As HR technology continues to evolve, AI-powered automation is transforming payroll, compliance, and employee engagement. From sentiment analysis in workplace communications to adaptive payroll engines that handle complex regional labor laws, intelligent HR platforms are reshaping how organizations manage their workforce.
In this exclusive conversation, Sayeed Anjum, Co-founder & CTO of greytHR, shares how greytAI is reshaping employee experiences, how the platform ensures compliance at scale, and why some human processes – like 1:1s – should never be automated.
Tech Disruptor Media: greytAI analyzes tone and emotion in workplace communications. Could you share some insights into its technical architecture? Are you leveraging open-source LLMs, or have you developed proprietary NLP models? Additionally, how does greytAI address nuances such as sarcasm and cultural context?
Sayeed Anjum: greytAI is our AI-driven recommendation engine, built into the Engage module of greytHR. It helps employees provide thoughtful feedback, improves peer recognition, and assists HR teams in understanding sentiment trends across the workforce.
We are using an established third-party service provider with mature language models to power greytAI. These models are safely integrated into greytHR through secure enterprise APIs and fine-tuned to suit HR-specific communication scenarios.
Special attention has been given to challenges like detecting sarcasm and interpreting cultural nuance. The models are tuned to limit misinterpretation, promote constructive language, and maintain contextual sensitivity across diverse workplace settings.
greytAI operates strictly on an opt-in basis. It does not read or respond to any communication unless explicitly enabled by the user or HR admin. Its role is to support – not monitor – and it functions with full transparency and user consent.
By embedding intelligence into everyday workflows, greytAI enhances employee communication and engagement – while staying aligned with organizational values and privacy expectations.
Tech Disruptor Media: With greytHR managing payroll in over 25 countries, each with its own unique labor laws, what would you say is your core approach or “secret sauce” for ensuring compliance across such diverse regulatory environments?
Sayeed Anjum: Compliance has always been a foundational priority at greytHR – not an afterthought. Our “secret sauce,” if you will, lies in the way we’ve architected the platform from the ground up to adapt to regulatory diversity.
Our payroll engine is built to be fully configurable. Every formula, allowance, deduction, or tax rule can be set up to reflect local labor laws – without custom code. Similarly, our reporting engine allows users to design statutory and MIS reports in any required format, supporting region-specific audit trails and filings. Importantly, this robust compliance framework is deeply integrated with our Core HR and Leave & Attendance modules, as part of our full-suite HRMS—ensuring that critical employee data and time-off information seamlessly feed into accurate and compliant payroll processing.
This flexibility is backed by deep domain knowledge. We’ve spent decades working closely with payroll administrators, finance heads, and HR teams across geographies. This has helped us localize our compliance logic for India, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia – while also building a scalable framework that adapts as regulations evolve.
What sets us apart is how easily our platform molds itself to the compliance context of the customer – not the other way around. This is what allows us to serve organizations of every size, across industries, and across 25+ countries – while ensuring payroll stays accurate, compliant, and audit-ready.
Tech Disruptor Media: Is greytHR considering partnerships with fintech companies to offer “salary-on-demand” services, or do you view this as outside the primary focus of your HRMS platform?
Sayeed Anjum: We’re already enabling salary-on-demand solutions, but in a way that aligns with our core philosophy – platform-first, not product-bloated.
greytHR’s Unite marketplace allows us to offer curated third-party services directly within our HRMS environment. In this context, we’ve partnered with leading fintechs like Fatakpay, KarmaLife, Fibe, and KreditBee to bring earned wage access to employees through our platform.
These services are integrated in a secure, consent-led manner. Employees don’t need to switch platforms or share data externally – they can access salary advances, financial wellness tools, and short-term credit right within the greytHR app.
The beauty of this approach is that it doesn’t distract us from our HRMS focus. We remain an HR-first platform, but our ecosystem makes it easy for organizations to extend financial services, wellness programs, and more – without managing multiple vendors.
This model ensures that HR teams stay lean, data flows remain secure, and employees benefit from enhanced services. That’s how we see the future: one secure window to manage everything work-related.
Tech Disruptor Media: Given that greytAI’s emotion analysis involves potentially sensitive data, could you elaborate on the privacy measures in place? Is there an opt-in process for employees, and how do you address potential concerns around workplace surveillance or “Big Brother” implications?
Sayeed Anjum: At greytHR, we believe in assistance, not surveillance. greytAI has been built as an opt-in experience – it doesn’t read, analyze, or engage with employee communication unless explicitly invited to.
The control remains firmly in the hands of the employee or the HR manager. If someone requests help – say feedback support – greytAI offers suggestions based on contextual prompts. But it never acts on its own, and it certainly doesn’t monitor employee interactions in the background.
We’ve also implemented rigorous data privacy protocols. No messages are stored beyond what’s needed to generate a response. Data is anonymized, tokenized, and processed with compliance to global standards like ISO 27001 and SOC 2.
Concerns about “Big Brother” monitoring are real, and we acknowledge that. That’s why transparency is our default. Employees know what’s being analyzed, how it’s being used, and they can withdraw consent at any time.
We want greytAI to be a tool that supports HR, not one that replaces empathy with automation. That balance – between value and privacy – is core to how we’ve designed this product.
Tech Disruptor Media: In your opinion, what’s one HR process that should never be automated—and why?
Sayeed Anjum: Employee engagement – especially 1:1 conversations between managers and employees – should not be automated. These dialogues offer the most accurate lens into an employee’s perception of their role, manager, and overall experience within the organization. They are essential for building trust and for capturing insights that drive retention and culture improvement.
While AI can help automate workflows around engagement — such as scheduling, reminders, or even summarizing feedback — the actual conversation must remain human. Empathy, active listening, and contextual judgment are key to meaningful 1:1s, and these are areas where human interaction continues to outperform automation.
AI is still in a nascent stage when it comes to handling conversational nuance. Employees can sometimes tailor responses to influence tone or sentiment detection, which may distort insights. A trained HR professional, however, can navigate the conversation, ask follow-up questions, and capture the true pulse of the employee.
In short, engagement is not just about collecting feedback — it’s about understanding people. That level of understanding can’t be fully automated. Technology should enhance these processes, but the conversation itself must remain personal and human-led.
Tech Disruptor Media: greytHR has evolved from payroll automation to a full-suite HRMS platform, offering over 50 tools across the ‘Hire-to-Retire’ lifecycle, and now incorporates AI for an enhanced employee experience. Looking ahead, what do you see as the next major advancement or “big leap” for greytHR
Sayeed Anjum: The big leap for us is bringing in AI-enabled features that help our clients augment their capacity and simplify routine processes. We’re already seeing this with the introduction of greytAI, our embedded recommendation engine that enhances employee communication and engagement through tone-aware suggestions and sentiment insights.
Alongside this, our AI-powered HR chatbot has already been used by lakhs of HR professionals to navigate configurations, resolve queries, and adopt the platform more effectively. These capabilities save time and allow HR teams to focus on strategic priorities instead of operational troubleshooting.
We’re also automating repetitive processes such as resume screening, adding employees to the platform, and screening documents for accuracy – reducing manual effort while increasing speed and consistency.
Building on this foundation, we’re expanding into on-demand AI-based support to help users complete actions faster, and introducing AI-powered analytics that convert complex data into instant, actionable insights.
Our focus is clear – to integrate AI where it delivers real value without adding complexity. By embedding intelligence into key workflows, we’re enabling our customers to scale HR operations efficiently and effectively.
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