HR helpdesk: answer staff questions without an HR team

Key takeaways

HR helpdesk outsourcing gives staff one place to ask routine questions about pay, holiday, policies and paperwork, answered from your own handbook within set times. It suits firms without an HR team where the owner or office manager fields every question. Anything involving a dispute, a complaint or legal advice escalates to the employer or an HR adviser.

• One channel for all routine HR questions.
• Answers come from your handbook and policies.
• Disputes and legal questions always escalate.
• Track question types to fix unclear policies.

What questions can an HR helpdesk answer?

Routine, factual questions with answers in your policies: how much holiday is left, when payday is, how to claim expenses, how to request parental leave, where to find a form, how to update bank or address details. In many small firms these questions take hours of the owner's week, a few minutes at a time.

• Which business processes should you outsource?
• HR without an HR department: risks and costs

What must the helpdesk escalate?

Anything involving a grievance, a disciplinary matter, discrimination, whistleblowing, health and adjustments, pay disputes or a request for legal advice. These need the employer's judgement and often a qualified adviser. The helpdesk logs the query, tells the employee who will respond and when, and passes it on the same day.

• Grievances and complaints about colleagues.
• Disciplinary or capability matters.
• Health, disability and adjustments.
• Pay disputes and legal questions.

• Disciplinary and grievance: what you can hand over
• Escalation paths for outsourced teams: fast, not chaotic

How do you set up an HR helpdesk?

Gather your handbook, policies and the questions staff ask most. Turn them into approved answers in a knowledge base, agree a response time such as one working day, set the escalation list, and choose one channel, such as a shared inbox or a form. Review the question log monthly: repeated questions usually mean a policy needs rewriting.

• Internal knowledge base: answers your team can find fast
• Shared inbox vs helpdesk: which does a small team need?

When is an HR helpdesk not worth it?

When the business has fewer than about ten staff and questions are rare, or when your policies are out of date. A helpdesk answering from an old handbook spreads wrong answers efficiently. Update the handbook first.

• How much volume makes a process worth outsourcing?
• Should you fix a process before you outsource it?

What does this look like in practice?

A pattern we see: the same ten questions make up most HR queries in a small firm. Answering them consistently, in writing, also reduces disputes later, because staff have a record of what they were told.

• See client work
• BPO Solutions for UK businesses

HR helpdesk checklist

Set these up before launch.

• Current handbook and policies.
• Approved answers to common questions.
• One channel for staff questions.
• Response time target.
• Escalation list and owner.
• Monthly review of question types.

• The process selection score: outsource, split or keep?
• In-house vs outsourced HR admin for small firms

Next step

Send us the questions your staff ask most often. We will tell you which a helpdesk could answer and what your knowledge base would need.