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Operations & Insight

HR helpdesk and grievance handling in Pitch N Hire

Pitch N Hire HR helpdesk turns employee questions and grievances into tracked tickets. Employees raise a request from the self-service portal, the category routes it to the right HR owner, an SLA clock starts, and every reply, reassignment and closure is recorded. Confidential grievance cases run on a restricted thread visible only to the handlers you name.

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What hr helpdesk includes

Employees raise tickets from the self-service portal, from email or from a shared HR inbox, and every channel lands in one queue
A two-level category tree routes each ticket to a named owner or to a team queue with round-robin assignment inside it
Response and resolution clocks run on your working calendar and pause while a ticket sits with the employee
Grievance cases open as restricted threads that only the handlers you name can open, search or export
Suggested knowledge base articles appear while the employee is still describing the question
Ageing rules notify a second owner or reassign the ticket before the resolution clock runs out
Every view, edit, reassignment and status change is written to a per-ticket audit log
Reporting groups tickets by category, owner, location and reopen count so recurring themes surface

How does the HR helpdesk work in Pitch N Hire?

An employee opens a request from the employee self-service portal, picks a category such as payroll, leave or document request, describes the issue and attaches a supporting file. Pitch N Hire creates a ticket with a reference number, stamps who raised it, and drops it into the queue the category points at. The owner reads that ticket beside the employee record, so department, manager, location and joining date are already on screen and nobody has to ask who is asking. Replies thread inside the ticket instead of scattering across mailboxes, and the employee follows the same thread from their side. Status moves through open, in progress, waiting on employee and resolved, with a notification at each change. A resolved ticket can be reopened by the person who raised it inside the window you configure, keeping a half-answered question attached to its original history.

  • Reference number, raiser, category, owner, priority and status on every ticket
  • Employee record context loads beside the conversation
  • Reopen window is configurable per category

How are employee queries categorised and routed to the right owner?

You define the category tree, and the tree is what drives routing. A parent such as payroll carries children like salary discrepancy, reimbursement or tax declaration, and each child names the queue that receives it. Routing can narrow further by location, legal entity or employment type, so a query from one office does not land with a team that cannot answer it. Inside a queue, assignment is round-robin among available owners, and an owner can hand a ticket on with a reason that stays in the record. Anything that arrives without a recognisable category falls into a catch-all queue rather than disappearing, and triage moves it. Owners can add private notes that the employee never sees, which is where the working reasoning goes, while the reply that the employee reads stays clean. Categories are versioned, so renaming one does not orphan the tickets already filed under it.

  • Parent and child categories, each pointing at a queue
  • Routing narrows by location, entity or employment type
  • Catch-all queue for anything unrecognised
  • Private internal notes separate from the employee-facing reply

How does Pitch N Hire handle a confidential grievance?

A grievance opens as a restricted case rather than an ordinary ticket. Restricted means the thread is excluded from the general queue, from search results and from bulk exports for everyone except the handlers named on that case, and adding a handler is itself a logged action. You decide who may raise a grievance, who may be named as a handler, whether an intake can be submitted without the raiser identifying themselves, and how long a closed case is retained. Attachments inherit the same restriction as the thread, so a supporting document cannot be reached through the file library. The case record carries its own stage list, separate from the helpdesk statuses, so an investigation reads differently from a password reset. Pitch N Hire supplies these controls; it does not define your process or judge it. What your jurisdiction expects of a grievance procedure differs by country and by state, changes, and belongs with your own legal advisers.

  • Restricted threads hidden from queue, search and bulk export
  • Named handlers only, with handler additions logged
  • Optional intake without the raiser naming themselves
  • Configurable stages and retention window per case type

See hr helpdesk running on your own setup

How do SLA timers and escalation paths work?

Each category carries a response target and a resolution target, and each target can differ by priority. The clocks count against the working calendar you configure, so weekends, holidays and shift patterns do not consume time the team was never available for. When an owner asks the employee for more information, the ticket moves to waiting on employee and the resolution clock pauses until a reply arrives, which stops an owner being measured on somebody else's silence. Before a target is reached, an ageing rule fires: notify the owner, copy the team lead, raise the priority, or reassign to a named backup. Escalation ladders can run more than one step, and each step records what triggered it. Breached tickets stay flagged after closure so a review looks at what happened rather than at a cleared board. Targets are edited per category without touching tickets already in flight.

  • Separate response and resolution targets per category and priority
  • Clocks follow your working calendar and pause on waiting states
  • Multi-step escalation with the trigger recorded at each step
  • Breach flags survive closure for later review

Can a knowledge base cut down repeat HR questions?

The knowledge base holds short answers written by HR and filed against the same categories the helpdesk uses. As an employee types a request, matching articles surface beneath the box, and choosing one closes the request before it ever becomes a ticket. Articles can be targeted, so a policy that applies to one entity or one location is shown only to the people it covers, and drafts stay invisible until published. A resolved ticket can be promoted into an article in one step, which is how the base grows out of work already done rather than out of a documentation project nobody has time for. Readers mark an article helpful or not, and searches that return nothing are collected into a gaps list HR can work through. Longer policy documents stay in HR documents and are linked from the article rather than pasted into it, so one source is maintained.

  • Articles suggested during ticket creation, not after
  • Audience targeting by entity, location or department
  • Promote a resolved ticket into an article
  • Failed-search gaps list for writing the next article

What does the audit trail on an HR ticket record?

