Expenses, forms and responsibilities: an AI agent finds approved information and answers recurring HR questions with sources. Personal cases stay with HR.
Illustrative use case — not a report of a completed client project.
An employee wants to submit expenses. The current policy is on the intranet, the form is in a document library, and an older guide is still circulating. HR regularly answers the same question and must check which policy applies to the person asking.
The proposed workflow
The agent identifies whether the request concerns general guidance or a personal case. A general process question does not require a full personnel file. If essential context such as the relevant location is missing, the agent asks rather than assuming which policy applies.
The agent searches only sources approved for this purpose and respects the requesting person’s access rights. Validity, version and the responsible department must be identifiable. Conflicting documents are flagged for clarification.
The answer explains the process in clear steps and links to the policy and form. Statements must be traceable to the retrieved content. Without a suitable source, the agent does not use general knowledge to invent company rules.
Individual entitlements, confidential conflicts and unclear exceptions go to HR. Only the information needed to handle the case is passed on. In this example, the agent makes no decisions about employment, compensation or individual entitlements.
The prerequisite is maintained, approved knowledge with clear owners for updates and access rights. A pilot can start with one topic, such as expenses. Tests cover differently worded questions, outdated sources, missing answers and deliberately confidential requests. HR assesses factual accuracy and appropriate handovers.
General knowledge retrieval and personal case handling are separated. An answer must not reveal documents or information the employee cannot access themselves. Changes to source documents must reach the knowledge base; a good first answer does not replace ongoing maintenance.
Evaluate value in the pilot
The potential benefit is faster guidance on recurring questions and more time for personal support. The pilot measures factually correct answers with supporting sources, appropriate handovers and follow-up questions. A high number of automatic answers alone would not demonstrate quality.
The agent states that a source is missing and passes the question to HR. After expert review, the new answer can be added to the approved knowledge base.
