The challenge
Cisco's People & Communities (P&C) team supports a massive, globally distributed workforce, but accessing everyday HR information meant navigating a patchwork of disconnected systems. Employees had to know which portal to go to, when to call HR, and how to interpret policy documents on their own. For something as routine as checking a time-off balance or retrieving compensation history, the friction was significant.
The goal was to remove that friction entirely, replacing the multi-system scavenger hunt with a single, conversational interface that could answer questions and take action in real time.
The solution
The P&C Assistant is an AI-powered HR companion built in collaboration with Cisco's Hire to Retire IT team and CIRCUIT. Rather than replacing existing systems, it sits on top of them, pulling live data from Workday, ServiceNow, HelpZone, and Cisco's internal directory through a single conversational interface.
The design challenge was making something that felt genuinely helpful rather than another chatbot. That meant clear affordances for what the assistant could and couldn't do, transparent data sourcing, and a trust-first approach to security. Users only ever see their own data, with manager-level access scoped strictly to direct reports.
The assistant is accessible via CIRCUIT, Webex, and browser, meeting employees where they already work.
The assistant successfully centralised access to P&C data across a global workforce, reducing reliance on manual HR requests for routine queries. Built with strict role-based security controls and automatic prompt deletion after two weeks, the design balanced openness and ease of use with Cisco's enterprise privacy requirements.