Innovation & Tech

Managing people across Europe should not mean multiplying complexity. At SD Worx, we are using AI and automation to make international workforce administration simpler, faster and increasingly effortless, bringing more intelligence into SD Worx People, our international core HR platform. 

We are tackling the administrative work that consumes HR teams’ time. AI-supported onboarding enables employees to provide documents before they start, while automated validation improves data quality and reduces manual work. International expense processing is increasingly automated, and our new cross-border hiring capabilities help SMEs set up employees in different countries using localised payroll configurations and standard hiring profiles. 

We are also reinventing everyday document processes. New e-signature capabilities enable secure digital signing across European standards, while our AI-powered template builder can generate document content and identify the right merge fields automatically. What used to involve repetitive configuration and administration becomes a much simpler digital experience. 

These innovations reflect a bigger ambition for SD Worx: to take complexity out of employing people across Europe. By combining our European HR and payroll expertise with AI, automation and technology, we want to make it dramatically easier for organisations to manage an international workforce, freeing HR teams to spend less time administering work and more time focusing on their people and their business.

What if accessing HR was less about finding the right application, menu or form, and more about simply saying what you want to achieve? That is the ambition for mySDWorx. Already used by almost 2 million active users, mySDWorx is evolving from SD Worx’s digital front door into a more intelligent, personalised experience for employees and HR professionals. 

Instead of expecting people to understand which system or service they need, we want mySDWorx to increasingly understand their context and guide them towards the right information, functionality or expertise. In our home markets, HR professionals can already bring together service tickets, SD Worx contacts and personalised HR and legal content through mySDWorx, connecting digital convenience with access to human expertise. 

Now we are adding conversational intelligence. mySDWorx Assist is being rolled out across Europe, building on initial pilots around company-specific content. Initial use cases make everyday HR interactions such as accessing payslips and managing absences simpler and more intuitive. Over time, the ambition is to move beyond answering questions towards guiding people through what they need to do next. 

And this is where mySDWorx connects with our broader WorkAI vision. The future of HR technology should not be about navigating more software. It should be about technology understanding what you want to accomplish and bringing together the information, action or SD Worx expertise needed to get it done. 

In the past few months SD Worx piloted its brand new 'all-in-one' platform for HR, Pay & Time to Belgian SMEs, giving them real-time visibility of workforce costs by integrating all employee-related data in a single, integrated AI-native solution. 

At the core of the platform is real-time data processing: payroll changes are calculated as they occur, rather than in a monthly batch. Combined with embedded compliance and real-time financial insights, this approach is designed to help customers understand the implications of changes sooner. Simulations allow employers to assess the payroll impact of planned recruitment and employees to explore how changing their working hours could affect their pay. 

The platform combines a shared international foundation with support for local requirements and country-specific rules, including government declarations and multiple financial streams. Open interfaces connect the platform with customers’ existing finance, recruitment and other business systems, while SD Worx specialists are available to help with more complex questions. 

The next phase will see gradual roll-out of the platform to Belgian SMEs. Beyond Belgium, SD Worx also plans to extend the AI-native technology to Germany, Finland, Luxembourg and the United Kingdom. 

WorkAI is our vision for bringing artificial intelligence across HR, Pay & Time. It combines intelligence that works with people with intelligent agents that work for them behind the scenes, helping turn complex data, processes and knowledge into simpler, more intuitive experiences.  

Rather than starting with a generic chatbot, SD Worx has invested first in AI that supports service delivery, connects data and workflows, and applies payroll and compliance knowledge. Specialised AI agents are already supporting payroll professionals at scale by analysing customer cases and preparing answers, while keeping the payroll expert in control. 

Now we are bringing more of that intelligence directly to customers. Imagine asking, in everyday language, “Why did our payroll costs increase?”, “What does this new legislation mean for us?” or “How can we reduce absence?” WorkAI is designed to connect the question to the relevant data, knowledge, software and expertise, moving HR technology beyond navigating screens and reports towards a more conversational experience. 

Ultimately, WorkAI is about combining the possibilities of AI with the expertise and context SD Worx has built across HR and payroll. The ambition is more digital, but not less human: AI takes on more of the complexity and repetitive work, while human expertise remains there when judgement and trust matter. It is a shift from software people work with towards intelligence that works with them, and increasingly works for them.