What an HR agent is
A chatbot waits for a question. An agent acts when something happens: a new hire is added, a leave request comes in, the payroll period starts. It reads the records it needs, carries out the steps you described, and hands each decision to the person who owns it. It keeps working whether or not anyone is logged in. You don't draw a flowchart: you describe the work in plain English, then pick the tools and permissions the agent may use.
How agents work in Worklayer
- Triggers. An agent runs on a schedule, such as the first working day of the month, or when something happens in Worklayer, such as a new hire or a leave request.
- Tools. An agent works with Worklayer's own data (employee records, time off, expenses, the payroll snapshot, tasks, documents) and with the integrations your admins connect: Slack, Notion, Airtable, Linear, and Gmail, Google Calendar or Outlook through a person's own account.
- Permissions start at zero. A new agent has none. Only admins grant them, area by area: none, read, or read and write. How permissions work.
- It asks when it needs more. A step that needs a permission the agent doesn't have stops and asks an admin, instead of failing quietly or finding a way round it.
- Every run is recorded. Each run is logged step by step: what happened, when and why. The audit trail.
Five agents HR teams run
Each of these comes from one of the workflow pages below. You write the instructions, so the steps, owners and timing follow your own process.
| Agent | Starts when | What it does | Where a person decides |
|---|---|---|---|
| Onboarding | A new employee is added | Sends the welcome message, assigns the onboarding checklist with an owner per task, schedules intro meetings around the start date and sends IT its setup task. | IT completes the laptop and account setup and confirms it. |
| Leave check | A leave request is submitted | Checks the request against the leave policy and the employee's balance, and puts both next to the request. | The manager approves or declines. Approved leave is recorded and shows in the team calendar. |
| Payroll preparation | The payroll period starts | Reminds whoever owns missing time records, then assembles salaries, bonuses, time and approved expenses into the month's payroll snapshot. | A payroll reviewer corrects and approves the snapshot before it is exported for your payroll provider. |
| Expense check | An expense is submitted | Checks it against your expense policy and configured rates, and flags an exception, such as a meal over the limit. | Finance decides on the exception. Only approved items go into payroll preparation. |
| Offboarding | A departure is recorded | Assigns the departure checklist to HR, the manager and IT: handover tasks, access changes and equipment returns, timed to the leaving date. | IT confirms access and returned equipment. A payroll reviewer checks the final payroll inputs. |
What agents don't do
- Act without permission. An agent uses only the data and tools an admin granted it. By default, that is nothing.
- Take the actions that can never be granted in Worklayer: deleting employee records, changing compensation or bank details, changing roles or permissions.
- Run payroll. Worklayer prepares and exports the payroll snapshot. Your payroll provider pays salaries, calculates tax and files returns.
- Act in tools that aren't connected. Revoking access in an app Worklayer doesn't connect to stays a task for IT, visible until IT confirms it.
- Work out of sight. Every step of every run is in the run history, with what the agent did and why.
The AI in Worklayer
Agents by workflow
- Employee onboardingWelcome, checklist, intro meetings and IT setup before day one.
- Leave and attendanceRequests reach the manager with policy and balance attached.
- Payroll preparationSalary, time and approved expenses in one snapshot to review.
- Expense approvalsClaims checked against policy, exceptions sent to Finance.
- Employee offboardingHandovers, access, equipment and final payroll inputs, each with an owner.
- Employee requestsPolicy answers and leave requests in one chat.
Questions
Software that carries out a piece of HR work by itself. It starts on a schedule or when something happens, such as a new hire, uses the data and tools it has been allowed, and records each step. In Worklayer, an admin writes its instructions in plain English and grants its permissions.
A chatbot answers when someone asks. Worklayer's assistant goes a step further: an employee can check a leave balance and submit the request in the same chat, within their own permissions. An agent needs nobody to ask. It runs on its trigger, for example every time a leave request comes in.
What an agent may do depends on the permissions an admin grants it. The workflows on this page keep the decision with a person: the agent checks the request against the policy and the balance, and the manager or Finance decides.
Yes. Worklayer is an HR system with employee records and an org chart, time tracking and leave, preliminary payroll, expenses, documents and analytics, with an AI assistant and AI agents built in. It doesn't run payroll, recruiting or performance reviews.
No. Worklayer costs €10 per employee per month, billed annually, excluding VAT, with every module, every integration and unlimited AI usage: no credits and no caps, subject to fair use. Companies of up to 3 employees, including the admin, use it free. See pricing
Yes, alongside the agents. The Worklayer MCP server lets Claude, ChatGPT and other AI tools read and act on your HR data while you chat, with your own permissions. Agents run inside Worklayer without anyone chatting. Connect an AI tool