A strong HR team that’s equipped to handle anything that comes its way is crucial for any organization to thrive. Fortunately, the right HR software ensures businesses across all industries are equipped with the tools they need to foster growth.
The Best 5 HR Software Options
- Paycom – Best for performance management
- VIVAHR – Best applicant tracking system
- Zenefits – Best all-in-one HR platform
- Bamboo HR – Best for building employee culture
- Cezanne – Best for international HR management
What is HR Software?
HR software is a tool that enables HR departments across all industries to organize, track, manage, and maintain a wide range of crucial employee information. This includes accurately managing payroll, onboarding and offboarding employees successfully, managing timesheets, filing compliance and training records, and storing key employee data.
If your business manages a growing number of employees, HR software is a crucial part of ensuring you’re managing tasks in a way that saves you money, time, and reduces troublesome bottlenecks.
Do I need HR Software?
Even if you only have a few employees, you likely need some form of HR software. Here’s a closer look at when you should consider onboarding HR software:
If Your HR Employees Are Consumed With Administrative Tasks
Managing attrition, making sure employees are reimbursed accurately, tracking PTO, ensuring 1099s are filed on time—your HR department’s administrative to-do list could go on and on.
Often, that leaves very little room for more innovative tasks that could help your business scale—anything from working on bettering company culture or thoroughly reviewing and recruiting talent that fit the company goals. A fleet of well-managed employees starts with ensuring your HR people aren’t overworked, which is where reliable HR software comes in.
If Paperwork Isn’t Efficiently Taking Care Of The Bulk Of Your Data
Excel spreadsheets and printed receipts can only carry your HR department so far. There comes a time when cloud-based software becomes necessary to streamline your data storage and management.
Paper filing is time-consuming, often prone to errors, can be unsafe, and can consume costly physical resources. With HR software, you can centralize your data in a safe, organized way that’s accessible to your HR team. This also means more accurate reporting and record-keeping.
It’s important to keep in mind that a paper filing system keeps you from being able to parse data, create reports, or log critical information quickly. An HR solution allows you to centralize any information you gather in one place, that’s accessible in more than one area to key stakeholders once you’ve configured key permissions.
If You Need To Improve Your Recruitment Process
It’s up to HR to ensure it’s recruiting the best talent it can find. The recruitment process becomes a lot harder when you don’t have a reliable system in place that helps you sift through, manage, and filter incoming applications.
With HR software, it becomes easier to create employee accounts, track employee history and hours worked, and it streamlines the onboarding process so it’s less overwhelming for everyone involved.
If You Need Systems That Save You Money Long-Term
The bigger your business, the more complexity you’re bound to deal with. This is where solutions like HR software can ensure you’re making the most of your employees’ time by mitigating errors and establishing repeatable processes.
Once you’re able to organize your HR operations into a streamlined workflow, you’re bound to save more hours in the day, which in turn saves you money in the long run. Managing HR processes that in turn manage your workforce is one of the best ways to ensure a smooth operational pipeline.
Cloud-based HR software ensures you have an easier time setting up standard operating procedures and keeping up with business-wide compliance requirements.
Paycom – Best For Performance Management
Performance management is a key part of managing your employees. As part of the HR department, you want to make sure the process is as efficient as possible.
With Paycom’s performance management tools it’s easy to create a library of positions with assigned competencies and salaries, and assign performance goals by similar responsibilities and skills. It also makes it easy for employees to conduct self-reviews as part of your company-wide process.
To learn more about Paycom’s prices, you’ll need to request a demo after you’ve answered a few short questions. Once approved, an expert will walk you through a personalized demo that’ll include processing accurate payrolls, standardizing training, and measuring the ROI of HR software for your business.
Pros
- Enhanced background checks and E-verify for streamlined talent acquisition
- Includes employee self-service portals that ease the HR workload
- Robust support features in case you need to troubleshoot anything
Cons
- Not as customizable and compatible with integrations as other options
- Can come with a learning curve when you’re first starting out
- Can be a pricey investment for small businesses
VIVAHR – Best Applicant Tracking System
The hiring process can easily become a source of headaches and bottlenecks if you don’t have a repeatable process in place. VIVAHR sets out to solve the applicant tracking system issue by providing a customizable hiring pipeline complete with templates that make the hiring process easier to manage.
VIVAHR lets you structure and customize your interview process, parse resumes, employ bulk candidate emails, create custom scorecards, and automate job posting distribution once you’ve created a listing.
VIVAHR is also able to integrate with the applications you’re already using with Zapier.
