By function: HR and people
HR and people operations automation
New starters have access on day one, leave is a message not a form, and the policy question is answered before it reaches HR.
- First workflow live
- Onboarding on a signature, usually inside the first sprint
- Usually owned by
- The one person who does HR
- Built on
- Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, Slack, Airtable
- Judged on
- Day-one readiness and Leave balance accuracy
In short
People operations automation turns a signed offer into accounts, equipment requests, a first-week plan and a welcome message, keeps leave and attendance in one record, files documents by person and type, and answers routine policy questions from your own handbook. SBD builds it on the tools you have, with a person reviewing anything sensitive.
Who this is for
The people who usually own HR and people.
- The one person who does HR
- Office and operations managers
- Founders onboarding their first ten hires
- Finance people who run payroll inputs
Is this you?
If three of these sound like your week, this page is about your team.
- New starters wait for a laptop
- Leave is approved by replying to a message
- An audit means searching inboxes
- HR answers the same ten questions
- A leaver still has a login
What it costs today
Where HR and people loses the hours.
Day one, no laptop, no login
Onboarding is a checklist in someone's head. Every new starter spends the first week waiting for access.
Leave is a thread
Requests arrive by chat, get approved by reply, and the balance is a spreadsheet nobody trusts.
Documents are everywhere
Offer letters in email, IDs in a folder, certificates on a phone. An audit means a week of searching.
HR answers the same ten questions
Policy, payslip dates, how to claim an expense. Each a message to one person who is also doing everything else.
For HR and people teams
Day one, everything ready.
Bring your onboarding checklist, wherever it lives. We will show you what runs on the signature and what still needs a person.
Show us your onboarding
By company size
HR and people at 10 people, and at 1,000.
- 1 to 10
Onboarding is a message from the founder and a shared login.
- 11 to 50
A checklist in someone's head, leave in a chat thread, documents in email.
- 51 to 200
An HR person answering the same questions, a leave sheet nobody trusts, and audits that take a week.
- 201 to 1,000
An HR system that holds the record but not the process, so joiners still wait for access and leavers keep it.
What we build
What we build for HR and people teams.
- 01
Onboarding that runs on a signature
A signed offer creates accounts, raises equipment and access requests, schedules the first-week meetings and sends the welcome pack, with a checklist the manager can see.
- 02
Leave and attendance in one record
Requests from chat or a form, approvals routed to the manager, balances updated, calendar blocked, payroll informed.
- 03
Documents filed by person and type
Every document captured, named, filed and linked to the person, with expiry reminders for the ones that lapse.
- 04
A handbook that answers
An assistant that answers routine questions from your own policies, cites the policy, and hands anything personal or sensitive to a person.
The workflows
The HR and people workflows, and what sets each one off.
- 01 Onboarding on a signature
When an offer is signed
ThenAccounts, equipment and access requested, first week scheduled, welcome sent
- 02 Leave and attendance
When a request arrives by chat or form
ThenRouted to the manager, balance updated, calendar blocked, payroll told
- 03 Document filing
When a document arrives
ThenNamed, filed by person and type, expiry reminder set
- 04 Handbook assistant
When a staff question is asked
ThenAnswered from policy with a citation, or handed to HR
- 05 Offboarding
When a leaving date is set
ThenAccess revoked on the day, equipment return tracked, final documents sent
The numbers we move
How a HR and people build is judged.
Every build has a number written into the blueprint. These are the ones HR and people builds are measured by, and how we measure them.
| Metric | Before | After | How it is measured |
|---|---|---|---|
| Day-one readiness | Access in week one, maybe | Accounts and equipment ready on day one | Share of starters with everything on day one |
| Leave balance accuracy | Disputed | Trusted | Discrepancies found at payroll, per month |
| Document completeness | Unknown | Every file present, expiries tracked | Share of records with all required documents |
| Routine questions to HR | Daily | Mostly answered by the handbook | Questions reaching a person, per week |
Built on
The tools you already run, where we can.
Every tool we connect has its own page in the integrations directory.
Proof
Proof from builds like this.
How it starts
An audit of the HR and people work your team still does by hand.
One to two weeks. We map the workflows, put an hours-a-week figure on each, and give you a costed blueprint in order of payback. The audit is credited in full to the build.
- Week 1 to 2Audit. We sit with the people who do the work and map it.
- Week 3Blueprint. Fixed scope, fixed price, the first build chosen by payback.
- Week 4 onBuild in two-week sprints, working software every second Friday.
- After go-liveSixty days of hypercare, then a care plan or run it yourself.
What this does not do
So the scope is clear before the call.
- Payroll calculation. We feed payroll the inputs; the payroll system does the sums.
- Employment law advice.
Terms, defined
HR and people terms, in plain English.
- Onboarding
- Everything between a signed offer and a productive first week, done in order, automatically.
- Offboarding
- Removing access and recovering equipment on the day someone leaves, with a record of what was done.
- Handbook assistant
- An assistant that answers policy questions from your own documents and cites them.
Questions
What people ask about HR and people automation.
Is employee data safe in this?
It stays in your accounts, access is by role, and anything sensitive such as pay or health is handled by a person. Logs record who saw what.
Do we need an HR system first?
No. Many clients run people operations on a database and a chat tool. If you have an HR system, we build around it.
Will the assistant answer pay questions?
It answers policy from the handbook and cites it. Anything about an individual goes to HR with the context attached.
Reading
- Systems
How much should an AI agent be allowed to do?
An agent with an unscoped token dropped a production database and its backups in nine seconds. The permission model we use for every agent: read widely, write narrowly, spend with a cap, and escalate when unsure.
- Strategy
We tried AI and nothing stuck
The sentence we hear on most first calls. It is almost never about the AI. The four reasons tools get abandoned in small companies, how to tell which one you have, and the one change that makes the next attempt stick.
Related
- Function
Back office
The admin layer that quietly consumes your team’s week, handled by systems instead.
- Function
IT
Joiners get access, leavers lose it, requests route themselves, and the automations the business runs on are documented and watched.
- Function
Operations
The order moves through the business without anyone re-typing it, and everyone who needs to know, knows.
By function: Back office, Finance and accounting, Compliance and risk, Sales and RevOps, Customer support, Operations, Marketing, IT, Leadership
HR and people
Get the HR and people hours back.
Bring the one HR and people workflow your team still runs by hand. You leave the call with a yes or no on fit and the first thing we would build.
Book the call