AI agents are rising in popularity as employers turn to the tools to automate business processes and increase the capacity of individual employees, teams and the organization. Microsoft is among the tech giants leveraging agentic AI, including through agents added to its Microsoft 365 Copilot. On Tuesday, it provided a sneak peek at yet another—the Employee Self-Service Agent, which customers can “private preview” starting in the first quarter.
The Employee Self-Service Agent is designed to expedite and streamline HR and IT-related tasks to provide employees with faster resolutions to information and resource retrieval and a more intuitive user experience. For example, the Employee Self-Service Agent can retrieve the right policy and resources from an organization’s knowledge sources and integrate personalized data from HR and IT service providers to create a single starting point for employees to resolve their most frequent queries, according to Microsoft.
Although Microsoft just unveiled the Employee Self-Service Agent this week, Microsoft Chief People Officer Kathleen Hogan and her team have been part of a select group of Microsoft employees from various departments who have been piloting the agent for the past 18 months.
“This really moves it from the notion that employees have to go to a portal to pull the data to a more proactive agent that is pulling the data for you, making recommendations, and pushing and nudging you to do things,” says Hogan, HR Executive‘s 2021 HR Executive of the Year.
The Employee Self-Service Agent is among the many ways Hogan and her HR team use AI to save time and costs while increasing HR’s capacity. And it’s just the beginning, Hogan says, predicting that, within five years, AI will “fundamentally transform the way HR works across every single dimension.”
She recently sat down with HR Executive to discuss Microsoft’s use of AI and its impact on her team. Hear what she has to say in this video interview.
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