How Freshworks’ HR team wins with Freshservice

In the age of the digital enterprise, human resources teams tackle a broader mission: designing and implementing every aspect of employee experience (EX), from onboarding to offboarding.

Five years ago, the HR team at Freshworks saw a huge opportunity to leverage the company’s flagship product, Freshservice, to redesign key aspects of EX. Initially an experiment, it turned into a strategic initiative that has paid off in multiple ways. 

An unsustainable balancing act

As Freshworks grew rapidly over the past decade, globally supporting over 67,000 customers and 5,000 employees, the HR team found itself buried in the complexity and volume of workforce demands.

According to Sid Nayar, VP of HR planning and operations, the team was juggling everything from employee development, payroll administration, and benefits management to workplace safety and employee relations. “It was a delicate balancing act that was becoming unsustainable.”

The tipping point came in 2019, with a surge of more than 2,500 employees in various regions. Relying on email and various tools to handle the avalanche of approvals for everything from onboarding to financial aid and leave requests became untenable. 

Read also: At Databricks, Freshservice finds favor with not just IT but HR, legal, and security teams  

But instead of adding more staff to handle the workloads, then-CIO Prasad Ramakrishnan proposed a solution: Customize Freshservice’s automation tools to help unburden HR staff.

So, the HR operations team set three goals: automate routine tasks, enable self-service, and free up IT agents and HR staff for more complex work. They targeted the following key areas:

1). ‘Ask HR’ email automation

When employees send emails to the general ‘ask hr’ address, they are automatically converted into tickets in Freshservice. Over the past year, this process has helped HR manage 8,434 employee requests.

The system categorizes these tickets into 16 broad groups and 211 specific types, helping HR staff organize and respond to inquiries more effectively. It also directs tickets to the appropriate regional HR team based on the employee's location. For requests involving sensitive HR data, the system has built-in approval workflows.

2). Tailored reports

HR staff can also use Freshservice’s automated workflows to request and create custom reports to analyze trends in employee inquiries and department performance through CSAT triggered after every ticket resolution.

3). Self-service for document generation

Adding a self-service document system has cut HR letter processing time by 93%. Previously, generating HR letters took 20-30 minutes manually, which was reduced to 10-15 minutes with initial automation. The latest features allow letters to be produced in just 2 minutes—it automatically attaches the document to a response email with suggested text.

4). Workflow automation

The HR department has implemented automated workflows to streamline two key processes. For the "Above & Beyond" employee recognition program, the system now manages award requests and multi-level approvals in one place, processing 518 such requests in the past year alone.

Additionally, a new workflow automates onboarding for contractors and Professional Employer Organizations (PEO). This system takes hiring manager inputs for demographics and job details and automatically creates employee profiles in Oracle's Human Capital Management software. This automation has reduced manual data entry, sped up processes, and improved data accuracy across HR operations.

5). Smart integration with Freddy AI Copilot and Slack

The HR team next integrated Freshservice with Freddy AI Copilot and Slack. Freddy AI Copilot helps HR staff in several ways. It can suggest replies to common questions, summarize tickets, create help articles, and assist with writing tasks. This makes it easier for HR to handle employee requests quickly.

The Slack connection allows HR to easily chat with employees when they need more information about a request. These conversations can be added to the related ticket. The system can even summarize these chats automatically. These integrations helped HR staff break down silos and communicate better with employees. 

Freshservice has made managing employee journeys easier and created a smoother, more consistent work experience. Its centrally managed Orchestration Center allows admins to automate repetitive tasks right from the service desk. IT teams have also helped HR streamline tasks with self-serve tools and chatbots.

In fact, the Freshservice Slackbot has enabled HR to convert employee service requests into trackable tickets, even from personal Slack accounts. This system not only helps capture requests through informal channels but also offers employees flexibility in deciding how they want to reach out to HR. Tickets are also auto-assigned to regional HR teams based on the requester’s location. Last year, the team processed 36 queries using this method.

Now, routine HR functions like responding to employee queries, generating different kinds of letters and documents, and generating approvals for employee awards are all automated, helping HR teams do what they do best: strike a connection with employees. 

Building a better—and more balanced—workplace 

Pulling all that off didn’t happen without some friction along the way. 

“Change is hard,” reflects Matthew Troxel, Freshworks’ director of HR operations. “We had to show people that automation wasn’t a threat, and in fact, empowers them to do their jobs better. It frees them up to focus less on administration and more on strategic projects.” 

His team has rolled out changes gradually, starting with simple tasks and expanding to more complex workflows. They encouraged feedback, letting HR staff suggest new opportunities for innovation and automation.

Even initial skeptics came around. “I was worried we would lose the human touch,” says Shriya Krishnaswamy, a talent acquisition specialist. “But it’s had the opposite effect. Our HR team is more engaged than ever.”

Only last year, the team successfully managed more than 13,606 queries using Freshservice. “We’re seeing a cultural shift,” adds Nayar. “Automation is not a pipedream but tablestakes today.” 

"In the end, it's about creating a better workplace," Troxel says. "When HR can spend less time on paperwork and more time on people work, everyone wins. It's not just about efficiency; it's about building a more engaged, productive, and satisfied workforce."

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