For a long time, human resources leaders could easily find themselves spending more time sifting through documents than working with people. But if there’s one conclusion to draw from the HR tech boom of the last several years, it’s that there’s no longer a shortage of HR software tools available.
These tools automate administrative work and analyze engagement trends. They develop customized employee growth plans and facilitate the transition to remote or hybrid workplaces. Some even offer new ways for employees to connect digitally and identify ways organizations can become more diverse, equitable and inclusive.
Still, it can be difficult to figure out what tools are right for you and your company. To help with that, we’ve curated a list of some of the most notable HR software platforms and apps to help you lead your team.
HR Software to Know
- Gusto
- Namely
- Culture Amp
- Bonusly
- Workday
- Zenefits
- Rippling
Top HR Software Tools and Platforms to Know
Type of HR software: All-in-one HR software
Deputy is an HR tech company offering a platform with features for managing employee schedules, maintaining timesheets, automating pay calculations, overseeing compliance with applicable labor laws and handling other core people management responsibilities. Thousands of businesses across industries ranging from healthcare to manufacturing trust Deputy’s solutions.
Type of HR software: Learning management system
360Learning’s software platform provides businesses with AI-powered tools that enable employee training and upskilling. In addition to a portfolio of products that equip a company’s internal experts to collaborate on learning and development activities, 360Learning also offers a library of integrations for Salesforce, Coursera, Google Drive, Zoom and other popular tools.
Type of HR software: Professional employer organization platform
Justworks is a professional employer organization, or PEO, offering a platform that’s meant to support HR administration for businesses of varying sizes. Its technology gives its customers access to health benefits plans, payroll services, tools for managing critical HR duties like onboarding, HR consultants, compliance support and 24/7 customer service.
Types of HR software: All-in-one HR software
Personio acts as a holistic HR software that helps small and medium-sized businesses streamline every step of the people management process from recruiting to offboarding. Personio says it aims to get organizations out of the spreadsheet era by offering an all-in-one solution that helps businesses scale and manage their workforce.
Type of HR software: Staffing software
Bullhorn makes cloud-based software for recruiting agencies and the staffing industry. Its product lineup includes offerings for applicant tracking, customer relationship management and automating recruitment processes. For example, Bullhorn’s Copilot product uses AI-powered tools to streamline recruiter workflows by allowing professionals to spend less time on manual tasks like sourcing talent and writing content and messages.
Type of HR software: All-in-one software for managing independent contractors
Companies can use Wingspan’s platform to manage payroll, benefits, onboarding and tax compliance for independent contractors. Wingspan also processes invoices for freelancers so they can be paid efficiently, and its platform can integrate with other HR and finance tools. Wingspan has a range of pricing models to suit businesses of all sizes.
Type of HR software: Talent optimization
The Predictive Index is a talent optimization firm that uses intricate psychometric assessments to match candidates with roles where their innate characteristics and ways of doing business will align with company and mission culture. Working with behavioral and cognitive assessment tools as well as job assessments and employee experience surveys, the company’s aim is to make hiring a scientific process and to increase successful strategic talent placement.
Type of HR software: Workplace equity analytics
Syndio offers consulting and a platform to assess and improve workplace equity, focusing on fairness in compensation and equal access to opportunities. Using concrete metrics and reporting, the software allows companies to see a clear picture of where they’re doing well, where they need improvement and suggestions for how to move forward.
Type of HR Software: Employee Engagement
LumApps makes a digital workplace platform — a virtual space where all the employees and stakeholders of a company can find company-specific news and content, communicate and form communities and collaborate on projects and processes. Within the platform, each employee receives customized messaging that they can access at their convenience.
Type of HR software: All-in-one HR software
HiBob is an HR platform that covers everything from payroll and time off requests to employee surveys and anonymous safety reporting. The company describes the platform’s interface as a “social media-like homepage” where users can see birthdays, work anniversaries and insights about the people who work at their company. To help promote a healthy workplace culture, HR teams can use the platform to build custom onboarding processes that encourage new hires to update their profiles with their pronouns and include recordings of how to pronounce their names. The platform also comes with solutions to help streamline HR workflows and task assignments, which includes sending reminders to ensure responsibilities are completed on time.
