Answers employee questions from policy and the system of record.
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Halvorsen
Customer story
Halvorsen Health resolves 71% of HR cases without a human and cuts off-cycle payroll by a third
A 12,000-employee health system deployed the Help Desk and Payroll Agents across 14 hospitals and 60 clinics in 11 weeks, in a HIPAA-ready configuration with a BAA.
“Our HR partners used to start every case by asking the employee the same four questions. Now the case arrives with the answers attached. The deflection number is real, but the bigger change is what the team spends its day on.”
Dana Okafor
VP People Operations, Halvorsen Health
Challenge
Halvorsen Health runs HR shared services for 12,000 employees from one center with 38 staff. In 2025 the center handled about 3,100 cases a month with a median resolution time of 5.2 days. Two-thirds of cases were questions with a definite answer somewhere: shift differential rules, PTO accrual for part-time nurses, tuition reimbursement eligibility, how to add a newborn to benefits. Each still required an HR generalist to read the policy, check the record, and write a reply.
Payroll was biweekly across three states and four collective bargaining agreements, each with its own differential and overtime rules. The payroll team of nine averaged 22 off-cycle runs a month, most of them corrections for errors that were visible in the pre-run register: a nurse who transferred to a new state without a new withholding election, a garnishment deducted above the federal cap, a retro differential missed after a schedule change.
The health system needed both problems solved under HIPAA, with employee data never leaving its security model, and with a payroll manager approving every change. It had evaluated two general-purpose assistants and rejected both because neither could show which record an answer came from.
Approach
Weeks 1 to 3: connect and scope. Halvorsen connected its HRIS, policy library (412 documents across entities and states), benefits administration, and payroll provider through read-only connectors in a HIPAA-ready workspace under a BAA. HR shared services chose 14 topics for the Help Desk Agent to answer, 6 it could act on with approval (address, direct deposit, W-4, dependent add, PTO request, name change), and a list that routes straight to a human: FMLA, accommodation, workplace concerns, and immigration.
Weeks 4 to 7: pilot at one hospital. The Help Desk Agent went live in Microsoft Teams for 1,900 employees at the flagship hospital. HR generalists reviewed every escalated case in the first two weeks and rated 400 agent answers for accuracy against the source document. The policy team used the unanswered-question queue to rewrite 31 documents that were ambiguous or out of date.
Weeks 6 to 11: Payroll Agent and rollout. The Payroll Agent ran in shadow mode for two pay cycles, producing exceptions the team compared to the corrections they made anyway. It then went live with tickets routed to specialists by pay group and a rule library for the three states. The Help Desk Agent rolled out to the remaining 13 hospitals and 60 clinics in three waves.
Results
By the third month after full rollout, 71% of HR cases were resolved by the agent without a human touching them, against a design target of 65%. Median resolution time for cases that did reach a person fell from 5.2 to 3.6 days, because cases arrived classified with the employee's record and history attached. Employee satisfaction on resolved cases measured 4.6 out of 5.
Off-cycle payroll runs fell from 22 to 14 a month, and 92% of pre-run exceptions were cleared before cutoff. The payroll manager approved every correction; the agent changed nothing on its own. Two state minimum-wage changes and one paid-leave rule change were queued with citations and applied on their effective dates.
HR shared services did not reduce headcount. It reassigned six generalists to leave administration and manager coaching, work that had a waiting list.
| Measure | Result1 |
|---|---|
| of HR cases resolved without a human | 71% |
| median resolution for escalated cases, down from 5.2 | 3.6 days |
| off-cycle payroll runs per month, down from 22 | 14 |
| of pre-run exceptions cleared before cutoff | 92% |
Timeline
11 weeks from scoping to steady state, in 5 phases.
Phase 1: Weeks 1-2
Discovery and scope
Case history analysis, topic selection, escalation rules, HIPAA configuration and BAA.
Phase 2: Weeks 2-3
Connect
HRIS, policy library, benefits, and payroll connected read-only. Evaluation set built from 400 historical cases.
Phase 3: Weeks 4-7
Help Desk pilot
Live for 1,900 employees at one hospital in Microsoft Teams. Daily accuracy review, 31 policy documents rewritten.
Phase 4: Weeks 6-9
Payroll shadow and go-live
Two shadow cycles, then live pre-cutoff checks with tickets routed by pay group.
Phase 5: Weeks 8-11
Rollout
Three waves across 13 hospitals and 60 clinics. Registry dashboards handed to HR leadership.
- 1.Modeled outcomes from design-partner deployments. Results vary by data quality, workflow scope, and approval policy. ↩
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The agents Halvorsen Health runs
Each agent is scoped to one workflow, reads only permitted data, logs every action, and routes consequential actions to a named approver.
Finds the errors before the payroll run, not after.
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Fills open shifts with eligible, willing staff in minutes.
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