HR documentation errors are expensive. A hiring decision that wasn't clearly documented, a performance review where the employee disputes what was said, a termination where notes don't support the reason given — these are the cases that turn into complaints, and complaints turn into costs.
Granola doesn't replace HR judgment. It captures HR conversations accurately, consistently, and completely — which is the foundation of defensible decisions.
Hiring Interviews
Interview documentation is where most organizations are weakest. Interviewers take notes in their own style, with their own level of thoroughness, capturing different things about the same candidate. When the hiring committee convenes, decisions are made on inconsistent information.
Granola standardizes interview documentation. Every conversation gets captured completely. The interviewer can focus on asking follow-up questions and reading the candidate instead of racing to capture responses before the next question.
Interview benefits:
- Consistent documentation across all candidates for the same role
- Complete responses captured — not just what the interviewer had time to write
- Searchable transcripts for comparison across candidate pools
- Clear record of what was discussed and evaluated for each candidate
- Reduced unconscious bias in notes — you capture what was said, not your interpretation filtered through memory
Legal protection: Documented, consistent evaluation criteria applied across candidates reduces exposure to discrimination claims. "We evaluated all candidates on X, Y, and Z criteria" is defensible. "We liked the candidate's energy" is not.
Performance Reviews
Performance reviews are consequential. They affect compensation, promotions, and in some cases termination. They also tend to be conversations where employees say one thing and managers hear another.
Granola captures the complete exchange. After the review, both parties have access to what was actually discussed — commitments made, concerns raised, goals set. When the employee comes back six months later saying "you never mentioned that concern," the record exists.
Performance review applications:
- Accurate documentation of feedback given and received
- Goal commitments with specificity — not "improve communication" but what was actually agreed to
- Record of employee responses and acknowledgments
- Consistency tracking — are managers applying the same standards across similar-level employees?
Exclude Sensitive Health Conversations
Do not use Granola to capture mental-health disclosures, medical-accommodation requests, health-related leave discussions, or other sensitive employee health information. Employment records are not automatically HIPAA PHI, but that does not establish suitability for cloud AI processing. Granola is not HIPAA compliant and cannot sign a BAA; its security FAQs exclude PHI processing.
Keep those conversations and their records in an organization-approved HR workflow. Consent alone does not resolve the product's limitations or other confidentiality obligations. Any Granola evaluation must be explicitly approved, non-clinical, and contain no PHI or sensitive health information. Stop capture if that boundary cannot hold, including during performance, onboarding, or investigation meetings discussed elsewhere in this guide.
Onboarding and Training Sessions
New employee onboarding involves high information density under low-retention conditions. New hires are overwhelmed. Trainers know the material so well they've lost sight of what's genuinely confusing.
Granola captures onboarding sessions and produces summaries that new employees can reference. Instead of "I was in a three-hour orientation but I don't remember the PTO policy," the new hire has a structured summary of everything covered.
HR Investigation Documentation
Workplace investigations require thorough documentation of every conversation. Who said what, when, in what context — these details matter. Reconstructing them from memory is unreliable, and unreliable documentation undermines the investigation.
Granola provides complete records without requiring the investigator to choose between asking follow-up questions and capturing what was just said.
Compliance and Record-Keeping
HR departments operate under complex compliance requirements: EEOC documentation, FMLA records, ADA accommodation tracking, wage and hour compliance. Many of these require documented conversations and decisions.
Granola integrates with standard meeting platforms (Zoom, Google Meet, Teams) and exports structured summaries that can be filed alongside other HR documentation.
Getting Started
Use Granola free for your first three months — run it through several interview cycles and performance conversations. Evaluate whether the documentation quality is better than what your team currently produces manually.
For most HR teams, the combination of better documentation and more presence in sensitive conversations justifies the cost quickly. The legal risk reduction alone tends to be the decisive factor.
Discussion
Giscus