What we automate · HR
J Labs designs and builds the automation layer on top of the HRIS and the tools your people team already runs. New starters get accounts, equipment, contracts and a first-week plan without a checklist being chased by hand, leavers get the reverse in the right order, and the questions that fill the HR inbox are answered from your own policies. Your people team keeps the conversations; the system keeps the paperwork moving.
Summary
J Labs automates HR operations for operating companies with an existing HRIS. The work sits on top of the systems already in place (BambooHR, HiBob, Personio, Workday, Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, the e-signature tool and the shared drive of templates) and closes the gaps between them: a signed offer triggers accounts, equipment, contracts and a first-week plan; a resignation triggers access removal, handover and final documents in the right order; contracts, letters and certificates are generated from the record instead of from the last one someone edited; and the questions that fill the HR inbox are answered from your own policies, with a person stepping in when the answer is a judgement. Every engagement starts with a 20 or 45-minute discovery call and, where it makes sense, a four-day Spec from €5,000 that produces the written brief and acceptance criteria before any build is priced. Builds are fixed scope, fixed timeline and fixed price, run on weekly 30-minute check-ins with the people team in the room, and ship in an average of eight weeks. Decisions about individual people (hiring, performance, pay, dismissal) stay with a human on every engagement; the repetitive, rules-based administration moves to the system.
What we automate
A signed contract triggers everything that follows: accounts and access requested, equipment ordered, payroll and benefits enrolment started, the manager prompted, the first-week plan issued. The checklist still exists; nobody has to chase it.
A leaver date triggers access removal, equipment return, handover prompts, final-pay instructions and the documents a leaver is entitled to, sequenced so nothing is revoked before it should be and nothing is left open after.
Contracts, amendments, reference letters, certificates and visa support letters drafted from the HRIS record and your approved templates, routed for e-signature and filed back against the employee. No more editing the last letter someone sent.
Leave, expenses, parental policy, working from abroad, probation: the questions that arrive daily answered from your documents, with the source cited and a hand-off to a person when the answer depends on circumstances. Built with an AI usage policy, not instead of one.
Manager changes, title changes, cost-centre moves and leave balances kept consistent across the HRIS, payroll, the directory and the org chart. Headcount and attrition reporting reads from one source, so the number in the board pack matches the one in the system.
Where the brief includes giving HR its own AI tooling (Claude Cowork or similar) we set up the roles, the shared knowledge base, the access boundaries between HR, finance and legal, and the usage policy the rest of the company will copy.
Fit
This is for you if
You run an HRIS and the process still runs on checklists and inboxes. The record is in the system. Everything around it (the onboarding tracker, the letter templates, the "quick question" channel) is manual, and it is where the hours go.
Your people team is small for the headcount it serves. A few people partners across hundreds or thousands of employees, spending most of the week on administration that has nothing to do with the people. Rules-based, repetitive, and the first thing to slip during a hiring push or a restructure.
You can describe the workflow in a paragraph. A defined trigger (an offer signed, a resignation received, a policy question asked), a known owner, an approval path, and a budget holder who can say yes. That is the shape we can scope in four days and build in weeks.
This is not for you if
You want HR outsourced, not automated. We are not a PEO, an employer of record or an HR consultancy. If the need is someone to own people operations, that is a hire or an outsourcing contract, and we will say so on the call.
You want an algorithm to make decisions about individual employees. Performance ratings, promotion, pay and dismissal decisions carry legal exposure and belong with a human. We automate the administration around those decisions and the documentation of them; we do not build the system that makes them.
The policies do not exist yet. Automation multiplies whatever it sits on. If the handbook is out of date and the leave rules differ by whoever answered last, an automated answer will be confidently wrong. The honest first step is a 20 or 45-minute call and a one-page summary, and often a policy rewrite before a build.
Systems
The ones you already run. We don't insist on rip-and-replace: the automation layer goes on top of the systems in place, and if a system is genuinely past saving we say so on the discovery call and show our working.
Engagement options
| Engagement | Price | Timeline | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Spec | From €5,000 | Four days | A written brief you own outright: problem definition, acceptance criteria, architecture sketch and cost estimate. Vendor-neutral: take it to us or to anyone. |
| People workflow build | Fixed price, quoted after discovery | Typically four to eight weeks | Onboarding, offboarding, document generation or policy answers in production on your HRIS, with weekly check-ins, open staging, documentation written as we go and a post-launch support window. |
| People operating system | Multi-phase, to €200,000+ | Multi-month, phased | The employee lifecycle automated end to end across HRIS, payroll, identity and communication tools, with reporting on top, the AI usage policy in place and a review cadence run with your people lead. |
None of these is an off-the-shelf product. There is no J Labs software to install: every system is specified in the brief, built for your stack, and owned by you. Every engagement is fixed scope, fixed timeline and fixed price, with acceptance criteria agreed before work starts. See how we work and the Spec.
Frequently asked
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