The Best Human Resources Software of 2023

Bambee is an HR outsourcing solution geared toward supplying small businesses (fewer than 500 employees) with custom HR support in a way that helps mitigate HR risks. After completing a brief survey about your organization, Bambee pairs you with a dedicated HR manager or director to meet your specific HR needs. This manager then conducts an HR audit on your organization to quickly identify areas where your business can improve to meet current federal, state, and local laws and regulations. Bambee works with you to create custom HR policies and procedures that not only are legally compliant, but also match the needs of your company culture.

Bambee has other tools to help you mitigate risks and stay compliant, such as HR process automation, document retention and e-signature capabilities. It can help you onboard, train and terminate employees as well. With features like Bambee Report Cards, you can easily track employee progress against their goals to ensure no one falls behind. We like that it also has the ability to facilitate employee feedback, which can help you identify and navigate problems as soon as they arise. Bambee support is available by phone, email and chat.

Gusto is our choice as the best HR software for payroll. It offers full-service payroll functions, workers’ compensation administration and the Gusto Wallet app, which your employees can use to access their payroll and account information. Employers with Gusto aren’t limited to running payroll in one specific state or country, because Gusto can help employers run payroll for employees and contractors in multiple states or countries. For example, Gusto can take care of state tax registration for you, as well as handle exchange rates and payments in multiple currencies. This type of pay assistance is increasingly important as more employers move toward global and distributed workforces.

We like that with Gusto, you have access to unlimited and multistate payroll, tax filing and payments, direct deposit, state and federal unemployment insurance, year-end tax forms, garnishments, multiple pay rates and schedules, PTO policy management, holiday pay, and time-off tracking. Since Gusto offers a variety of comprehensive benefits, employers can seamlessly integrate those into payroll as well. It also provides reporting, accounting and time tracking integrations; new-hire reporting; and payroll reports.

Rippling is our choice as the best HR solution for ease of use. We were impressed with how quickly you can get your business up and running with Rippling – within four weeks. Rippling’s workforce management platform starts at just $8 per user per month, and you can add a variety of HR management services, like applicant tracking, time and attendance tracking, payroll processing, benefits administration, learning management, and an HR help desk. It even offers comprehensive spend management functionality so employers can track and manage all company expenses (including payroll) in one place. If you employ workers overseas, Rippling can easily support your payroll needs through its global payroll system. You can run payroll off-cycle, correct historical pay runs and even pay employees in their local currency. The Rippling platform is intuitive and easy to use, and it even has a mobile app for iOS and Android devices.

With Rippling’s new applicant tracking system, recruiters and managers can easily track applicant pipelines, create automatic workflows, view recruitment data and acquire candidate feedback. Once someone is hired, you can automate onboarding and offboarding as well, creating simple-to-follow workflows and approvals. With HR automation, new hires are funneled through the onboarding process (e.g., offer letters, new-hire paperwork, criminal background checks and e-verification). The automated process is seamless. Rippling says the average time it takes a new hire to complete onboarding is 90 seconds. To further simplify your HR needs, you can automate other processes, like time and attendance, applicant tracking, and ACA and COBRA administration.

Paycor is our choice as the best HR software for analytics. Instead of offering simple standard reports, we like how Paycor provides users with several charts and graphs that can be easily digested. Users can view current workforce trends, like headcount by employment type, as well as projected trends that are predicted based on past workforce data. You can access charts and graphs on benchmarks and demographics and easily compare multiple organizations or locations. We were impressed with how Paycor lists key drivers affecting certain workforce trends to help you quickly discover ways to improve your organization. With Paycor’s performance management metrics, you can easily track and improve employee performance as well.

The platform, which can cater to businesses of all sizes, is a full-service human capital management (HCM) software platform. It offers a variety of features for HR, payroll, benefits administration, talent and workforce management, and employee engagement service. We like how it provides metrics and analytics on these topics to better inform your business. We also are impressed by how the software is constantly improving with new features to help simplify these HR processes, such as its new AI-generated job descriptions tool. Since a lot of Paycor’s features can be implemented with automated workflows, the administration on your end is simplified. It also offers an advanced tax recommendation feature that provides business owners with employee-specific tax information based on employee location and alerts business leaders about missing tax information. This type of data is key for avoiding potential tax problems.

Paychex Flex is our choice as the best HR software for remote teams. Since Paychex is a full-service solution, you can take advantage of the many features you’ll need to manage your remote workforce, such as new-hire reporting, time and attendance tracking, payroll processing, payroll tax management, and benefits administration. The software also integrates with numerous third-party services, which is ideal for customizing a solution that can serve your remote workforce best. We like how the software allows you to track employee information regardless of where they’re located and maintain legal compliance through data analytics, general ledger reports, and automatic W-2 and 1099 forms. It also offers a secure document management center that serves as a centralized location for remote and hybrid employee documents. It supports multiple uploads, in-app signing capabilities, real-time reporting and rule-based restrictions.

Keeping employees satisfied can be tricky, especially with so many teams working remotely. Paychex Flex helps with this by offering direct deposit and pay cards, employee financial wellness programs, employment and income verification services, and an e-learning management system. One feature that sets Paychex Flex apart from its competition is its mobile capabilities: The free Paychex Flex mobile app is comprehensive, whereas most competitors limit the functionality of their mobile apps. This is great for on-the-go managers, remote employees and teams with flexible working arrangements.

BambooHR is a mobile-friendly platform that is ideal for hiring and onboarding employees. Each service plan includes essential HR services like document storage, employee records, benefits tracking, time-off management, reporting, and workflows and approvals. What sets BambooHR apart is its Advantage plan: It offers everything you need to source, hire and onboard the best talent. Unlike some competitors, it includes applicant tracking capabilities so that you are able to find the best employees for your open positions. You can post open jobs, search and filter resumes and cover letters by keywords, and create talent pools full of viable candidates. Once you’ve found the best candidate, you can automatically funnel them into BambooHR’s onboarding process.

