If you’re researching HR technology, you’re probably doing so for one of two reasons. 1) You need an improvement to the system you currently use and are looking for an employee management app that has more (or better) features than what you are used to. 2) You are a growing business looking to implement employee management software for the first time. Either way, we can help.
Whether you’re here to find a new tool or perhaps introducing an employee management system for the first time, this article will help you quickly compare and evaluate the best employee management system along with other human resources software. So let’s dive in!
The Best Employee Management Systems
monday.comBest for employee time & task tracking
- Eddy
Best all-in-one HR software for small, local businesses
- SAP SuccessFactors
Best EMS for enterprises
- Workday
Best for business & professional services companies
- Leapsome
Best for people enablement & learning
- 15five
Best for employee performance management
- Zenefits
Best for paperless employee onboarding
- Gusto
Best payroll service for international contractor-based teams
- Saba
Best targeted employee development plans
- Kissflow
Best project & task management for HR
HR Management Tools Comparison Criteria
What are we looking for when we are looking for HR online systems and tools? Here’s a summary of my evaluation criteria:
- User Interface (UI): Is it clean and attractive?
- Usability: Is it easy to learn and master? Does the company offer good tech support, user support, tutorials, and training?
- Features & Functionality:
- Engagement and Productivity – Are there features designed to encourage employee engagement and monitor satisfaction and other moods? Are there any productivity tools that can be put to use?
- Employee Record Keeping – Is there a functional employee database for record-keeping? Are the employee records easily searchable? Can you search with filters and keywords?
- Surveys & Feedback – Are employees encouraged or enabled to provide some sort of feedback? Is work culture signifiers like mood, conflict, and satisfaction recorded somehow?
- Real-Time Reporting and Analysis – Are the reporting features useful and intuitive? Is there a variety of export and visualization options? Can you easily pull information for top performers?
- Integrations: Is it easy to connect with other tools? Any pre-built integrations? This is not strictly vital for employee management software but is a huge plus.
- Value for $: How appropriate is the price for the features, capabilities, and use case? Is pricing clear, transparent and flexible?
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Overviews Of Top 10 HR Management Software
Here’s a brief description of each of the employee information systems that are featured on this top 10 list.
monday.com - Best for employee time & task tracking
monday.com's schedules, timelines, dashboards, and reports give you a birds-eye-view of your employees' work progress so you can spot potential issues or celebrate daily successes.
Managers will appreciate the customizable reports and dashboards which can display valuable metrics needed for employee management: capacity limitations, progress tracking, time management, budget totals, and missed deadline warnings.
Part of managing your employees is making sure they aren’t bogged down in admin and data entry when they could best be using their skills elsewhere. monday.com offers automations that can handle basic, recurring tasks without live intervention, freeing up your people for more creative and complex work.
monday.com’s integrations include project management apps like Slack, Google Workspace, Gmail, Google Calendar, Jira, GitHub, Trello, Dropbox, Typeform and many more, accessible through a paid plan with Zapier.
monday.com costs from $8/user/month and offers a free trial.
Eddy - Best all-in-one HR software for small, local businesses
Employees and managers can easily access company directories and store important employee documents.
Eddy is an all-in-one HR Suite built for small, local businesses. With Eddy, businesses can hire, onboard, manage, and pay employees with one easy-to-use software.
Founded in 2017 by former professional basketball player turned entrepreneur, Travis Hansen, Eddy has grown rapidly due to its simple but powerful product, highly-rated customer service, and focus on local businesses with deskless workforces.
Key features include job posting management, tracking incoming candidates, and a full-scale applicant tracking system (ATS). The onboarding system lets HR managers create custom onboarding packages, assign tasks, and easily collect digital signatures.
A core function of Eddy is people management—users can access company directories and store important employee documents, notes on performance, and training and certifications in employee profiles. You can also create custom PTO policies and approve or deny requests; tap into their time tracking tool, which allows employees to easily clock in and clock out; and navigate payroll processes using Eddy’s full-service payroll system that includes support for multiple pay periods and end-of-year W-2 preparation, filing, and distribution.
Eddy starts at $8/employee/month plus a $49 base fee, and offers a free demo.
SAP SuccessFactors - Best EMS for enterprises
SAP SuccessFactor boasts advanced HR tools like the payroll control center sampled above.
SAP SuccessFactor is an engagement-focus HR tool that offers flexible employee surveys, role-based dashboards and reporting, customizable impact reports, event-based triggers, and employee rewards programs.
SAP SuccessFactor scored highly in regards to the Value for Cost criteria. Not only does it have a very reasonable entry price but the software also has a free trial, ensuring potential customers are only paying for a tool they are comfortable with.
There is a bit of a coherence issue with the different modules they offer, which were once separate “add on” products and which still often feel that way. The meshing from one module item to the next is often clumsy, resulting in additional menuing or log-ins.
SAP SuccessFactors starts at $8/user/month and has a free trial.
Workday - Best for business & professional services companies
Track turnover, movement, and other data.