Type of HR software: All-in-one HR software
Gusto is a cloud-based HR platform that specializes in serving the needs of small businesses and startups. Its platform automates complex tasks like filing payroll taxes, managing benefits, tracking PTO requests and sets onboarding task reminders to help you stay on top of your hiring process. It also enables leaders to manage remote staff and ensure they’re meeting state compliance requirements all with a few clicks. For founders scaling without an HR team, Gusto also offers a concierge plan that allows users to get personal support from its team of HR consultants.
Type of HR software: All-in-one HR software
Namely provides an all-in-one HR platform designed specifically for growing midsize businesses. Its cloud-based platform allows employers to manage the hiring process, provides proactive alerts to potential compliance issues that arise from changing legislation around remote payroll taxes, manages your payroll and provides data insights on employee performance and company diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Namely also stands out for its unique social newsfeed, where employees can celebrate birthdays and individual accomplishments.
Type of HR Software: All-in-one HR Software
PickTrace is a software platform for the agricultural industry. It allows ag companies of any size to manage their harvests and labor forces (a challenge due to the seasonal nature of the product and industry) through a web-based system that updates in real time. Serving citrus, berry and apple growers across the United States and around the world, PickTrace handles payroll, labor law compliance and the piecework pay system that is standard in industrial agriculture.
Type of HR software: All-in-one HR software
Paylocity is an HR platform designed to grow with the needs of its customers. For small businesses, the platform automates payroll, flags duplication errors that cause tax issues, provides a self-service portal for employees to find important HR documents and offers leaders access to HR consultants. The midsize package includes tools that flag potential tax compliance issues that come with scaling a company. It also allows for employees to manage their PTO, benefits and pay, and for employers to track employee engagement trends. Finally, its enterprise package builds on those services and includes real-time data tracking around areas like retention, demographics and performance management.
Type of HR software: All-in-one HR software
Designed for enterprise companies with a sprawling workforce, Workday unifies all HR services into one cloud-based platform. The company, which was founded in 2005 and went public in 2012, has established itself as a household name in the HR tech space. Its wide-ranging suite of products includes everything from talent acquisition to payroll to human capital management and more, giving HR leaders the data and tools they need to support and grow the company.
Type of HR software: Employee engagement
More than 200 companies across the world use YOOBIC to help their frontline workers get and stay more productive and engaged. The software platform offers task management, communication and training all in one place. You can also use it to track completion and compliance in real time, share important documents and procedures, and reach employees through one-to-one chat or group discussions.
Type of HR software: Recruiting, hiring and applicant tracking
Yello is a talent acquisition platform that is questioning old processes by implementing new technology. Since 2008, the company has partnered with businesses to improve campus recruiting. By 2015, Yello started assisting with professional recruiting too. The platform lends support to recruiters through collaboration with each other and talent engagement. Recruiters can source candidates, match with top talent, interview and evaluate and connect workflows to other assessment systems.
Type of HR software: Recruiting, hiring and applicant tracking
You can think of Free Agency as a talent management agency that represents tech professionals rather than Hollywood stars. With Free Agency, candidates get access to a streamlined job search, advanced compensation data, a stable of expert mentors, interview prep, salary negotiation coaching and more. In turn, the company takes a cut of the candidate’s base salary after they cinch the job.
Type of HR software: Employee engagement
ActivTrak makes workforce analytics software that assists businesses in promoting team productivity and collaboration. The cloud-based platform collects data on employees’ apps and website activity. From there, trends are identified about work habits through the platform dashboard. Viewing trends over time, measuring shifts in productivity and customizing privacy settings, can reduce unproductive habits, allowing businesses to benefit.
