From transactional to strategic HR: Here's how Manipal Hospitals made the shift with Leena AI
Nurses, doctors and field staff emailed and called HR for every answer, and new hires were leaving.
MiPAL now resolves queries in under a second, and new-hire turnover is down 5% a year.
Manipal Hospitals is India's second-largest healthcare provider, with 28 hospitals and more than 11,000 employees. Its nurses, doctors and on-field staff need HR support around the clock, and they were getting it by email and phone.
The volume of mundane queries was huge, the process for reaching corporate HR was long and manual, and there was no central channel. HR had become more transactional than strategic.
- Some employee groups had no official ID, so MiPAL identifies them by mobile number — the key to 100% adoption.
- Cases are triaged automatically to the right expert, with live status updates for employees.
- Average case resolution fell from 2 days to under 24 hours, without adding HR agents.
- Regular pulse surveys for new hires cut new-hire attrition by up to 5% a year.
Where HR time was going
Two problems ran side by side. HR support agents spent their days answering the same questions over email and phone, and resolution dragged because there was no single channel.
Manipal's expertise in medical care was never in question. The bottleneck was the lengthy, manual procedure for reaching corporate HR, which delayed resolution many times over.
Turnover among new hires was also rising. With a workforce this large, HR could not talk to everyone to find out what was going wrong.
Why mobile numbers mattered
Reaching everyone meant reaching people who did not have an official ID. A tool that required corporate credentials would have left whole groups out.
The platform also had to integrate with SuccessFactors and Ascent Payroll, so answers about pay, tax and leave came from the real systems.
Some employee spans do not have official IDs. However, the product flexibility allowed us to use mobile numbers for identification and onboarding employees. This also helped us achieve 100% adoption of the virtual assistant platform.
Jagdish S.Associate Director, Manipal Health EnterprisesWhat Manipal Hospitals built
MiPAL, the AI-powered virtual assistant, became every employee's personal HR assistant on mobile or desktop.
Employees can check the status of a ticket at any time by asking MiPAL for the latest update.
For engagement, the dynamic dashboard gave HR leaders visibility into what was driving and what was eroding engagement, so the organisation could sustain what it did well while closing the gaps.
Announcements moved to MiPAL too. Interactive notices need minimal information and effort, and work for team gatherings, events, holidays or personalised messages. HR sees real-time analytics on delivery and acknowledgement.
Knowledge was the other piece. For an organisation this size, an efficient knowledge base is a powerful tool: Leena AI's knowledge management brought scattered articles into one place, and busy employees get personalised, actionable answers in seconds. MiPAL reads almost 4,000 knowledge base articles a month.
MiPAL's four jobs
- AnswersInstant self-serviceHoliday calendars, tax, payslips, leave and reimbursement history, from about 4,000 knowledge articles a month.
- TriageCases to the right expertTickets routed to subject-matter experts, with status available on request.
- EngagementPulse for new hiresRegular pulse and engagement surveys, with a live dashboard of what drives engagement.
- AnnouncementsInteractive noticesGIFs and images instead of mass email, with delivery and acknowledgement analytics.
The knowledge dashboard shows HR the most requested articles and the questions with no good answer, so content gaps get filled in one place.
The triage capability not only expedited resolution for employees but also freed up HRs to focus on higher level work.
Jagdish S.Associate Director, Manipal Health EnterprisesWhat changed
Over nine months, HR offloaded routine issues and moved into performance, engagement and retention work. Manipal kept scaling and kept satisfaction high without adding HR support agents.
This shift let HR save 60,000+ hours in nine months and put that effort into holistic employee experience. Regular pulse surveys for new hires, analysed in real time, cut new-hire attrition by up to 5% a year and 0.4% a month.
| Measure | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Average case resolution | 2 days | Under 24 hours |
| New-hire turnover | Rising for 2–3 months | Down up to 5% a year |
| Average query resolution on the bot | — | 0.3 seconds |
| Queries resolved automatically | — | 1,66,000+ |
| Hours saved for employees and HR | — | 60,000+ in 9 months |
| New-hire attrition, per month | — | Down 0.4% |
| Messages sent to date | — | 5,60,000+ |
| Average monthly user interactions | — | 4,500+ |
Leena AI has become a one-stop solution for managing all employee queries related to HR policies, payroll, taxes, leave management, and more. Our HR team has been able to strike a balance between transactional and strategic HR practices. Thanks to Leena AI for coming up with a tailor-made solution best suited to our needs.
Partha DasChief People Officer, Manipal Health EnterprisesStrategic HR
The value was never just speed. Taking routine work off HR's plate is what let the team act on what new hires were telling them — and that is what moved attrition.
For employees, engagement and satisfaction rose sharply: they fetch important information in real time and can communicate their pain points effectively. Across the company, that means faster workflows, higher productivity and better satisfaction.
Manipal is now evaluating Leena AI's employee relationship management platform to manage those relationships across the whole enterprise.
About Manipal Hospitals
Manipal Health Enterprises, known as Manipal Hospitals, is a chain of multi-specialty hospitals and India's second-largest healthcare provider, with 28 hospitals. Its roots trace back to 1953, when Kasturba Medical College was established in Manipal. It employs more than 11,000 people.
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