HR glossary
HR help desk
An HR help desk is a system for receiving, routing and resolving employee questions and requests to HR.
An HR help desk is how employees get help from HR when they can’t find an answer themselves. Every question becomes a ticket or case, gets routed to the right person, and is tracked until it’s resolved.
It replaces the shared inbox where questions get lost and the same answer gets typed out again and again. It also keeps sensitive conversations, like a complaint or a medical leave request, out of public channels.
Track what people ask. The most common questions are the ones your knowledge base should answer next.
What the research says
In SHRM’s 2025 State of the Workplace research, 62% of HR professionals said their department had been working beyond its typical capacity in 2024, up from 57% in 2023. And 57% said it lacked enough staff for its workload1.
A help desk shows where HR’s time goes. That data is what makes the case for a new knowledge base article, a self-service form or another hire.
Shuffl · HR by the numbers
HR teams working beyond capacity, 2024
HR teams working beyond capacity, 2024: 62% of HR professionals said their department worked beyond its typical capacity. Source: SHRM, 2025.
An example
A 400-person manufacturer’s two-person HR team moves from a shared inbox to a help desk. After the first quarter, the reports show 610 requests. Pay and tax questions make up 31%, leave 22%, benefits 18% and letters and verifications 12%, with the rest spread thin. The median time to a first response is 26 hours.
The team writes knowledge base articles for the ten most common pay and leave questions and adds a form for verification letters. The next quarter, requests fall to 470 and the median first response drops to 9 hours.
The team stayed at two people. The time they got back came from answering the most common questions once, in writing.
How to set one up
- Keep categories few, like pay, leave, benefits, letters, personal details and employee relations, and give each an owner.
- Restrict sensitive categories, like complaints and medical leave, to named people.
- Set a response time target and report on it every month.
- Close each ticket with a link to the article that answers it, or a note that one is needed.
- Review the top categories each quarter and decide what to document or automate next.
Common questions
- What is HR case management?
- Case management is the tracking behind the help desk: who owns each request, its status and its history.
- What requests go to an HR help desk?
- Benefits, pay, leave, policy questions, employment letters and changes to personal details.
Sources
Read on . Numbers change as new studies come out, so check the source before you quote it.
- SHRM, 2025 SHRM State of the Workplace research report, 2025. 1,615 HR professionals surveyed Dec. 9 to 12, 2024 through SHRM’s Voice of Work Research Panel; 238 HR executives; 471 US workers outside HR surveyed Dec. 12 to 16, 2024 on NORC’s AmeriSpeak probability-based panel, weighted to the US adult population.