Type of HR software: Employee engagement
Snappy’s gifting platform is on a mission to elevate workplace gratitude. People use it to send a gift to an employee (or a customer), and Snappy facilitates customized gift campaigns automatically. After receiving an email, gift recipients choose a gift and it's shipped instantly The platform also provides global shipping, can send bulk gifts, prompts employee insights and calculates long-term campaign costs.
Type of HR software: Recruiting, hiring and applicant tracking
Percy is a recruiting firm specializing in entry-level customer service and sales roles that uses “a blend of technology and human touch” to improve hiring outcomes for both companies and candidates. It does this by harnessing the data and experiences of candidates to discover their values and skills, and from there, recruiters can match these candidates with the right jobs, ensuring that each open position has quality applicants.
Type of HR software: All-in-one HR software
Zenefits, acquired by TriNet, specializes in helping small and medium-size businesses manage their people operations tasks all in one place. Employers can use the platform to manage organization charts, streamline hiring processes like creating an offer letter and requesting a background check, and onboard employees faster. Zenefits also offers a health insurance marketplace to make it easier for employers to shop for plans and allows employees to sign up for benefits. Employers can use Zenefits to set employee goals, track performance and survey employees to boost retention and engagement.
Type of HR software: Employee engagement
15Five is a performance management platform that blends data with theories on positive psychology (a study on the emotions and experiences that lead to deep satisfaction) to aid professional development. To do so, the platform emphasizes a best-self methodology, which involves creating a shared context around performance and culture, facilitating individual growth and encouraging relationships. Not only can managers use it to conduct employee reviews, but they can also keep track of one-on-one meeting notes and review performance data that can help inform compensation and promotion decisions.
Type of HR software: Employee engagement
Professional development platform BetterUp combines access to a network of professional coaches with AI insights to help employers level up their employees. Its algorithm takes into account where each employee is in their career and how they prefer to learn to create a personalized growth plan for each person. This includes providing curated professional development content and access to coaching at key junctures in the employee’s development. Then it sends employee development data to give HR leaders insight into valuable metrics like employee outcomes, performance and satisfaction.
Type of HR software: Employee engagement
Bonusly is an employee recognition platform that encourages engagement through a point-based reward system. Employees can earn points for celebrating their co-workers’ accomplishments or receiving recognition themselves. Employers meanwhile can set a monetary value to those points. Once an employee accrues enough, they can cash it in like credits for rewards through a marketplace that includes Amazon and Starbucks. The app syncs with Slack for company-wide acknowledgement, and allows HR leaders to send out surveys and track recognition trends by team.
Type of HR software: Employee engagement
Culture Amp is an employee engagement platform designed to help HR leaders bolster their culture with surveys, data and qualitative insights. Through its platform, employers can send anonymous pulse surveys (like “Do you feel appreciated at work?”), conduct performance reviews and create an avenue for employee feedback. It then packages those insights into data, which employers can use to identify employees most at risk to leave, why they leave and what the culture is missing.
Type of HR software: Employee engagement
Some of the most important assets companies have for filling future roles are the employees and managers currently on staff. Lattice is a performance management platform that aims to help organizations grow their talent and prepare them for those future positions. To do so, it tracks progress toward team and individual goals, facilitates feedback with 360-review frameworks and one-on-one templates, and allows employers to set transparent career pathing standards.
Type of HR software: Recruiting, hiring and applicant tracking
Adia is an on-demand hiring platform where workers can discover job opportunities and employers can skip the traditional hiring process, which usually comes with extensive paperwork. With Adia, workers are hired by the platform through a W-2, making job searching easier for each party. It also allows workers to maintain a flexible schedule while being eligible for benefits.
Type of HR software: Employee engagement
Enboarder develops an onboarding platform that equips HR teams with personalized experiences for employees. These experiences often involve sharing business values, partnering a new hire with a buddy or scheduling meetings. The company offers solutions for onboarding, transitioning management, offboarding, remote working and more. With the people activation platform, Enboarder aims to improve employee engagement.
