AI-native HR moves into workplace chats as companies seek frictionless workflows

Darwinbox is bringing its AI-native human resources platform into Slack, allowing employees to handle routine HR tasks without leaving workplace conversations.

The integration with Darwinbox Cortex lets staff use natural language to manage leave requests, ask about payroll and benefits, submit expenses and seek answers to policy questions. Managers can approve time off, expenses and recruitment-related actions directly from Slack channels. Companies can also complete and track onboarding through workplace chats.

“HR software spent four decades asking employees to come to it. Cortex is built on the opposite premise. It goes to them,” said Chaitanya Peddi, Darwinbox’s co-founder. He described Slack as the place where work decisions are made and said embedding the platform there could remove barriers for organisations.

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HR software spent four decades asking employees to come to it. Cortex is built on the opposite premise. It goes to them.

Darwinbox said employee queries, workflow bottlenecks and recurring policy questions could help improve future responses and recommendations. The company presents the move as part of a wider shift in enterprise software, where AI systems increasingly provide information, carry out tasks and automate workflows.

Gregg Rybicki, Slack’s senior director of partner engineering, said the aim was to place AI tools directly in employees’ flow of work. As companies seek greater efficiency from digital transformation spending, HR vendors are increasingly competing on convenience and user experience, with collaboration platforms becoming a key route into corporate systems.

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Slack is where work happens, and AI has fundamentally reshaped how teams get things done. That’s why we want the best AI tools meeting people right there, in their flow of work.