Employee policy questions, one company told us, were eating its HR manager's day. The messages came in a steady stream: how many days of leave can I carry forward, is the medical claim limit per year or per visit, where is the form for the training allowance. Each one was small, each one was already written down in the handbook, and together they turned the HR manager into the company's search engine.
What they told us
The handbook was accurate. It was also a long PDF, a shared drive and a few announcements scattered across chat groups. A new employee did not know which document to open, and an experienced one did not want to scroll through forty pages for one number. So they asked a person, and that person stopped what they were doing.
They wanted staff to be able to ask the handbook directly. They were also clear about what worried them: an assistant that confidently invents a leave policy is worse than no assistant, and an internal tool must not end up on the public internet.
How we approached it
Policy answers carry weight. An employee who is told the wrong claim limit makes a real decision on it. So we planned around three requirements:
- The assistant answers only from the documents assigned to it, and says plainly when a question is not covered.
- The business controls where the assistant can appear, so an internal one stays internal.
- Keeping the knowledge current must be easy, so that last year's policy stops answering the day it is replaced.
How it works
The business uploads its own documents — the handbook, the claims policy, the IT guide — to a knowledge base and attaches it to a widget. Staff ask in plain words, and the assistant finds the passage that answers the question and replies from it, in the language the employee writes in.
It stays inside your documents. A question the documents do not cover gets an honest "I don't have that", not a guess.
You control where it appears. A widget can be restricted to the web addresses you allow, so an internal assistant lives on your intranet page rather than anywhere on the internet.
The knowledge stays tidy. Documents can be switched on or off without re-uploading, and individual passages can be edited.
Where it leaves HR
The HR manager still gets questions, and the ones that reach them are the ones that need a person: a sensitive situation, an exception, a decision. The assistant answers the routine ones from the handbook. It does not interpret policy beyond what is written, and it is not meant to.
Frequently asked questions
Can a Gydr assistant answer employee policy questions from our own documents?
Yes. Upload your handbook and policy documents to a knowledge base, attach it to a widget, and the assistant answers from those passages.
Will it make up a policy it does not know?
No. It answers only from the knowledge assigned to it, and says so when a question is not covered.
How do we keep an internal assistant internal?
Restrict the widget to the web addresses where it is allowed to appear, such as your intranet.