Type of HR software: Recruiting, hiring and applicant tracking
Fountain recognized that applicant tracking systems are centered around salaried positions. To fix this, the company developed software that assists in sourcing, qualifying and hiring talent for hourly based positions. Through the software, businesses can post to job boards, automate workflows and submit documents to candidates for e-signatures.
Type of HR software: Benefits and compensation
Finch is a B2B company with a single API platform that unifies HR teams to manage payroll and benefits data for employees. The company strives to empower innovators and establish economic movement between employers and employees. The result of this movement will hopefully produce open access to the global employment ecosystem.
Type of HR software: Recruiting, hiring and applicant tracking
Indeed Flex helps job candidates find temporary work with a convenient mobile app and MSP. As a part of the Indeed family, Flex hopes to transform how temporary workers discover and apply for jobs. For employers, the company operates a network of trained workers. Workers who are not as trained receive practical training with an in-house trainer. Additionally, employers can access performance tracking, workplace continuity and worker insights.
Type of HR software: Recruiting, hiring and applicant tracking
HireArt is a platform for sourcing, employing and managing contract W-2 workers. The employment platform has a network of job seekers and partners with staffing agencies to streamline sourcing. Additionally, there are automated onboarding tasks that help regulate workplace compliance and store employee documents. HireArt can also assist with workplace management by offering support from the expert team, payroll tracking, affordable benefits and more.
Type of HR software: Benefits and compensation
Healthee believes improving health in the U.S. starts by improving employee health benefits. The New York-based company developed an AI-powered platform, Zoe, that operates as a health assistant for workers. The platform simplifies health plan details, allowing workers to choose plans that meet all their requirements.
Type of HR software: Recruiting, hiring and applicant tracking
GigSmart is a modern staffing solution that provides businesses with a wide range of worker candidates. The company offers two staffing apps: Get Workers and Get Gigs. The apps operate for businesses and workers, allowing each side of the marketplace to interact. The company also helps consumers find workers for residential assistance like gardening, repairs and even running errands.
Type of HR software: Recruiting, hiring and applicant tracking
LaunchSource is helping the tech industry connect with talented sales professionals. The company is a talent marketplace for hiring managers and recruiting teams to discover early career and pre-vetted sales talent. By using LaunchSource solutions, businesses can expect to receive insights into market trends and candidates, hire candidates within days and save time on sourcing.
Type of HR software: Employee engagement
Continu is a workplace learning platform that makes training more sociable, mobile and connected. The platform supports creating learning content, distributing materials, tracking real-time reports and integrating other workplace tools. Overall, the company strives to increase employee and customer engagement.
Type of HR software: Benefits and compensation
Rightway’s app assists company employees with healthcare navigation and pharmacy benefits management. Through its services, patients can access data-tailored recommendations, a clinical-led care team, a centralized ecosystem for benefits and an open marketplace that connects to each sector of the pharmaceutical industry.
Type of HR software: Recruiting, hiring and applicant tracking
Sprockets is a hiring platform looking to make the hiring process more equitable. The company uses artificial intelligence to pinpoint solid applicants without the use of resumes, cover letters or interviews, as it believes removing these tools helps eliminate potential bias during the hiring process. Some of the platform features are background checks, sourcing, personality assessments, applicant matching and more.
Type of HR software: Employee engagement
The employee engagement platform Simpplr has products that include employee newsletters, modern intranets, a listener suite and media-rich videos. The AI-powered platform also supports customized services, allowing organizations to receive optimal benefits and satisfaction. Outside of employee engagement and experiences, Simpplr is meant to improve productivity, onboarding and overall workplace culture.
Type of HR software: Employee engagement
Scholars is working to transform how businesses engage with new hires and retain talent. Using its early-career retention platform, the company predicts and prevents employee turnovers while highlighting insights. Some of the platform features include optimizing communication for recruiters, consolidating the information for new hires and tracking employee engagement. Businesses like DICK’s Sporting Goods and GoPuff use the platform.
