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
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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Fintech
Addition Wealth offers a financial wellness platform that its clients can integrate into their HR systems to provide their employees with financial education and guidance. Its services include free access to tools, courses and content, along with retirement planning, equity compensation and opportunities for meetings with financial advisors.
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: Health, wealth, retirement and benefits solutions
Inspira Financial works with employers to put together solutions packages tailored to meet specific business and workforce needs. Its customizable offerings cover everything from health savings accounts and emergency savings funds to commuter benefits, with Inspira providing support to streamline benefits administration.
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: 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.
Types of HR Software: Benefits + fintech
Human Interest offers pathways to 401(k) programs for employees of small and medium-sized businesses. The company’s mission is to increase retirement plan access, particularly for workers who traditionally would be excluded from employer-contribution 401(k) plans. Human Interest features transparent pricing and novel financial products that come with ease of use and no transaction fees.
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: 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.
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
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: 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: Recruitment
Clasp is a recruiting platform, which was previously Stride Funding. It helps students match with companies and helps students pay off student loans. For client companies, Clasp reduces recruitment costs and employers find and retain employees.
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: Payroll Solutions
Check assists software firms in providing their clients with embedded payroll solutions. It provides software companies with employee benefits and embedded payroll infrastructure through SimplyInsured to ensure proper payroll and tax computations. Its payroll package components can be customized to meet the unique business needs of its client companies. With offices in New York and San Francisco, Check’s team is also dispersed remotely throughout the United States.
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: 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.
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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Immigration Solution
Envoy Global makes its full-service immigration solution available at all times for companies to hire and manage international talents. It helps companies with human resources for incoming and outgoing immigrant employees. The company prioritizes security and mobility for its onboarding and legal representative services.
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: 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: Benefits navigation
HealthJoy’s platform helps employees understand the healthcare benefits available to them and get access to care. Its solutions for employers and HR teams include an AI-powered virtual assistant known as JOY that can provide employees with personalized answers to questions about navigating their benefits.
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: Talent acquisition
Veritone makes AI solutions with applications for a variety of industries. Veritone Hire is a talent acquisition solution that supports efficient media planning for advertising job openings and engaging quality candidates. Veritone says its technology integrates with more than 120 applicant tracking systems to enable efficient recruitment operations.
Type of HR Software: Healthcare benefit
Garner Health offers a mobile app that provides its members with data to help them evaluate healthcare providers and get reimbursed for out-of-pocket medical costs. Businesses partner with Garner to give their employees access to its solutions so they can connect with top quality doctors and specialists.
Type of HR Software: Employee management
Nowsta gives companies a platform for sourcing, hiring and managing hourly workers. Its FlexPool solution lets companies build a hybrid talent pool of employees by connecting disparate staffing sources. Its Talent product allows employers to staff vetted talent and its Management tool offers a central place for scheduling, attendance, communications and reporting.
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: 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: 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.
