding, etc., on a single digitized platform.

2. Making use of conversational AI
   As the name suggests, conversational AI is the technology that allows your employees to interact with AI chatbots to get their issues resolved. This provides employees with the ideal combination of human-like interactions and the precision of a machine. Using conversational AI in your HR help desk lets your employees obtain seamless support without the immediate need for real-life agents. All you need to do is feed your enterprise knowledge base with the answers to all possible questions your employees can ask. When an employee asks a question to a chatbot, it would immediately scan the knowledge base and develop a solution that best suits the concerned employee. This way, your employees can get their questions answered within seconds and get back to their work. Even if your employees are willing to approach a support agent to obtain better insights into the issue, they can ask the AI chatbots to do the same. The chatbot would route the case to an expert and communicate the solution through them.

3. Automating the ticketing process
   Especially in industries that do not deal with IT processes, employees aren't always well-versed with a manual ticketing system. Although effective, the traditional ticketing system still involves activities that might be complicated for many employees. This issue can be resolved by introducing an automated ticketing system within your HR help desk. The modern help desks are equipped with a technology that automates the entire ticketing process – from raising tickets to closing them. Here, all your employees need to do is chat with a virtual assistant to create a ticket for their case and route the same to an agent. The help desk will automatically issue a ticket and keep track of the same until the agent resolves the issue. Then, it sends automated notifications about the progress of their case to employees. When the issue is finally resolved, the service desk automatically closes the ticket, and the employee can get back to work.

4. Imparting knowledge through microlearning
   A modern HR help desk can also be used for training employees without spending money on trainers and workshops. For example, if your employees need to learn specific skills or brush up on certain topics, you can add relevant training materials to your knowledge base and access them through the same platform. This allows employees to self-train and helps the HR managers to track their progress. Also, you can allow your experienced employees to add resources to the knowledge base and share the lessons with their peers.

5. Conducting automated employee surveys
   HR managers can use the help desk to create and conduct personalized employee surveys to understand the pulse of their team and gauge the overall employee experience. A single platform can be used for collecting the data and analyzing the same to derive valuable conclusions.

The final word

We've highlighted some of the most important ways in which you can optimize your HR help desk. It is always advisable for an organization to digitize its HR processes and use technologies like AI to obtain the best results. This allows your HR professionals to perform their duties even better and increase the overall employee engagement within your organization.