Rather than solve HR complexity, many companies have chosen to live with it—accepting inefficiency as a cost of doing business. But in a labor market where success is defined by agility and a thirst for AI, that compromise is losing ground.

Because of this, Hitachi Digital chose a different path.

Before rolling out a new AI innovation, a single HR request at conglomerate Hitachi could span several platforms and require deep context. With tens of thousands of employees distributed across five of the org’s distinct companies within the Hitachi Digital structure, even simple requests became complex undertakings.

By deploying an AI HR companion named Skye, built by the universal AI employee platform Ema, the company has restructured how it delivers HR services while improving operational efficiency.

What is an AI in HR solution that works?

Supporting employees in this complex, global environment is a “massive undertaking,” explains Amee Desjourdy, CHRO at Hitachi Digital. The organization’s 20-plus systems of records, different cloud platforms and varying HR policies across business units created what Desjourdy calls “fragmentation,” making it incredibly difficult for human teams to maintain consistency while processing requests quickly. The average resolution time for an HR query was over five days.

Desjourdy says the AI implementation project started in early 2025 with a simple but urgent question: Where are employees consistently running into friction? “Navigating those complex policies, benefits and systems across business units was slowing things down,” she says.

Skye addressed this gap as a tool that can reason over documents and personalize responses based on business unit, country or role. It can also take intelligent actions like filing IT service tickets or processing leave requests, says Desjourdy. This support takes many of these tasks off the HR team’s desk and helps employees get answers quickly.

Hitachi also approached the deployment with intentional cultural considerations. “We are working to rewire the mindset of our employees—from seeing AI as just a tool to treating it as a co-worker,” Desjourdy says. “We introduced Skye with a name, a personality and a role because we didn’t want this to feel like another chatbot.” She calls it a “limitless HR companion designed to make work simpler.”

The company also maintained clear messaging about how AI enhances productivity rather than replaces jobs, backed by strong leadership support and continuous feedback loops. Desjourdy says this approach proved crucial for adoption.

The strategy worked. Employees began turning to Skye first rather than opening tickets or searching through documentation, but only after trust was established through consistent performance and clear communication. “Trust is earned in two ways,” says Surojit Chatterjee, CEO of Ema. “Consistent accuracy and intentional design.”

At Hitachi, Skye functions like a system, integrating with tools like ServiceNow, Jira and Okta while supporting employees across both Microsoft and Google environments. “It understands the employees’ context, including which company they belong to, and takes action across disparate systems—delivering answers inside Teams or Google Chat in seconds,” Desjourdy explains.

Read more: The machine-human workforce is here. How must leadership shift?

Common pitfalls to avoid

Chatterjee suggests that trust can be built when HR teams and business leaders promote AI as an end-to-end solution. He says employers can scale AI when they go beyond simple assistance to intelligent action with agents “that can reason across fragmented policies, integrate with enterprise software and respond contextually to each employee’s needs.”

One of the biggest mistakes HR teams make is treating AI like a tool rather than a system. “Traditional chatbots may work for single-step tasks, but they break down under complexity,” Chatterjee notes.

Hitachi took team sentiment seriously. “Early feedback from employees was overwhelmingly positive,” says Desjourdy. “That was our green light.”

Chatterjee says some leaders over-index on cost savings without measuring metrics that matter. He points out the importance of quantifying employee experience, time reclaimed for strategic work and accuracy of resolutions. He says AI that doesn’t improve trust and performance isn’t sustainable, even if it checks other boxes.

Another common misconception involves assuming off-the-shelf AI solutions will work without customization. “We’ve seen a growing belief that ‘a couple of engineers’ can stitch something together using open platforms,” Chatterjee notes. “But building AI agents that truly work in complex enterprise environments requires dedicated expertise.”

The results

The results speak to the transformative potential of well-implemented AI agents. “Based on early results, Skye can be scaled to automate 30-plus HR use-cases, from hire to retire, across the employee lifecycle,” Desjourdy reports.

Current projections show Skye will save 50%-70% of the time currently spent on HR activities. Beyond time savings, the company anticipates:

• A 30% month-over-month drop in HR ticket volume
• Average query resolution time moving from days to hours
• High accuracy in responses beyond the first month of deployment

“We see Skye becoming a foundational part of our HR ecosystem,” says Desjourdy. She adds that active use case development is in progress for recruiting, onboarding and in the retention space.

The Hitachi HR team is also exploring “AI-human co-piloting,” where Skye helps HR teams proactively surface insights, identify policy conflicts and streamline decision-making. Desjourdy predicts that eventually AI will teach, coach and optimize how HR functions.

She puts it this way: “Our vision is simple: to create a workplace where humans and AI collaborate seamlessly, with each focused on what they do best.”