The Product
Built Around the Action Inbox
Every page is a view over shared objects. Every action is an API endpoint, an audit event, and a possible automation trigger. No UI-only buttons. The product feels like an assistant, not a dashboard, and it surfaces the operational debt the rest of the org never sees: probation drift, compensation band breach, contractor classification risk, and the hundred small policy consequences that quietly accrue.
Every Workflow Surfaces As a Structured Card
The Action Inbox is the center of Clarus HR. Every workflow that produces human work emits a card with severity, deadline, recommended action, one-click handlers, and evidence references. Keyboard triage with j/k/a/r/s/c/x. Bulk actions run with dry-run preview before commit.
- Four card types: informational, needs approval, needs action, urgent escalation
- SLA clocks pause and resume on status changes; breaches surface as urgent escalations
- Idempotency-Key on every mutating endpoint; replays return the original result
- Dry-run preview returns predicted before/after diff without committing
Type a Sentence. Watch a Structured Plan Appear.
Ask in plain English; get a typed plan with intended actions, predicted effects, evidence, and required approvals. The dry-run diff renders side-by-side before anything commits. Approve, edit, or reject. Every plan persists with the original utterance, the plan, the result, and the audit events produced.
- Natural-language requests turn into typed Plan objects with steps and evidence
- Side-by-side before/after diff for every step
- Approve once; durable Inngest workers do the rest
- Plans persist for replay and audit
Policies Are Executable Objects, Not Documents
When a policy is created or revised, the system computes the operational consequences and produces a complete rollout plan: audience selection, acknowledgment campaign, manager briefings, FAQ, exceptions workflow, and a verifiable audit trail.
- Jurisdiction scope (federal/state/county/city) and employee-group scope per policy
- Acknowledgment campaigns with comprehension checks and reminder cadence
- Multi-jurisdiction variants for state-specific rules
- Exceptions captured as typed objects, not loose email threads
50+ Jurisdictions Seeded, 250 Requirements Tracked
Federal, all 50 states + DC, and major city overlays seeded out of the box. Add a remote worker and the jurisdiction engine recomputes their training, postings, and tax registrations in seconds. Annual law-change feeds with AI impact analysis ship in the box.
- Rooftop-precision posting kits per location
- EEO-1, ACA, OSHA, and state PFML eligibility (CA, NY, MA, WA, OR, CO, CT, NJ)
- Auto-prepared registration packets for nexus events
- ICS calendar export for compliance deadlines
Hire, Transfer, Leave, Return, Terminate
Templated lifecycles with checklists as typed objects. Each step is a state machine with idempotent transitions, illegal-transition guards, and an audit event on every mutation. Onboarding packets generated; offboarding documents collected; everything stays in sync.
- Typed state machines for every status-bearing object, with idempotent transitions and illegal-transition guards
- Lifecycle templates: clone, edit, version, deprecate
- Auto-generated onboarding packets with Clarus CLM-parsed offer letters
- Cohort onboarding for batch hires
Carrier Feeds, ACA, Retirement, Anomalies
EDI 834 carrier feeds with HMAC-signed payloads. ACA 1094-C and 1095-C generation with measurement-period look-back. 401(k) match, vesting, true-up, and 415/402(g) limit checks. Payroll anomalies and tax registrations surface as inbox items.
- Carrier reconciliation with discrepancy detection
- Dependent eligibility verification with auto-approve thresholds
- QLE (qualifying life event) workflow with one-click approval
- COBRA event tracking and notification
ER Cases, Investigations, Findings
Cases with witnesses, scheduled interviews, locked notes, and draft findings memos. Linked cases for related parties. SLA clocks pause and resume; breaches surface as urgent escalations. OSHA log entries and union grievances tracked as separate case kinds.
- Append-only case events (chain of custody)
- Anonymous reporter workflow
- Communication freezes on active investigations
- Discipline actions, PIPs, accommodation requests
Powered By Clarus CLM
Offer letters, employment agreements, and handbooks flow through the same clause-extraction engine that powers Clarus CLM. Risky terms surface before signature; policy mismatches between handbook versions surface in the inbox; onboarding documents become structured clauses, not opaque PDFs.
- Offer-letter clause extraction with playbook-deviation flags
- Handbook diffing with executable rollout plans
- Employment agreement template library tied to jurisdiction scope
- Document signing via DocuSign / Adobe Sign / Dropbox Sign or internal adapter
For HR Consulting Firms
A second axis of multi-tenancy: client_workspace_id scopes data within a firm. Service lines, SLA clocks per client, client portal, and cross-client policy + template propagation with explicit firm-admin gating. Quarterly executive deck assembly with signed-link sharing.
- 12 service lines (compliance, payroll, ER, benefits, recruiting, etc.)
- Per-client primary owner + backup + escalation chain
- Pause reasons (waiting on client / legal / payroll) with carve-outs
- Client Portal route group with audited access events
Decisions That Stop Drifting Past Their Date
Every active hire with a start date gets a probation window automatically. The length is configurable per tenant; default is 90 days. Seven days before the window closes, a decision-due card lands in the Action Inbox with the full audit trail attached. Pass, extend, or end the engagement: every call is recorded, including the rationale.
- Auto-created per active employee with a hire date
- Decision-due card emitted seven days before the window ends
- Pass / extend / fail with optional notes
- Closing the window also closes the matching open inbox card
Band Breach Without Showing Salary
Salaries outside the configured band for an employee's level and location surface here. The page never displays the salary itself, only the gap percent and the band that was compared against. Acknowledgement is per-anomaly and silences only that one finding; the next scan will not re-flag it unless the salary returns to band and then leaves again.
- Tenant-configurable bands per (level, location)
- Signed gap_pct and explicit above-band / below-band direction
- Acknowledge clears without re-running detection
- Findings deduped on (employee, direction, status='open')
Engagement Signals, Not a Determination
Five engagement signals get scored per contractor / 1099 / unclassified employee: sole-employer, long engagement, fixed schedule, equipment provided, embedded-in-team. Borderline scores (0.7 and above) emit a critical inbox card. The output is a risk surface for HR + legal review, not a determination on the employment relationship.
- Latest evaluation per employee via DISTINCT ON
- Five weighted signals, classification in (employee, contractor, borderline)
- Signal pills surface the matching evidence per employee
- Re-run anytime to refresh; rows accumulate as a history
Action / Policy Contradictions Surfaced
Operational HR Debt is the gap between what the policy says and what actually happened. Overdue acknowledgments, stale exception requests, undocumented exceptions, side agreements that contradict the handbook: each lands here as a structured card with a plain-English summary and a recommended next step. Resolve, dismiss, or accept the risk; every choice is auditable.
- AI-generated 2-3 sentence summary per debt item
- Severity-grouped feed (critical, high, medium, low)
- Resolve / dismiss / accept-risk with mandatory note for accepted-risk
- Inbox cards emitted automatically for high+ severity
See the Whole Surface in 45 Minutes
Book a demo and we will walk through the Action Inbox, run a policy rollout, and add a remote worker so you can watch nexus recompute live.