Starting Up: This startup founder wants to make the HR function as nimble as a gecko

Each week, we get into the weeds with the founders of HR tech startups. Want to tell us about your company? Get in touch here.

Jay Polaki has been an HR professional for about a quarter century, starting her career in HR back when paperwork was completed on paper, before the “dot-com revolution.”

“I’ve seen the whole gamut of how technology has not just changed how we work and our relationship with work, but how it has changed our workplace in general,” Polaki told HR Brew.

But according to the co-founder and CEO of HR Geckos, a copilot for HR processes with an AI-powered HR help desk and dashboard, HR lags behind in the digitization of its practices and processes. HR pros can find themselves bogged down, in the weeds, putting out fires, and reacting to needs of both the organization and its employees. HR Geckos, Polaki said, relies on data and analytics to inform HR teams and help them become “fire preventers” and its help bot helps employees gather the info they need.

Launched in 2023, HR Geckos serves small to medium-sized businesses from 50 employees to 5,000 employees. There’s a freemium plan for employers with fewer than 25 employees, and a pro plan for larger companies. Polaki said their current customer base is “industry agnostic,” but many have distributed workforces, such as logistics and transportation companies, medical practices or clinics, and hospitality companies with multiple locations.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What specific issue in HR does your company intend to solve?

Our platform provides a big dashboard to track all HR help desk tickets. We provide 24/7 support to the workforce with an easy-to-use smart chatbot.

The significant advantage for HR teams is that we help them provide HR services instantly. The big advantage for businesses is that they can comply with ever-changing laws and avoid the costs that come with manual processes and outdated technology.

What product or service does your company offer?

We are the copilot for HR operations. We automate key HR processes, connect all HR systems, and our AI-powered help desk is the only help desk built for HR, by HR. Our platform provides a big dashboard to track all HR help desk tickets. We provide 24/7 support to the workforce with an easy-to-use smart chatbot. Employees can roll over 401(k), access company policies and org charts, and complete onboarding processes at the click of a button, anytime, anywhere, and on any device.

We also provide deep data-driven insights from our analytics and intuitive support from our chatbot for HR teams.

Our AI chatbot is deployed on both sides of our platform (employer and employee). On the employee/user side, it improves process efficiencies and reduces the time to resolve employee requests by over 75%. On the employer/admin side, it helps HR teams navigate legal and compliance issues, build employee handbooks, digitize HR workflows, and curate FAQ libraries.

Deploying automation and a chatbot helps HR pros focus elsewhere in the function?

We don’t want to remove the human from the equation because it cannot be 100% automated, but what we are trying to do is augment the human so the “help desk” is there to augment the human and if the chatbot is unable to help the employee, it can still connect them to an actual human representative to talk to.

Are you integrated with many HCM, HRIS, or ATS platforms?

We have thousands of integrations. Anything that has an open API, we can integrate with that. And we also build custom integrations, which [is] part of our subscription plan.