With BambooHR onboarding, you can send out electronic offer letters to be signed digitally and automatically saved as PDFs. To enhance your onboarding process, the software can be used to send welcome emails and new-hire packets, as well as assign onboarding tasks. These help your new hires understand what they have to look forward to when starting at your company. Since BambooHR now offers benefits administration as an optional add-on service, anyone who opts for this solution can further enhance their employee onboarding process by guiding new hires through open enrollment as well. The platform seamlessly connects with 17 different carriers (and counting), removing the burden of manually updating employee data. BambooHR offers self-service features and the user interface is intuitive, so your new hires can get up and running in no time.

GoCo is our choice as the best HR software for designing custom HR workflows. This easy-to-use software starts at $5 per employee per month for essential hiring and onboarding services, employee self-service functionality, and digital document tools. We like how you can customize the software with a variety of add-on services, like benefits administration, payroll processing, and time off and time tracking. With GoCo’s Workflow add-on, you can simplify your company’s HR processes by automating HR tasks. For example, you can streamline your onboarding process by standardizing new-hire packets, training and orientation, and onboarding checklists. With GoCo’s recent AI integration capabilities, drafting and managing employee documents is a breeze as well. You can also automate offboarding checklists, travel and promotion requests, performance reviews, employee surveys, and equipment requests.

Automating an HR process with GoCo is as easy as creating a workflow template (e.g., create tasks, collect data, set due dates, customize permissions), collaborating with others (e.g., assigning tasks to others in the organization), and tracking workflows (e.g., viewing HR workflows on one dashboard). With GoCo’s custom messaging features, you can easily deliver targeted messages to your staff. GoCo also offers custom reporting tools that provide a variety of visualization options along with sorting, filtering, grouping and aggregation capabilities. This is helpful when making educated HR decisions. If you have questions regarding GoCo or its many features, you can access customer support by phone or email. If you add on the HR Support on Demand feature, you can connect with certified HR professionals by live chat as well.

Zenefits by TriNet is a comprehensive HR software platform that has all of the features a startup needs to manage its HR needs. Zenefits offers multiple plans and add-on features with monthly and annual contracts. This allows a new business to create a plan that works best for it (and its budget). The lowest plan starts at just $8 per employee per month, which is competitive with other HR solutions on the market. Its modern and intuitive user interface is ideal for companies that want to get started on the platform without the steep learning curve that some other services have.

Zenefits offers vital HR services that help you manage your growing workforce, whether employees or independent contractors. For example, it provides automated employee onboarding with background check integration, e-signature capabilities, document management services and automated workflows. You have the flexibility to partner with one of Zenefits’ brokers to administer employee benefits, or you can use your own. This is especially ideal for startups, as you may or may not already have a benefits broker. Zenefits can create staffing schedules, track employee hours and time off, process payroll, and manage employee performance. Although the specific features you can access will depend on which Zenefits plan and add-ons you select, the platform can be easily scaled to meet the needs of your growing startup.

Although it may seem like an unlikely contender, as it’s primarily known for its project management and CRM software, Monday is now offering top-notch HR services and is our choice as the best solution for performance management. This software has many features to help you manage employee and team performance. For example, we like that it has a wealth of project management tools that can be easily customized to meet users’ needs. You can set up dependency settings, meaning certain tasks can only be started after other tasks have been completed. This helps ensure that tasks are being completed in order, keeping workers on task. Additionally, we like that you can view worker progress by various charts and timelines. If an employee is falling behind, you can quickly identify the problem to help them get back on track.

Other Monday features that aid in managing employee performance are its collaboration tools. With collaborative whiteboards, embedded documents and update notifications, employees, contractors and clients can easily work together in real time. Since Monday offers a multitude of security settings, you can ensure workers are accessing only information that is relevant to them.

Papaya Global is our choice as the best HR software for international businesses. If you have employees in one or more countries, Papaya Global helps manage your global workforce. It currently offers support for workers in more than 160 countries, which is a wider reach than many of the competitors we reviewed. If you don’t have a physical entity in the country where you are hiring, Papaya Global can act as your employer of record. We like that Papaya Global can run payroll for all worker types and helps you automatically pay workers in their local currencies, directly to their bank accounts.

The Papaya Global platform allows you to set customized roles and permissions for specific workers. This is a great way to easily manage what type of access workers can have and the actions they can take, as well as what type of data they can view, depending on who they are or where they’re located. Papaya Global is fully compliant with SOC2 requirements and GDPR requests, and it also helps facilitate compliant digital contract management for your global workforce. If you have any questions along the way, Papaya Global support can be reached by phone and webchat.

ADP is our choice as the best HR software for employee benefits administration. Whether you go with ADP for its HR software, HR outsourcing or PEO model, you can access ADP’s robust benefit administration capabilities. The company has connections with major healthcare companies, allowing you to tap into comprehensive benefits with flexible rate structures. If you’re new to the scene, ADP can help you set up your ADP plan and guide you through the benefits administration process.

We like that ADP offers services like employee discount programs, open enrollment administration, election changes, dependent and beneficiary tracking, life event processing, absence management, and benefits invoice reconciliation. ADP also helps you maintain legal compliance by offering an ACA compliance dashboard, COBRA administration and COBRA event triggers. It can even act as a liaison with carriers for evidence of insurability approvals and help with the reconciliation of carrier error reports. All of these benefit services combine to make for a seamless benefits administration process.