Personio enhances the employee experience with an AI-powered chatbot and compliant Whistleblowing app

4th July 2023: Personio, Europe’s leading HR software company for small and mid-sized businesses (SMEs), today announced the latest expansion of its all-in-one HR platform with two new innovations — Personio Conversations now with AI-Powered Answers and Personio Whistleblowing — that deliver a more seamless employee experience. In addition, these updates will enable SMEs to further consolidate tools, increase efficiency and ensure compliance.

Currently, employees and HR managers alike are used to working in siloed apps and tools to manage their growing workloads, whether for onboarding, managing absences, performance reviews, payroll and more. Personio has always aimed to streamline these experiences for every employee. Saving time and helping entire organisations get better work done faster by providing one place for every work-related need. Thanks to this expansion of Personio’s product portfolio, employees can now gain instant access to the information they require and feel protected through anonymised, digitised reporting — all from the Personio platform.

This comes at a time when nearly four in ten (37%) HR managers say that efficient processes are key to helping their businesses navigate challenging times, with a quarter (25%) citing a holistic approach to employee experience as important*.

Hanno Renner, Co-Founder and CEO of Personio, said: “Changing regulations and the influx of new technologies can make it incredibly complex for employers to manage employee requests and HR processes effectively, whilst ensuring compliance. This is even more challenging for HR managers at SMEs, who are often short on time and the resources needed to manage multiple digital tools. At Personio, we strive to help our customers navigate this increasingly intricate landscape. These new features exemplify our commitment to enable better organisations, by further democratising HR software for SMEs, while delivering a seamless experience for all employees.”

Maria Angelidou-Smith, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Personio, said: “At Personio, we know that being able to deliver value to HR teams comes through delivering value to employees. That’s why we've always seen it as our top imperative to make the employee experience around key people workflows as seamless as possible, in order to drive positive outcomes for our customers. We’re excited to leverage emerging technologies, such as AI, to free up people’s time for more strategic work.”

Personio Conversations, the HR helpdesk that supports HR teams to easily prioritise and answer ad-hoc employee requests, is now being upgraded with an HR focused, AI-powered chatbot.

HR managers are often inundated with day-to-day requests from employees across multiple channels, oftentimes spending valuable time simply directing employees to the right documentation scattered across various systems. Many of these requests are for relatively straightforward information, such as ‘What is the policy on parental leave?’ In fact, two thirds of European HR managers state that they spend on average 3.5 hours per week answering employee questions.*

Available to employees 24/7, Personio Conversations’ AI-powered chatbot will help employees to get fast and tailored responses to their queries by automatically answering routine questions without the need for HR personnel. Employees can even submit requests from channels they already use such as Slack or MS Teams to maximise convenience and adoption.

This new feature comes as Personio’s latest research finds that 64% of HR professionals in Europe believe AI and automation can help them free up time to focus on strategic work.** Erika Werle, People Operations Manager at ABOUT YOU, an online fashion retailer which uses Personio Conversations, said: “We’re already looking forward to using the new AI-Powered Answers feature. This will provide employees with automated suggestions for the information they need, which should help them resolve queries on their own.”

With many EU countries set to see whistleblowing regulations coming into effect this year (in line with the EU Whistleblower Directive) and the UK currently reviewing the whistleblowing framework, companies that fail to implement the measure or that fail to properly handle whistleblowing cases could face severe consequences. These could range from negative publicity to court sanctions and even large fines.

Personio Whistleblowing is a centralised solution for anonymous reporting that enables people to safely and anonymously report wrongdoing. By doing so, it empowers employees to speak up, and helps to create a company culture where everyone can feel safe without fear of retaliation. The system has also been designed to ensure easy case management through a ticketing-like system, so that the assigned whistleblowing case manager never misses a report, and always knows the status of open cases.

AI-Powered Answers via Personio Conversations will be available to customers starting today. More information here: personio.com/conversations/

Personio Whistleblowing will be available in Q3. Interested companies can raise their interest here: personio.com/contact/

* Personio research: HR Study: The True Cost of a Crisis – HR’s Response to Challenging Times (published September 2022)

** Personio research: Closing the HR-to-CEO gap: how to build tomorrow’s workplace today (published June 2023)

Press enquiries: Personio SE & Co. KG  Laura Weidner Associate PR Manager Tel: +151 706 000 57 E-Mail: press@personio.de 

UK & Ireland - Firstlight Group  Ellie Rust / Alex McKie Tel: + 44 (0)7860650103 / +44 (0)7943457798 E-Mail: personioteam@firstlightgroup.io 

About Personio: Personio is the People Operating System for small and medium-sized companies with 10 to 2,000 employees. Based in Munich, London, Madrid, Dublin, Berlin, Barcelona and Amsterdam, Personio’s mission is to make HR processes as efficient and effective as possible so HR can focus on what matters most: people. Personio does that by offering an all-in-one HR software that includes human resources management, recruiting, talent management and payroll. With People Workflow Automation, Personio helps more than 10,000 customers across Europe to remove delays and realize opportunities.