The log is append-only. Every state change, reassignment, category edit, priority change, attachment added or removed, and every message sent is written with the actor and the timestamp, and none of those entries can be edited afterwards. On restricted grievance cases the log also records reads, so it is possible to see who opened a case and when, not only who changed it. Export actions are logged as events in their own right, which matters when a case file leaves the system. Retention is set per case type, and the log is retained with the record it describes rather than separately. When an internal review asks what happened on a specific complaint, the answer is a single chronological export rather than a reconstruction from inboxes. Access to read another owner's audit trail is a permission of its own, so the log is not casually browsable across the HR team.

  • Append-only entries with actor and timestamp
  • Read events logged on restricted cases
  • Export treated as a logged event
  • Reading another owner's trail is a separate permission

How do employees track the requests they have raised?

The portal gives each employee a list of their own requests with status, owner and the last update, so the follow-up question that would otherwise arrive as a reminder email is answered on screen. They reply in the thread, add an attachment, and see when the ticket moved to waiting on them, which is usually the reason a request has stalled. Notifications are configurable per employee between immediate and digest, and the same list is reachable on a phone for people who do not sit at a desk. After closure the employee is asked whether the answer resolved the question, and a negative response reopens the thread rather than opening a new one. Managers do not see their reports' tickets by default; visibility is granted deliberately, because a query about pay or a grievance is not automatically the manager's business.

  • My requests list with status, owner and last update
  • Reply, attach and reopen from the same thread
  • Immediate or digest notifications per employee
  • Manager visibility is granted, never assumed

What does helpdesk reporting tell HR about the workforce?

Reporting counts tickets by category, owner, location, entity and month, and shows how response and resolution durations move against your own earlier periods. The point is not a target imported from elsewhere; it is the shape of your own demand. A category that keeps growing usually says something specific: repeated salary discrepancy tickets after a payroll run point at a data flow, a spike in policy questions after an announcement points at how the announcement was worded, and a cluster from one location points at something local. Reopen counts separate answers that closed a ticket from answers that only paused it. Where the same request follows a fixed path every time, it is a candidate for HR workflows rather than for a faster reply, and where the question is genuinely informational, it belongs in the knowledge base. Reports export on a schedule for a monthly HR review.

  • Volume by category, owner, location, entity and month
  • Duration trends compared with your own earlier periods
  • Reopen counts distinguish resolved from paused
  • Recurring request paths flagged as automation candidates

How Pitch N Hire treats different request types

How Pitch N Hire treats different request types
Request type Who can see it Default routing Closure evidence
Payroll or reimbursement queryHR payroll queue plus the raiserPayroll owner for that entityCorrected component or explanation in thread
Leave or attendance correctionHR operations queue plus the raiserLocation HR ownerAdjusted record referenced in the reply
Document or letter requestHR operations queue plus the raiserRound-robin inside the queueIssued document attached to the ticket
Policy questionHR operations queue plus the raiserTriage, then subject ownerReply or linked knowledge base article
GrievanceNamed handlers onlyGrievance handler panelStage outcome recorded on the case
Access or asset requestIT queue plus the raiserIT owner for that locationProvisioning confirmation in thread

Put hr helpdesk to work in your HR stack

FAQ

HR Helpdesk β€” FAQs

What is an HR helpdesk? +
An HR helpdesk is a ticketing system for employee questions and requests. Rather than tracking queries across inboxes and chat threads, each one becomes a ticket with a category, an owner, a status and a timer. HR can see what is outstanding, who holds it, and what employees keep asking about.
How do you define an employee grievance in the system? +
You define it. Pitch N Hire ships a restricted case type intended for grievances, and you decide which categories use it, who may raise one, who may handle it and how long a closed case is kept. The software enforces the confidentiality settings you choose; it does not classify complaints for you.
Does Pitch N Hire make our grievance process legally compliant? +
No. Pitch N Hire provides confidentiality controls, configurable stages, retention settings and an audit trail. What a grievance procedure must contain varies by country and state and changes over time, so the process itself and its legal standing belong with your own advisers, not with the software.
Can an employee raise a grievance without naming themselves? +
If you enable it for that case type. An anonymous intake still creates a case with stages and an audit trail, but the handler cannot see who raised it and cannot reply directly. Where follow-up questions matter, most teams keep identified intake and restrict who can open the thread instead.
How are tickets assigned to the right person? +
The category the employee chooses points at a queue, and routing can narrow further by location, legal entity or employment type. Inside a queue, assignment rotates among available owners. Anything unrecognised lands in a catch-all queue for triage, so no request is left without an owner.
What happens when a ticket is about to miss its target? +
An ageing rule fires before the resolution clock runs out. Depending on how you configure it, the rule notifies the owner, copies a team lead, raises the priority or reassigns to a backup. Ladders can run several steps, and each step records what triggered it.
Can we reduce the number of repeat questions? +
The knowledge base suggests matching articles while the employee is still writing the request, so a common question can be answered before a ticket exists. Any resolved ticket can be promoted into an article, and searches that return nothing are collected so HR knows which article to write next.
Who can see a ticket after it is closed? +
The same people who could see it while it was open. Ordinary tickets stay visible to the raiser and the relevant HR queue; restricted grievance cases stay visible only to their named handlers. Retention is set per case type, and the audit log is kept with the record it describes.
Can we see the helpdesk before committing to it? +
Yes. A walkthrough covers your category tree, routing rules, target settings and grievance restrictions on your own structure rather than on sample data. Book a demo and bring the request types your team handles most often so the configuration discussion is concrete.
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