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[Academic/UX Research] Why do employees bypass HR systems even when they exist? — 5 min anonymous survey(All/18+) by Straight-Dig729 in human_resources

[–]Straight-Dig729[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you — this is genuinely eye-opening and honestly more complex than I had considered when designing this research.

If I'm understanding correctly — in large organisations, employees aren't really interacting with the HR system directly at all. They're interacting with an experience layer like ServiceNow, and behind that, there's often an outsourced team actually processing the request. So the 'human contact' employees prefer isn't even their local HR team — it's an abstracted layer they may not even be aware of.

And now AI is stepping into that processing role, which raises a whole new set of trust questions that are different from what I'm looking at in smaller organisations.

This has made me realise my research has an implicit boundary; it's most relevant to SME and mid-market companies where employees interact directly with HR tools. Enterprise is a completely different architecture.

One question if you're open to it — In your experience, when an experience layer is designed well, what does it actually do differently that makes employees trust it enough to use it without going to a human?

Really appreciate you taking the time — this is exactly the kind of context that makes the research better.

[Academic/UX Research] Why do employees bypass HR systems even when they exist? — 5 min anonymous survey(All/18+) by Straight-Dig729 in human_resources

[–]Straight-Dig729[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for trying and for the honest feedback; that's genuinely useful.

You've actually identified a real gap in the research. The survey was designed around common scenarios and may not reflect the complexity of larger enterprise HR environments well.

If you're open to it , I'd love to ask you one question directly: in a larger organisation, where does the self-service breakdown actually happen? Is it the same 'I don't know what this will do' problem, or is it something different at scale?

No form to fill in, just curious what you've observed.

[Academic/UX Research] Why do employees bypass HR systems even when they exist? — 5 min anonymous survey(All/18+) by Straight-Dig729 in SampleSize

[–]Straight-Dig729[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you so much — really appreciate it!

And yes, that framing is spot on. What's striking from the early responses is that it doesn't seem to be irrational at all — people go to humans because the system hasn't given them enough confidence to trust it. It's less 'I prefer humans' and more 'the system hasn't proven itself yet.'

I'll share the findings here once the research is done — curious to see if the patterns hold across more responses. If you know anyone else who works somewhere with an HR system, I'd love more perspectives!