Type of HR software: Benefits and compensation
Sparrow offers an end-to-end leave management solution for businesses and their HR teams. Whether it’s parental, medical or caregiver leave, the management solution works to provide a seamless transition for everyone involved. The company recognizes the leave affects people beyond direct team members and implements automated tasks surrounding communication and payroll calculations.
Type of HR software: Recruiting, hiring and applicant tracking
Turn Technologies is reimagining talent acquisition, as its online identity screening platform helps businesses with autonomous screening, sourcing and hiring across large marketing channels. The platform also provides guidance through the hiring marketplace with Advise, which uses AI technology to make predictions about future hiring changes so businesses can stay ahead of the curve.
Type of HR software: Employee engagement
Whispir is a communication intelligence company working to master connection and engagement. The company’s platform can automate workflows, build messages, form smart reports and provide pay-by-text capabilities. Additional features include two-way texting, geolocation, real-time engagement insights, bulk SMS messaging and more. With multiple capabilities and features, businesses are using the platform to build their brand and even reimagine marketing engagement.
Type of HR software: Recruiting, hiring and applicant tracking
WhoCo believes the combination of technology and savvy recruiters can change the daunting hiring process with its talent platform. For companies, the new process helps reduce bias while increasing inclusivity and transparency. From posting a job description to interviewing tips, WhoCo assists completely. Candidates can expect to be matched with companies and jobs based on their career goals.
Type of HR software: Recruiting, hiring and applicant tracking
With over 75 years of experience, Wonderlic has assisted hiring teams in choosing the best candidates and predicting on-the-job performances. Wonderlic’s pre-employment assessment measures a candidate’s personality, motivation and cognitive ability. The assessment is scored against an AI Job Description Profile to see who matches the job description. The company’s assessment helps reduce turnover rates, streamline the hiring process and eliminate hesitations along the way.
Type of HR software: All-in-one HR software
Workforce is a management platform meant to streamline the operational tasks of frontline hourly workers. The platform can aid employee scheduling, communication, payroll integrations, forecasting reports and time and attendance. Overall, the platform is a complete operating system that simplifies employee engagement and promotes labor efficiency. Workforce can be utilized in most industries, including retail, healthcare and hospitality.
Type of HR software: Recruiting, hiring and applicant tracking
Workrise helps skilled laborers and employers discover each other. The company provides staffing, training and other professional services for businesses and laborers — specifically in the solar, oil and gas industries. As businesses receive in-demand trained workers, the workers are exposed to well-paid opportunities and matched to jobs in need of their skills.
Type of HR software: Recruiting, hiring and applicant tracking
Double is an assistant matching service and delegation app striving to give executives more time to do what they enjoy. The company sources local executive assistants with two years of experience and manages a variety of tasks. Additionally, the app ensures executives and assistants are supporting each other through quick, transparent communication.
Type of HR software: Employee engagement
Happeo is an employee communications platform that is pushing to be an information hub for employees. With its mission to create happy people at work, the company made a community-powered platform that allows employees to share information freely, collaborate easily and search for information. The platform integrates with other networks like Slack and Google Workspace to store information in one place.
Type of HR software: All-in-one HR software
The administrative work in managing a rapidly expanding company can be tedious and time intensive. Rippling strives to simplify the process for companies of all sizes with its HR cloud software. HR leaders can use it to manage their payroll, track benefits and approve PTO, as well as automate the work required to onboard employees. They can also add any third-party apps like Google Workspace, Slack and Zoom among others to the software, and adjust employee access with a click of a button.
Type of HR software: Employee engagement
Diversio combines AI with employee engagement data to help HR leaders diagnose shortcomings in DEI and develop a more inclusive culture. To do so, users can integrate employee engagement and performance data, along with organizational demographics and hiring data into the software. Its algorithm will then sift through information and calculate your company’s inclusion score. Employers can use that score to measure how its inclusivity evolves over time and compares with other employers in their respective industry. In addition, the platform also highlights DEI shortcomings and recommendations on how employers can improve their culture.