Workday has employee management systems for medium- and large-sized businesses and offers tools to recruit and develop team talent with features like head-count visualization, financial trend analysis, and support for regulations such as probation and notice periods.
Workday is both extremely user-friendly and has a smart, clean interface design. This scored them favorably in both the usability and UX categories of the evaluation criteria.
Reporting functions are a bit lackluster compared to other software in the field; the tool doesn’t do a great job of ingesting equity data, particularly vesting data.
Workday offers pricing upon request.
Leapsome - Best for people enablement & learning
Leapsome links employee engagement and goal alignment with performance management and learning & development.
Leapsome’s all-in-one platform helps companies strengthen their employee satisfaction through a comprehensive suite of tools focused on employee engagement, performance and learning & development. Their performance review system includes modern elements like 360 degree feedback, agile project reviews, and anonymous leadership reviews, to give employees a voice during the feedback process. Goal setting is also well-integrated into the system so employees always know what’s expected of them, and how their goals are contributing to the bigger picture.
To help with employee upskilling, their learning and development module can create learning paths using customized curriculum, or curated third-party content from their built-in learning library. Knowledge acquisition can also be measured using short quizzes with a variety of question formats. Their learning path dashboard also makes it easy to keep track of internal enrollment numbers, progress status, and completion rates for individuals or at the company-wide level.
Leapsome integrates with 15+ common HR software applications including Personio, BambooHR, Bob, Workday, Rippling, PayFit, ADP, Active Directory, SFTP, Okta, OneLogin, GSuite, Slack, Jira Software, Microsoft Teams and common calendar apps.
Leapsome costs from $6/user/month. A 14-day free trial and free demo are also available.
15five - Best for employee performance management
Surveys designed to gauge staff mood.
Used by Spotify and HubSpot, 15five is designed to build an engaging work culture through weekly check-ins, dedicated 1-on-1s, self-review tools, and a recognition system whereby employees can pass along “High Fives” for good work.
15five’s array of mood and wellbeing tests make it stand out as an HR tool with a purpose. The UX is colorful, easy to use, and many functions are gamified, making it ripe for user adoption.
This employee management system lost a few marks in the evaluation section for Features – Reporting, as there was no way to prioritize or sort manager-assigned “High Fives” in order to better draw out top performers.
15five starts at $4/user/month (billed annually) and has a free trial.
Zenefits - Best for paperless employee onboarding
New employees can onboard themselves easily using Zenefits’ self-onboarding feature, which automatically syncs their personal details with other system modules.
Zenefits has created an HRIS platform that alleviates common HR headaches by integrating core HR functions like payroll, benefits, and time-off tracking, all within one system. In their higher service tiers, modules are also available for compensation management, performance management and several in-depth employee engagement tools.
Their automated and fully digital onboarding process supports offer letters, background checks, e-signatures, and employee self-onboarding. Once new staff enter their personal details, the information is automatically synced to benefits and payroll without the need for additional HR admin support. The platform is also accessible via mobile devices, making it easy for new staff to get up-to-speed even before day one.
Zenefits integrates with 45+ applications including Google Suite, Office 365, Slack, Salesforce, Expensify, Bonusly, BetterWorks, Zapier, and many others.
Zenefits costs from $8/user/month. A 14-day free trial and free demo are also available.
Gusto - Best payroll service for international contractor-based teams
Gusto’s full service payroll service makes it easy to process payroll no matter where your workforce is located.
Gusto is an all-in-one HR solution with scalable pricing and features that work for smaller businesses with simple salary structures all the way up to complex, sophisticated international teams. Their Core level functions primarily as a payroll system with hiring and onboarding tools, with additional support for benefits management included. Their platform really comes alive at the Complete level, which includes team management tools, performance reviews, time-off management, and employee engagement features.
Gusto’s full-service payroll automatically files your corporate taxes with each payroll run, and includes a helpful AutoPilot feature to make submitting payroll even faster than most other systems. In today’s work-from-anywhere world, it’s common to have a global workforce, rather than all employees residing in the same place. Gusto has you covered there too, as it supports payments to international contractors in over 80 countries. As well, it also has a built-in device management tracking system that helps with inventory control, network access, and keeping your company data secure.
The list of integrations for Gusto is very comprehensive, with over 135 options to choose from. Commonly used options include Asana, Bonusly, ChartHop, DropBox, GitHub, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Sage Accounting, Salesforce, Shopify, Slack, Webex, Zipbooks and Zoom.
Gusto costs from $6/employee/month plus a $39/month base fee. A 30-day free trial is also available.
Saba - Best targeted employee development plans
Staff reviews and compensation notes.
With over 33 million users to date, Saba is an HR solution that focuses on ways to decrease turnover, optimize the workforce organization, prepare succession planning, and build the employer brand in a way that attracts top-quality talent.
Saba scored well in the Usability section of the evaluation, simply because of the vast number of resources they offer for training and learning. They have eBooks, guides, templates, checklists, webinars, product tours, How-Tos, and case studies.
