AI Features Overview

Sparko is built with artificial intelligence at its core, providing intelligent automation and insights across all HR functions.

AI Philosophy

Unlike traditional HR software where AI is an add-on, Sparko was designed from the ground up to leverage AI. The assistant adapts its tone to your question, as one of these advisors:

HR Business Partner - Policy expert and employee advocate
Career Advisor - Growth-focused development guide
Compensation & Benefits Advisor - Total rewards expert
Recruiting Assistant - Hiring support for recruiters and hiring managers
Performance Manager - Goals, reviews and feedback support

AI Capabilities by Module

People & Organization

Feature	Description
Career Path Recommendations	Personalized career progression suggestions
Skill Gap Analysis	Identify skills needed for target roles
Employment Contract Clauses	Picks each clause of a new hire's employment contract from the options your template approves, with a reason for each. A section where only one option fits the terms is set without AI. Salary, dates and other numbers come from the contract's terms, never from AI
Contract Template Generation	Drafts an employment contract template for any country: the clauses, a note on why each clause is there, and a statutory checklist that runs on every contract. Numbers become merge fields; any figure left in the text is flagged for a person to resolve before the template can be published. Review the generated checks with your counsel
Contract Adaptation	Uses an approved agreement to propose additional clause options for the actual client country, work country and engagement. Shows wording and generated-checklist changes before approval. A person with contract and template permissions approves publication and use on the editable draft; checks run again and the contract is never sent automatically

Recruiting

Feature	Description
Job Description Generator	Create compelling job postings from requirements
Resume Parsing	Extract structured data from resumes
Candidate Screening	Automatically prioritize candidates
Interview Synthesis	Summarize interview feedback
Offer Benefits Blocks	Drafts the per-country benefits block of the offer letter template for a country that has none, in the background or on request. The block is marked AI-generated and stays editable; no candidate or salary data goes into it

Performance

Feature	Description
OKR Suggestions	Generate relevant objectives and key results
Review Generation	Draft performance reviews from data
Feedback Quality Scoring	Ensure feedback is constructive
1-on-1 Agenda Generator	Create meeting agendas based on context

Compensation

Feature	Description
Salary Recommendations	The pay range from your salary band for the role and level, plus the market benchmarks stored on that band, explained in plain language
Pay Equity Analysis	Identify compensation disparities
Merit Increase Recommendations	A suggested merit percent and rationale per person on the worksheet, staged for the manager to apply or ignore
Compliance Watch	Reads changes on the official pages your payroll rules cite and proposes the new value with its quoted sentence, applied only when HR confirms
Receipt Reading	Reads a photo or PDF of a receipt and fills in the expense claim: merchant, date, currency, total, tax and a suggested category. Sparko reads it itself first and asks AI only for what it could not read. You check every value before anything is filed
Expense Claim From Chat	Describe an expense or attach a receipt in the Sparko AI chat and it proposes the claim, with its policy flags and the approver, for you to confirm
Act on Flags and Pay Anomalies	On Business, Act on a flight-risk flag or a pay anomaly proposes a pay change you type into the approval chain, or a 1:1 with the manager, one action per flag. Calls no AI model, so it works with AI turned off

Career

Feature	Description
Development Plan Generator	Phased growth plans built from skill gaps
Mentor Matching	Suggests mentors by skill and focus area
Skill Development Priorities	Prioritize what to learn next

Learning

Feature	Description
Course authoring	Drafts an outline you edit first, then the lessons and a quiz per module with a reason for each answer
Structure with AI	Splits a pasted document or file into lessons and adds a quiz per module, keeping your wording
Regenerate and Shorten	Rewrites one lesson, or makes it shorter
Learning with Sparko AI	Finds a published course for one person, adapts a copy, or outlines a new one; you review it all before anything is created

Course authoring and import

Draft with AI starts from a title and audience. Sparko proposes an outline and writes nothing until you confirm it. Structure with AI keeps your own wording, splits it into lessons and adds a quiz for each module. Imported text is treated as content to organise and never as instructions to follow. A course already in the Sparko course format imports with no AI.

Draft with AI costs about 7, 13 or 26 actions for a Short, Standard or Long course. Structure with AI costs two actions for each part of the document. Regenerate and Shorten cost one action each. See Learning.

Learning with Sparko AI sends Sparko only the person's first name and job title, what you typed, and the titles, audiences, skills and lesson text of your published courses. Nothing else about the person is used.

Time & Leave

Feature	Description
Conflict Detection	Identify scheduling conflicts
Coverage Analysis	Ensure team coverage during absences

Books

Feature	Description
Posting Suggestions	Suggests an account for a bank line nothing else recognised, with a reason and up to three alternatives. AI picks the account from your chart; Books works out every amount, the bank line and the tax split
Bill and Receipt Reading	Reads an uploaded bill or receipt, asking AI only for fields Books could not read itself, and puts the suggested entry in the review queue with where each field came from
Statement Reading	Reads CSV files in a layout Books does not know yet, and PDF statements whose lines Books could not prove from their balances itself

A suggestion from AI alone is never shown above 90% confidence, and Books never posts it on its own. Books only posts on its own when a suggestion is backed by a saved rule, your own history, an exact match, a transfer between your accounts or a payroll payment, and it meets the ledger's confidence threshold. Books counts AI suggestions per entity each month: 200 on Core, fair use on Growth, unlimited on Business and Custom. See the Books guide.

AI Assistant

The AI Assistant is your always-available helper accessible from any screen.

🤖 Sparko AI Assistant Your HR Business Partner 🤖

Hi Sarah! How can I help you today? I can assist with:

Time off requests
Career development
Policy questions
And much more!

<!-- User Message -->
<div style="display: flex; gap: 10px; margin-bottom: 15px; justify-content: flex-end;">
  <div style="background: #4f46e5; color: white; padding: 12px 15px; border-radius: 12px 12px 0 12px; max-width: 280px;">
    <p style="margin: 0; font-size: 14px;">How much PTO do I have left?</p>
  </div>
</div>

<!-- AI Response -->
<div style="display: flex; gap: 10px;">
  <div style="width: 32px; height: 32px; background: #4f46e5; border-radius: 50%; display: flex; align-items: center; justify-content: center; flex-shrink: 0;">
    <span style="font-size: 14px;">🤖</span>
  </div>
  <div style="background: white; padding: 12px 15px; border-radius: 0 12px 12px 12px; box-shadow: 0 1px 3px rgba(0,0,0,0.1); max-width: 280px;">
    <p style="margin: 0; font-size: 14px; color: #374151;">You have <strong>12 days</strong> of PTO remaining this year.</p>
    <div style="margin-top: 10px; padding: 10px; background: #f0fdf4; border-radius: 6px; font-size: 12px; color: #166534;">
      📊 Used: 8 days<br>
      📅 Pending: 0 days<br>
      ✨ Available: 12 days
    </div>
    <button style="margin-top: 10px; background: #4f46e5; color: white; border: none; padding: 8px 12px; border-radius: 6px; font-size: 12px; cursor: pointer; width: 100%;">Request Time Off</button>
  </div>
</div>

➤

What You Can Ask

Time & Leave:

"How much PTO do I have?"
"Request time off for next Friday"
"Who's out of office this week?"

Career:

"What skills should I develop?"
"What career paths are available to me?"
"Help me create a development plan"

Performance:

"Help me write an OKR"
"Prepare me for my 1-on-1"
"Show my performance history"

HR Policies:

"What's our remote work policy?"
"How do I request time off?"
"When is the next company holiday?"

People:

"Who is my skip-level manager?"
"How many people are in Engineering?"
"Find me Sarah from Product"

Agentic AI: Actions With Your Approval

On every plan, Sparko's AI is agentic: it doesn't just recommend actions, it executes them for you (with your approval). What changes between plans is how those actions are counted. On Core each one costs an assistant action from your monthly assistant pool, separate from your AI actions; on Growth they draw on the same kind of assistant allowance; on Business and Custom nothing is metered.

A trial includes the Business feature set, with 250 AI actions and 75 assistant actions shared by the workspace for the whole trial. The trial allowance does not reset monthly or scale with headcount, and trial candidate screening stays overnight. See Creating your workspace.

