Why are you wasting time writing HR content no one reads?

Most HR published documents in your system are routinely ignored by your workforce because most employees only refer to them at the point of need.

But what’s the point of spending lots of time and effort refining the perfect policy if your workers can’t find it (or don’t bother looking) and just end up writing into HR to ask for help?

Here’s three ways to help surface knowledge to your employees:

• Use Generative AI as an essential component of your HR delivery strategy
• Investing in a knowledge management system that's built for HR, not IT
• Pull it all together with a next gen, AI-driven HR portal

Let's dive into each of these a little more. Then we will unpack an example of what happens when you don’t have the right HR content easily accessible to employees and what this costs the business.

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1. Generative AI is here and it’s an essential component of your service delivery strategy

Imagine that on the corner of every one of your workers’ desks sat an experienced HR Business Partner.

This business partner has a photographic memory and can instantly recall any fact or policy from all your knowledge articles. Whenever an employee has an HR question, they just look over to their HRBP to get an instant answer.

Assistants based on generative AI, like Applaud’s deliver this dream. They are here now. They are not the future and they are an essential part of your HR ecosystem.

Have a question about flexible working? Ask AI about the new policy. It will produce a fast, accurate answer and avoid sucking up any of HR’s valuable resources or time.

Wasted time = wasted money.

2. Invest in a Knowledge Management system that’s built for HR, not IT

Garbage in, garbage out.

An AI Assistant is only as good as the knowledge that’s passed to it.

So many HR Leaders we speak to are being forced to use ServiceNow or Sharepoint or some other IT-owned system to publish knowledge.

Spoiler Alert: If you want the best for your HR Knowledge, you need to buy software that’s been built with HR in mind and – here’s the important bit – is directly integrated into your AI Assistant of choice.

Layer Microsoft CoPilot onto an unstructured Sharepoint library of junk, you’ll get junk answers. Rely on an Assistant embedded within ServiceNow, you’re missing out on getting answers that are contained within your Sharepoint library.

Modern Knowledge Management Platforms, such as Applaud Knowledge Management  has been purpose built to supply all the controls you need as an HR custodian of knowledge such as approvals, publishing and version control.

Those are table stakes; what you really need is a modern solution to import knowledge from disparate sources such as Sharepoint and ServiceNow; generate and improve content using AI; seamlessly serve knowledge into your AI Assistant.

If you can’t manage your knowledge properly, you get a mess of documents scattered randomly around your intranet which means no one can find anything – and that includes your new AI Assistant.

Deal breaker.

3. Pull it all together with a next gen, AI driven HR Portal

When an employee is looking for a policy, their first port of call– the intranet.

But that’s not owned by HR and content can get buried.

Your HR system of record is not designed as a system of engagement or a platform for knowledge, more often than not, the advice will be how to raise a case with your HR team.

Applauds HR Portal pulls together knowledge, HR data, search and AI Assistants into a convenient ‘one stop shop’ for workers that are looking for answers.

Advances in AI can now elevate your traditional static, custom built HR portal into a dynamic place to visit that promotes data and knowledge most relevant to the worker based on their location, job or role. Multiple channels deliver answers, such as search, AI Assistant, Knowledge Libraries.

Take a look at the below video to learn all about Applaud's intuitive HR portal that works hard behind the scenes to help your employees find what they're looking for, fast.

Example: What happens when you don’t have the right HR content at your employees fingertips? 

The knock on effect might be worse than you think. Let’s explore a typical chain of events, from the perspectives of an HR manager, an employee and the employee's manager. We'll also consider the average amount of time spent by each per task.

Perspective: HR Manager
New policy. Done
Time spent - 8 hours 

You’ve spent several afternoons researching the new Flexible Working Request regulations that came into force in April 2024 (UK).

You’ve written and rewritten the forthcoming policy document. Maybe even passed it through AI to ensure clarity of writing.

It’s gone to your manager who’s enthusiastically reviewed it and given you the thumbs up to publish it on your intranet.

You check the document one last time; you wouldn’t want to send this out to the entire company with an embarrassing typo.

Tentatively pressing ‘Publish’, the document hits the intranet. You feel good about ensuring your company now has a regulatory compliant process in place.

Perspective: Employee
Help! My manager has asked me to come into the office five days a week! 
Time spent - 1 hour 

When Covid hit, your local office closed, and you performed your bookkeeping role from home.

Your productivity was unaffected, and flexibility offered by home working gave you a welcome work life balance. When the office re-opened, there was a gradual return to the office for a few days a week. 

Recently your manager has asked you to return to the office 5 days a week. But this makes your life hard with a young family to take care of.

You know you can perform the job to a high standard from home, so you put in a flexible working request. You know that since April 5th 2024, all UK employers have a statutory right to consider such requests.

You wait for a response…

Perspective: Employee's Manager
What’s a flexible working request? 
Time spent - 1 hour 

Your finance team worked well remotely during the post Covid years but you strongly believe you get the most productivity from your team when they are all together in the office.

Your mandate to return to 5 days a week in the office hasn’t gone down well but you’re confident you’ve done the right thing for the business.

A request for flexible working comes in from one of your finance administrators. They are a good worker and you know they can do the job at home but it’s got to be the same rule for everyone.

You’re not sure what a Flexible Working Request is. You do a quick check on the intranet but can’t find anything.

You reject the request without giving any reason.

Perspective: Employee
Ask HR
Time spent - 2.5 hours 

You are disappointed to read your request for flexible working was rejected. You also know that your employer must give a valid reason when rejecting a request.

You’re not sure what to do so you go onto your intranet.

You trying to navigate to the HR page but find yourself buried in information about learning, applying for internal jobs and performance management.

You log into your employee self service application and have a look around but there’s nothing there.

You pick up the phone to HR. The automated line tells you to raise a service desk request unless it’s urgent.

You stumble around the intranet looking for the helpdesk page. You find it, then spend 15 minutes filling out the form, attaching your flexible working request, attaching your manager’s reply and submitting.

You wait for the reply from HR.

Unbeknownst to you, the relevant policy document was buried a few folders deep on the same page where you logged your helpdesk request. If you had found it, you could have sent it to your manager and sorted this out yourself.

Perspective: HR Manager
Meanwhile on the HR Service Desk…
Time spent - 30 mins 

You pick up the next open HR query that’s come into your queue.

It was raised a couple of days ago by an employee who had their flexible working request rejected. You’ve had a few of these over the past month since the regulations changed.

You type up some advice for the employee and write to the manager. You point both of them to the new flexible working policy that was published last month and give some advice to the manager to ensure they follow that procedure.

A few days later, the employee’s flexible working request was approved. HR has saved the day!

But was all that time and cost needed when everything the manager and employee needed was in that sparkling new policy document uploaded to your ServiceNow site?

What does this cost the business?

Multiple hours wasted across different departments that could all have been saved with easy access to the right information.

HR service desk employees answering the exact same query over and over again.

Not only that, but potentially a relationship damaged between an employee and a manager.

If you’re not investing in gen-AI powered tools today to fix this problem, you’ve already fallen behind.

You are letting your employees down and wasting HR resource.

You need to knock on your budget holder’s door and fix that right now.

Do it.

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About the Author

Ivan Harding has worked in the HR Technology sector for over 20 years, starting life in IBM before moving onto the Oracle Development team, where he reached Director level. Prior to co-founding Applaud in 2008, Ivan worked with a number of large, global companies, helping them get the most out of their HR Technology investment.