What is new in Rafiq HR: employee engagement, AI agents for managers, and Rafiq on top of your current HR system

Rafiq HR started as a complete HR, payroll and learning system with Rafiq, an AI colleague that does the work once you approve it. This month it grew in three directions that HR teams in Saudi Arabia and the UAE asked for: listening to employees, taking routine work off managers, and fitting next to the HR system a company already runs.

Employee engagement, on the same employee record

Engagement used to live in a separate survey tool that knew nothing about your org chart. In Rafiq HR it sits on the same record as performance, learning and pay:

• Pulse and engagement surveys. HR launches a survey, Rafiq reminds the people who have not answered, and results come back with sentiment and an action plan to approve. Employees see their open surveys on their own dashboard.
• Recognition tied to your values. Anyone can recognise a colleague against the company’s values, and Rafiq can draft the message for them.
• Wellbeing. Wellbeing check-ins and access to an employee assistance programme, so support is one request away.
• Company announcements. News reaches every employee, including those who only use WhatsApp or a shared kiosk.

Talent teams also get salary benchmarking, pay-equity checks and retention intelligence that flags people at risk of leaving, all calculated from the data already in the system.

Agents that prepare the work, for people to approve

Rafiq already answered questions and prepared letters, leave and payroll. It now runs focused agents for the moments that eat a manager’s week:

• Shift cover: when someone calls in sick, Rafiq proposes who can cover, within the rules, for the manager to approve.
• One-to-one assistant: notes, follow-ups and goals from each 1:1, kept with the employee.
• Review drafts with sources: performance review drafts that cite the goals, feedback and records they used.
• Ramp-up plans: a first-weeks plan for every new joiner.
• Payroll checks: an anomaly detective that flags unusual changes before a run, and staged bulk changes that are previewed before they apply.

Companies can also set up their own workspace agents from chat. Every workspace has a kill switch and a monthly spend ceiling, and any stopped run is recorded in the audit trail. As before, nothing changes until a person approves it, and pay, contracts and disciplinary actions need a second approver.

Keep your HR system, add Rafiq HR on top

Many organisations are not ready to replace their HR system, but they are missing engagement, talent or learning tools in Arabic. Rafiq HR now runs in an add-on mode: your current HR system stays the record, employee data syncs through a connector, and you switch on only the Rafiq HR modules you need.

On the Enterprise plan, connectors for SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central and Oracle Fusion HCM are delivered in the implementation, and Rafiq works as an Arabic and English conversational layer over the connected system. An integrations hub shows every connection, its status and its settings in one place.

Rafiq wherever people work

Rafiq is reachable on the web, the mobile apps, WhatsApp, a shared kiosk, a phone line and by voice. Through MCP, people can also reach Rafiq HR from Claude or ChatGPT, with their own permissions. Rafiq now names records the way people do, by code, name or employee number, rather than by internal IDs.

Recruiting and learning

Recruiting gained candidate messages, interview scheduling that candidates book themselves, CV reading and screening, pre-boarding, a talent pool, agencies and job boards, plus high-volume hiring over WhatsApp and LinkedIn Recruiter System Connect. On the learning side, an AI course builder and manager role-play coaching joined Rafiq HR Learn, which also plays SCORM and xAPI courses built in Innovito Studio or licensed from Innovito Ready.

How to try it

Every module can be tried free for 30 days with a company email address, no card, and a sample company preloaded, for up to 100 employees. Plans are priced per employee per month and published on rafiqhr.com. To scope an enterprise rollout, a government deployment or an add-on on top of your current HR system, talk to Innovito, or read more on the Rafiq HR page.