Software navigation is not entirely intuitive. For example, user data is split into multiple centers in the backend, the User Center and the Appraisal Process, which can be a bit confusing.
Saba offers pricing upon request and has a free demo.
Kissflow - Best project & task management for HR
Field vacation requests digitally.
Kissflow is a project management tool with plenty of features specific to HR, like time tracking capabilities, a task activity stream, applicant tracking, onboarding, performance management, leave requests, and attendance management.
Integration options are a strong point of the software, evaluating favorably in that regard. Connection possibilities include Quickbooks, Google Suite, Dropbox, DocuSign, WebMerge, SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, and more.
A few points were lost due to the price of this software, which is a bit high comparatively and might discourage small-to-mid-sized companies from giving it a try.
Kissflow starts at $360/month for up to 30 users and offers a 14-day free trial.
Need Expert Help Selecting The Right Workforce Management Software?
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Best Employee Management Systems Software Summary
| Software | USP | Free Option | Price | Site |
|---|---|---|---|---|
monday.com  | Best for employee time & task tracking | Freemium version 14 days free trial | From $8/user/month | Check out monday.com |
Eddy  | Best all-in-one HR software for small, local businesses | Not Available | From $8/employee/month | Check out Eddy |
SAP SuccessFactors  | Best EMS for enterprises | Free trial | From $8/user/month | Check out SAP SuccessFactors |
Workday  | Best for business & professional services companies | Not Available | Upon request | Check out Workday |
Leapsome  | Best for people enablement & learning | 14-day free trial | From $6/user/month | Check out Leapsome |
15five  | Best for employee performance management | Free trial | From $4/user/month (billed annually) | Check out 15five |
Zenefits  | Best for paperless employee onboarding | 14-day free trial | From $8/user/month | Check out Zenefits |
Gusto  | Best payroll service for international contractor-based teams | 30-day free trial | From $6/employee/month plus $39/month base fee | Check out Gusto |
Saba  | Best targeted employee development plans | Free demo | Upon request | Check out Saba |
Kissflow  | Best project & task management for HR | 14 days free trial | From $360/month for up to 30 users | Check out Kissflow |
Other Employee Management Systems
Here’s a few more that didn’t make the top list. If you need additional suggestions for handy HR systems, check these out.
- ConnectTeam – All-in-one employee management app with time clocks, scheduling, task management, and communications. Free for up to 50 users.
- Remote – Free basic contractor management platform with paid upgrades for employee benefits, payroll, and IP & invention rights.
- Peakon – Measure and improve employee engagement with personnel surveys, advanced segmentation, and targeted questionnaires.
- Bamboo HR – Tools for hiring, onboarding, preparing compensation, and/or building culture with robust data collection and analytics.
- Hubstaff – Employee monitoring software with the ability to track app/URL activity and capture activity levels based on keyboard and mouse usage.
- ActivTrack – Generate insightful reports and trends for employee performance and discover who on your team is disengaged or headed that way.
- Lanteria – Human resource software based on SharePoint and Office 365 with org charts, employee profiles, and out-of-the-box reports.
- Gusto – Billed as HR software for small business, this tool features full-service payroll, benefits management, and time tracking.
- Lattice – A people management platform with features around feedback/reviewing, collaboration, team agendas, and goal setting.
- Zoho People – HR management with a new hire portal, customizable workflows, checklists status-view reports, and an attendance tracker.
- Ultimate Software – Managed HR services like payroll, benefits, tax filing, wage-attachment disbursement, check printing, and more.
- Litmos – A training platform that automates communications and tracking, as well as provides built-in reporting and dashboards.
- Namely – An award-winning people operations platform with tools for engagement, onboarding, payroll, and analytics.
Worker Management Software FAQ
Have some questions about employee management systems before we dive into our summaries and reviews? Start here.
Employee management focuses on the employee to ensure they are performing their best in order to achieve bigger organizational goals. In doing so, teams can capitalize on employee strengths and needs to maximize on a functional and efficient workplace.
Employee management systems are useful for running a smooth organization, especially organizations of scale. It assists HR personnel to keep track of employee information such as salary details, medical information, attendance/leave records, overall performance and more.
A leave management system is a type of worker management software that allows automated leave requests to be processed. This activity tends to be a time-consuming task for the HR department to ensure a sufficient amount of staff within the organization at all times. This system makes the process painless for both managers and employees.
Human Resource Information System (HRIS) is a valuable process that allows businesses to organize and streamline all data in consolidated hr software. This saves time, resources, and budget to simplify work and efficiency within organizations. Information such as departments, pay rates, benefits selection, and employee job information can be utilized in an HRIS system.
What’s Your Top Employee Management System?
Any of the tools above can be of help to employees managers, it’s just a matter of deciding which one is best for you. Have you tried out any employee management systems listed above? Do you have an HR tool that you would add to the list? Let us know in the comments.
Looking into a more comprehensive solution such as ERP Software or maybe a less comprehensive solution? Check these lists out:
