HR Portal for 1,200-Employee Financial Services Firm

Business challenge

The HR team was fielding over 200 monthly inquiries about policies, benefits, and onboarding procedures — questions with clear written answers scattered across unnavigable network drives. Vacation requests required manual email chains with two approval steps, creating an average 4.2-day resolution cycle. There was no central employee directory, so new hires spent their first days asking colleagues for the right contact. IT was maintaining a SharePoint 2015 farm site that hadn't been updated in three years, and a recent compliance audit flagged inconsistent document versioning as a risk. The organization needed a modern, self-service intranet that reduced HR overhead and gave employees an intuitive single source of truth — without requiring IT to maintain it manually.

Implementation approach

We began with a two-day discovery workshop mapping current pain points to SharePoint features, followed by a four-sprint agile implementation. The architecture centered on a SharePoint Communication Site intranet homepage linked to a dedicated HR hub site. The policy library used a four-column metadata schema (Department, Policy Category, Effective Date, Review Status), enabling filtered views for each HR function. Power Automate handled the vacation request workflow: employees submitted requests via an embedded Power App form, which automatically routed to their line manager and then to HR — with email notifications and automatic calendar entries at each step. The employee directory was built on Microsoft 365 user profile data with Delve integration, surfacing reporting structure, skills, and contact information without manual maintenance. SharePoint search was configured to prioritize policy documents and surface promoted results for the three most-searched queries. The go-live included six department champion sessions and a 'find it in 30 seconds' adoption challenge that drove 73% of employees to log in within the first five days.

Measurable outcomes

• 40% reduction in HR inquiry volume
• Centralized 200+ policies in searchable library
• 2-week implementation from kickoff to launch

Project timeline

2 weeks from kickoff to launch

Key takeaways for similar organizations

Assigning a metadata owner from the HR team — not IT — from the start was the single decision that delivered the most lasting value. HR staff owned the policy taxonomy and kept it current, which meant search results remained accurate six months after launch without IT involvement. The automated vacation request workflow cut the average approval cycle from 4.2 days to under 24 hours, and the searchable policy library eliminated the most common category of HR inquiry within 90 days. For organizations of similar size in regulated industries, we recommend separating the technical configuration sprint from the adoption sprint: a polished intranet with no adoption plan will not deliver the HR workload reduction that justifies the project. Running a short gamified adoption event consistently outperforms passive launch email campaigns — plan the adoption campaign before the technical build begins, not after it ends.

The HR director reported that new hires now find policy answers in under two minutes instead of sending multiple emails. Department champions continue to run monthly 'find it in 30 seconds' challenges, which keeps adoption metrics above 70% six months post-launch. If you are considering a similar project, budget one day of champion training per department and ensure HR owns the policy review calendar — not IT.

Technical stack