Type of HR software: Employee engagement
Donut’s application syncs with Slack to send notifications designed to stimulate conversation and employee engagement. Messages can spark conversation with prompts like “What’s the most beautiful place you’ve ever been?,” celebrate birthdays or link two people up to create introductions. The tool has a new DEI feature where the app will connect employees with shared identities and create discussion prompts around DEI to help build community.
Type of HR software: All-in-one HR software
Founded in 1998, Paycom offers a comprehensive platform that allows businesses to take care of all their employee needs. Its suite of services includes payroll, hiring and performance management tools, and enables employers to manage salaries, track employee performance and satisfaction and ensure they’re meeting compliance standards.
Type of HR software: All-in-one HR software
BambooHR specializes in helping those small and midsize businesses ditch the spreadsheets and transition to an HR management platform. It allows employers to customize its services based on their firm’s growth and needs. The standard platform allows employers to store employee records, manage benefits packages and gather data on employee performance and turnover, along with an app that allows employees to request time off. Users can also purchase an advanced package that facilitates hiring with an application tracking system and automated onboarding and offboarding features, as well as add-ons to manage payroll and track employee performance.
Type of HR software: Employee engagement
Ethena is an employee training platform that stands out for its focus on personalized, periodic lessons throughout the year rather than over one long session. The platform offers courses in harassment prevention, anti-bribery, hiring, DEI and interviewing best practices. The curriculum is tailored to the customer’s industry and broken down into bite-size sessions delivered over Slack, Zoom or email, depending on employer preference. Employers can track progress and collect feedback on the training to improve it.
Type of HR software: Employee engagement
Kazoo provides an all-in-one employee experience platform that helps employers retain and develop their staff. Through the platform, HR leaders and employees can gamify the professional development process. Managers can set goals and tasks for their employees, and then when the employee meets them, they can earn points that lead to rewards like an Amazon gift card, donations to a social cause or office events. It also enables the company to measure how far along they are toward team or companywide goals by breaking each task an employee is responsible for completing down into individual progress bars. This system also makes it easier for managers to keep tabs on the needs of their remote employees, identify who is out-performing expectations and who needs more assistance.
Type of HR software: Recruiting, hiring and applicant tracking
Applied is a DEI-focused hiring platform that aims to reduce bias in the hiring process. To do so, its software can be used to remove gendered language and jargon from job descriptions, anonymize candidate applications and offer structured interview questions. It also provides data reports on the diversity of your hiring pipeline throughout the process.
Type of HR software: Recruiting, hiring and applicant tracking
One of the biggest challenges with hiring remote workers across different states and countries is navigating the payroll and compliance process. Often, employers need to establish a local entity in a country before they can hire there. Deel combines a hiring platform with local entity status in more than 60 different countries. The way it works is that employers can search for candidates through its hiring network. Once they find someone, Deel becomes the legal employer for the employee to ensure the hire is legally compliant, while the employee works for your company.
Type of HR software: Recruiting, hiring and applicant tracking
Entelo is a hiring platform that seeks to reduce the time to hire through a deep candidate search pool and hiring analytics. Recruiters and HR leaders can work with an Entelo recruiter to tailor their hiring campaign to attract specific types of candidates, search through its deep hiring network and manage the hiring process. Users can also tap into its predictive analytics to identify up-and-coming candidates who are in line for a promotion and a fit for your open roles.
Type of HR software: Recruiting, hiring and applicant tracking
While adopting a remote workforce opens companies up to a wider pool of talent, it also makes it more difficult to vet and source those candidates. Notch offers a hiring platform that specializes in helping companies find and vet remote software developers. To do so, Notch partners with HR teams to identify their company’s hiring needs, and then uses a blend of AI and human sourcing to find potential candidates. The company reports a snappy 72-hour average turnaround time from consulting call to providing candidate matches. Notch also handles most early onboarding tasks to help customers scale their engineering team.