You can try VIVAHR free for seven days to get a feel for the tools. From there, its annual Starter tier starts at $65 a month but you can upgrade to its Corporate tier where you can contact them to get a customized quote according to your business needs.
Pros
- Makes it easy to create a “hiring brand” so you attract the right people to job openings
- Provides pre-made hiring templates to make the job listing process easier
- Enables you to create custom hiring pipelines to easily keep track of candidates every step of the way
Cons
- Can limit the number of job postings if you go with a more affordable tier
- Limited email automation options
- Posting jobs on premium job boards requires additional fees
Zenefits – Best All-In-One HR Platform
Zenefits is a comprehensive all-in-one HR solution that equips you with the tools to manage your team from recruitment to onboarding all the way through to retirement.
Zenefits provides such a long list of tools it’s hard to know where to start. It includes tools like self-onboarding for new employees, workforce management through its mobile app, company-wide directories, create and enforce PTO policies, and gather insights on turnover, diversity, and employee compensation.
Zenefits also ensures you keep a record of past employees after you’ve successfully offboarded them, in case they decide to rejoin your company later. In short, Zenefits offers an intelligently interconnected hub of tools that empower your HR team to effectively manage its workforce at scale.
Zenefits’ more affordable annual plan starts with its Essentials tier at $8 per month per employee and then works its way up to the Zen tier at $21 per month per employee. You can also test drive it for two weeks free by requesting a demo.
Pros
- Extremely easy and intuitive to use
- Provides advisory services to ensure you aren’t running into compliance issues
- Provides mobile app for both the HR team and employees
Cons
- Customer service is mostly online as opposed to phone support
- Limited integrations
- Customer support response times could be better
Bamboo HR – Best For Building Employee Culture
Bamboo HR is HR software built with people in mind before processes. It prides itself on being an HR solution that helps businesses manage employee culture. One major way it does this is by making all other HR tasks so streamlined that your HR team will have plenty of bandwidth to focus on culture-building activities.
As a cloud-based HR solution, Bamboo HR empowers your HR team to onboard new employees successfully with an automated tracking system. It also provides efficient time-tracking tools, benefits administration, payroll processing, automations and reminders, and plenty of workforce analytics so your HR team can stay on top of changes and turnover rates. These tools are designed to help your HR team free up time to focus on tasks that enrich your employee experience and build company culture.
Bamboo HR doesn’t publicly list a set of pricing tiers so you’ll have to contact them to get a personalized quote. Either that, or you can start off with a free trial first before fully committing.
Pros
- Easy to set permissions and employee digital signatures
- Great customer support through the phone or online
- Errs on the side of simplicity which is great for small businesses
Cons
- Limited mobile app functionality
- Isn’t the best at more complex tasks and processes
- Reporting features can be limited
Cezanne – Best For International HR Management
Medium-sized companies in the 100-3,000 employee range can benefit from onboarding robust HR software like Cezanne HR, especially if they manage a global workforce.
Cezanne comes equipped with language translation and global capabilities that ease international management, as well as configurable processes that help you manage calendars and holidays along with security permissions and compliance features that ensure everything is being done by the book.
Cezanne makes it easy to set your own security roles once you’re onboarded by one of its expert consultants. If your HR team still needs help navigating through every tool that Cezanne offers, Cezanne offers personalized training and workshops to get you up and running.
Interested in working with Cezanne? You can book your demo here after answering a few questions about your organization like the size of your team and if you’re currently using another HR system.
Pros
- User-friendly interface
- Easy for employees to use
- Focuses on offering plenty of global features including GDPR compliance
Cons
- Can take a bit longer to onboard HR team due to added complexity
- Costly
- Limited integrations
Summary
Have you chosen the best HR solution for your team yet? VIVAHR is a great solution if your team needs a robust applicant tracking system that helps you onboard quality candidates. Zenefits is a great all-in-one solution for a more comprehensive HR approach. Paycom offers a robust set of performance management tools. Bamboo HR is a robust option that helps your HR team free up more time to work on culture-building tasks. Here’s a quick recap of each:
- Paycom – Best for performance management
- VIVAHR – Best applicant tracking system
- Zenefits – Best all-in-one HR platform
- Bamboo HR – Best for building employee culture
- Cezanne – Best for international HR management
With a streamlined HR tool that fits your specific needs, you’re looking at more efficient processes that can help your HR team manage its workforce successfully. This way, you get rid of the inefficiencies that cause headaches throughout the entire employee management life cycle.
