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Case study · Employee self-service

HR stops being a call centre

The HR agent: employee self-service on Teams

An employee asks on Teams about leave, a certificate or a benefit. The agent answers from company policy and HR data, a robot issues the certificate — and sensitive cases reach a human with full context.

1 800requests a month land on this example company's 6-person HR team. Seven in ten are the same questions again.

Executive summary

The challenge

HR is drowning in repetitive questions: certificates, leave balances, request statuses.

What changes

An agent on Teams answers from policies and HR data; robots issue the documents.

Business value

A one-second answer instead of days; HR wins back time for recruiting and development.

Systems & scope

Teams, SAP HR / the HR system, SharePoint; UiPath agent + robots.

Illustrative scenario

A manufacturing and trading company, 2,500 employees

HR receives 1,800 requests a month. 70% — 1,260 cases — are repetitive: employment certificates, leave balances, request status, benefit rules, sick-leave settlement.

Half the workforce is on shifts — asking in the evening and at weekends, when the HR office is closed. Answers arrive a day or two later. Frustration grows on both sides.

The current reality

  1. HumanAn employee calls or emails HR
  2. WaitingThe case sits in an inbox — 1–2 days on average
  3. HumanAn HR officer digs through SAP HR, payroll and policies
  4. HumanThe certificate is typed up manually in Word
  5. Error riskAnswers differ depending on who replies
  6. WaitingAt payroll close everything waits even longer
HumanWaitingError risk

The hidden cost of the current process

Being an answering desk costs more than the HR budget shows.

  • 252 hours a month of HR time go to questions whose answers already sit in the system.
  • Shift workers leave the line to chase paperwork — the cost lands on operations, not HR.
  • Recruiting and development take the back seat — attrition creeps up quietly.

The cost of doing nothing

A year of answering by hand≈ 75 600 €
3 years — the same queue≈ 226 800 €
After growth to 3,500 employees (per year)≈ 105 800 €

Manual work is an operational tax: the automation investment is finite, the manual cost is paid again every month.

The process after automation

  1. AutomationThe employee asks the agent on Teams — any time of day
  2. AutomationThe agent answers from policies and SAP HR data in seconds
  3. AutomationA robot generates and sends the certificate on the spot
  4. HumanSensitive cases go straight to a human — with context
  5. AutomationHR sees question trends in one panel
HumanAutomation

What the automation handles

  • Answers to repetitive questions 24/7, holidays included
  • Certificates, letters and request statuses on the spot
  • Logging every case with a full trail

When a human decides

  • Sensitive cases: health, disputes, personal situations
  • Discretionary decisions — raises, policy exceptions
  • Interpreting new regulations and agreements

Before

Time to answer1–2 days
Coverage outside office hoursnone
Share of repetitive work in HR~70%
Consistency of answersdepends on the person

After

Time to answerseconds–minutes
Coverage outside office hours24/7
Share of repetitive work in HRexceptions only
Consistency of answersone policy

Value model — example assumptions

Illustrative model
1,260 repetitive cases × 12 min= 252 h / month
252 h × €25 fully loaded hourly cost= €6,300 / month
12 months× 12
Annual capacity released≈ 75 600 €

Business benefits

  • HR returns to work that needs a human: recruiting, development, hard conversations
  • A shift worker gets an answer at 10 pm, not after the weekend
  • One policy, one answer — fewer disputes and appeals
  • The company adds another plant without growing the HR team

Board-level KPIs affected

HR cost per employeeFirst-response timeSelf-service rateeNPS

What management gains

  • A dashboard of what people really ask — pay and attrition topics surface early
  • A measurable response time instead of impressions
  • Fewer escalations to line managers

Estimate it for your organisation

hours released per month
annual capacity released

An illustrative estimate based on your inputs. A model of released capacity — not a savings promise.

Systems in this scenario

Inputs

  • Teams / intranet
  • E-mail / telefon
  • Portal pracowniczy

Mientha agentic layer

  • UiPath Agent Builder
  • UiPath robots
  • Maestro™ · Action Center

Core systems

  • SAP HR / system kadrowy
  • SharePoint (polityki)
  • System płacowy

Human approval: Teams / Action Center

What we deliver

  • Analysis of request statistics and the top 3 categories
  • HR policies translated into answer rules
  • An agent on Teams + robots for certificates and letters
  • Sensitive-case routes with context handover
  • A pilot with one site or department
  • Monitoring, a trends report and answer-base growth

What we need to start

  • 2–3 months of HR request statistics
  • Current policies and regulations (PDFs are fine)
  • A process owner on the HR side
  • A technical account for the HR test environment

Implementation roadmap

Discovery

We map the process, data and exceptions with process owners.

Design

Target flow, business rules, approval thresholds.

Build

Agents, robots and integrations in your environment.

Validate

Tests on real cases, exception handling.

Go-live

Controlled rollout with human oversight.

Optimise

Monitoring, reporting and continuous improvement.

Typical duration depends on systems and rules — a single process is usually weeks, not quarters.

Risk and controls

Autonomy under control

  • The agent answers only from approved sources — policies and HR data
  • A sensitive-category list controlled by HR — those cases always go to a human
  • Personal-data access mirrored from HR-system permissions
  • A full question-and-answer log available to HR

Why now

  • Every month is ~€6,300 of HR work on questions an agent can handle
  • The labour market needs your HR for recruiting, not certificates
  • Employees compare you with banks and e-commerce — they expect instant answers

Why this matters to:

CHRO / Dyrektor HR

The team stops being a hotline; time returns to recruiting and development.

COO

The line does not queue for HR calls — cases resolve themselves.

CFO

HR cost per employee falls even as the company grows.

Questions we usually hear

“Will employees accept this?”

A pilot answers that fast: a one-second reply at 10 pm on shift defends itself. Hard cases stay with humans — we do not change that.

“What about personal data?”

The agent sees exactly what the HR officer handling the case would see — permissions mirror the HR system, and every access is logged.

“We have an intranet FAQ.”

An FAQ answers in generalities. The agent answers this employee's question — with their leave balance and their contract. You feel the difference on day one.

When this may not be the right solution

  • Under ~200 requests a month — a tidy inbox and templates will do
  • HR policies are unwritten or outdated — content first, agent second
  • No approval for any automated handling of HR data

A question for your next board meeting

How many hours does your HR team spend every month answering the same 20 questions?

How much of your HR team's time goes to questions that repeat every month?

One quarter of request statistics is enough — we will show what the agent takes over first.

Show us your 3 most common HR requests

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