How Agentic AI Works

Example: Creating a Career Development Plan

1 You ask: "Help me become a Senior Engineer"

<!-- Step 2 -->
<div style="display: flex; gap: 15px; align-items: flex-start;">
  <div style="width: 30px; height: 30px; background: #10b981; border-radius: 50%; display: flex; align-items: center; justify-content: center; color: white; font-weight: bold; flex-shrink: 0;">2</div>
  <div style="flex: 1; background: white; padding: 15px; border-radius: 8px; border: 1px solid #e5e7eb;">
    <div style="font-weight: 500; color: #374151;">AI analyzes your profile:</div>
    <ul style="font-size: 14px; color: #6b7280; margin: 5px 0 0 0; padding-left: 20px;">
      <li>Reviews your current skills</li>
      <li>Identifies skill gaps</li>
      <li>Maps your skill gaps</li>
      <li>Searches for mentors</li>
    </ul>
  </div>
</div>

<!-- Step 3 -->
<div style="display: flex; gap: 15px; align-items: flex-start;">
  <div style="width: 30px; height: 30px; background: #f59e0b; border-radius: 50%; display: flex; align-items: center; justify-content: center; color: white; font-weight: bold; flex-shrink: 0;">3</div>
  <div style="flex: 1; background: white; padding: 15px; border-radius: 8px; border: 1px solid #e5e7eb;">
    <div style="font-weight: 500; color: #374151;">AI proposes actions:</div>
    <div style="margin-top: 10px; padding: 10px; background: #fffbeb; border-radius: 6px; border: 1px solid #fcd34d;">
      <div style="font-size: 13px; color: #92400e;">
        ☐ Create career goal: "Reach Senior Engineer"<br>
        ☐ Request feedback from your team<br>
        ☐ Connect with mentor: James Wilson<br>
        ☐ Add 6 development milestones
      </div>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

<!-- Step 4 -->
<div style="display: flex; gap: 15px; align-items: flex-start;">
  <div style="width: 30px; height: 30px; background: #6366f1; border-radius: 50%; display: flex; align-items: center; justify-content: center; color: white; font-weight: bold; flex-shrink: 0;">4</div>
  <div style="flex: 1; background: white; padding: 15px; border-radius: 8px; border: 1px solid #e5e7eb;">
    <div style="font-weight: 500; color: #374151;">You approve, AI executes:</div>
    <div style="margin-top: 10px; padding: 10px; background: #f0fdf4; border-radius: 6px; border: 1px solid #86efac;">
      <div style="font-size: 13px; color: #166534;">
        ✓ Career goal created<br>
        ✓ Feedback requests sent<br>
        ✓ Mentor request sent<br>
        ✓ Development plan ready!
      </div>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

Agentic AI Features

Every plan can run these. You still need the same permission you would need to do the thing yourself.

Feature	Available on
Career goal creation	Every plan
Development plan generation	Every plan
Mentorship match requests	Every plan
OKR creation (can ground goals in your strategic roadmap)	Every plan
Strategic roadmap lookup	Every plan
Time-off requests	Every plan
Performance review drafting & approval	Every plan
Job posting creation & routing	Every plan
Market pay lookup, hiring plan and backfill lookup	Business and Custom

AI Trust & Safety

Human-in-the-Loop

All significant AI actions require your approval:

You review proposed actions before execution
You can modify or reject any action
Audit trail of all AI-assisted actions

Data Privacy

AI only accesses data you're authorized to see
Conversations are encrypted
No personal data used to train external models
GDPR compliant

Transparency

AI explains its reasoning
You can see what data informed recommendations
Clear labeling of AI-generated content

Getting Started with AI

Enable AI Assistant

The AI Assistant is enabled by default. Access it:

Press Cmd/Ctrl + K (or /) from any page and type your question
Open My Hub > Sparko AI for the full chat page
Ask questions naturally

Tips for Better Results

Be specific: "Help me create an OKR for improving code quality" vs "Help with OKRs"
Provide context: "I'm preparing for my review next week..."
Ask follow-ups: "Tell me more about the first recommendation"
Try natural language: Talk like you would to a helpful colleague

AI Limitations

The AI assistant:

Cannot access external websites or systems
Cannot make changes without your approval
May occasionally make mistakes - always verify important information
Works best with clear, specific questions

AI Usage Visibility

Admins on a plan with an AI allowance see it in Company Settings, in the AI section: actions used, actions left, and the reset date. Everyone sees the same pooled number on the chip at the bottom of the sidebar.

Sparko reports usage in AI actions, never in tokens or dollars. See the AI Governance & Allowance guide for what counts as an action and what does not.