As more and more companies feel the pinch, streamlining processes is high on the agenda. One area that is ripe for automation is the laborious work of HR departments. That’s why we’ve put together the best HR automation tools out there on the market.
These are anything but carbon copies of each other. They cover different aspects of HR business process automation and show you as a manager what possibilities are out there. Some tools specialize in one area, while others take a more general approach, so deciding on the right HR automation tools for you all depends on what you already have in place.
Although costing slightly above others per user, Bitrix24 gives your team a huge array of features that cover your HR needs and much more. You can go from recruiting and employee scheduling straight to checking your marketing strategy with your team on a video call — all within Bitrix24. In this context, it works out cheaper than signing up for a mish-mash of different apps, putting Bitrix24 as one of the best HR automation tools for small businesses who need a full suite of features to do their job.
All these apps are connected without even having to set up integrations, and the automations are virtually endless. You can customize automations with dependencies to work specifically for your team. Approval workflows are just one of the streamlining examples that reduces vacation requests to instant notifications and a quick click.
Pricing in USD per team per month
Free (unlimited users): Free
Basic (5 users): $39
Standard (25 users): $79
Professional (unlimited users): $159
Comes with a wealth of other business tools
A huge amount of powerful automations and integrations
OysterHR is one of those automated HR tools that works much like an international hiring expert. It streamlines your hiring, payment, and employee care duties for teams all over the world so you can focus on the personal touch. With a huge database to draw on, Oyster’s HR automation software covers all those frustratingly difficult details that no human brain can learn by itself. This allows relatively small human resources departments to control worldwide companies.
Their global HR automation tools find the best localized employee benefits, calculate the cost of each employment, and pay on time in each individual’s preferred currency. Therefore, you can make respectable, well-informed offers quickly to ensure you hire that top talent.
Pricing in USD per employee per month
Lite: Free
Business: $399
Enterprise: Custom pricing
Country-specific compliance is great for risk management
Full employee onboarding and continued support
The big investment puts it out of reach for small businesses
BrightHR is one of the best HR automation tools on our list for its variety of features. Keep track of your staff attendance with a holiday calendar, sickness log, and shift planner, while taking your payments with their payroll reporting tool. It works perfectly for remote teams, with staff rotas to inform your employee scheduling and attendance reports to track who is online at any given time.
Although not to the same extent as Bitrix24, the BrightHR automation software combines with other tools, namely unlimited document storage space to keep all your staff records safe.
Pricing in GBP per employee per month
Connect: £4.28
Protect: £8.55
Prime: £13.25
Wide-reaching and varied HR business process automation
All the info you need at a glance
Dashboards aren’t easily customizable
Not available in the USA
Among the best HR automation tools for small companies, Personio helps to keep your payroll costs low by taking over a bunch of the more repetitive tasks your HR team has to deal with. They claim to save you up to 60 hours per month to give you more time to advance your strategic initiatives.
Unlike more specialist automated HR tools, Personio covers a wide range of functions from onboarding to employee offboarding and everything in between. Therefore, you can pull reports of your existing employee details, attendance, time off, and payroll, as you launch your next recruitment drive. Personio also offers employee training that you can set up in an automated workflow so each individual (and your team as a whole) can progress at a manageable rate.
Pricing in EUR per employee per month
Essential: €2.88
Professional: €4.43
Enterprise: Upon request
Competitive pricing
Far-reaching capabilities
Only available in Europe
Unlimited Users Free
FactorialHR falls right into the “all-in-one” category, rather than focusing on one area. All of its packages feature employee benefits management, documentation, task management, and communications tools, very similar to Bitrix24’s vast offering. At its best, it comes equipped with plenty of time-saving automations such as custom approval workflows and automatic notifications that ping the relevant people to keep everybody up to date.
Factorial’s pricing system is rather complicated, with three bundles available:
Core HR & Time Hub
Core HR & Talent Hub
Complete Bundle
While the introductory plans never go over $6 per person per month, the Enterprise package, which has customizable features, facial recognition, competency assessments, one-on-one tracking, and more, is only available on request.
Pricing in USD per employee per month (annual billing)
Business: $4
Business (Complete Bundle): $6
Enterprise: On request
A great all-rounder
14-day free trial
Little transparency for Enterprise costs
Sesame is an up-and-coming all-rounder based in Spain. Like Factorial and Bitrix24, it covers all your major bases within the HR department’s scope, but doesn’t go much beyond. That said, it has great integrations with apps like Google Drive and Slack to pick up the… slack (bad joke, we know).
You get a great array of recruitment tools, with automated job offers and automatic updates to all those involved in the process. Add in time management, company culture, and a healthy bunch of extra tools and you’ve got one of the best HR automation tools for your department. Although Sesame hasn’t quite established itself on the world stage yet, things are looking good for this new player.
Pricing in EUR per employee per month (annual billing)
SesameHR Starter: €3
SesameHR Professional: €4
SesameHR Professional: Upon request
Its e-signature feature is quite unique
A well-priced all-rounder
Still rather unproven compared to the rest on the list
TalentLMS is an employee training tool with a huge amount of training courses for your staff. It’s super-easy to set up, so your team can quickly get started with your compliance, onboarding, sales, customer service, or partner training — anything your team needs. It comes with templates that have been written and reviewed by experts to kick things off, before customizing your own specific in-house courses.
The TalentLMS free version is great for testing things out with up to five users and ten courses. This way, you can give it a go before you present it to your bosses. By the premium plan, you get a range of automations with dependencies to speed up your course assignment. For example, you can assign a new course when one is completed, two days later, or only if they have achieved a certain score on the first test.
Pricing in USD per team per month (annual billing)
Free: $0
Starter: $69
Basic: $149
Plus: $279
Premium: $459
Enterprise: Upon request
Constantly updating courses
Courses are short and engaging
Few other HR features
When looking for the best HR automation tools, you’re ultimately looking for something that makes your work easier, and that’s the ethos of Fuse Workforce Management. With a bit of careful work setting up your rules, you can rely on its automations to streamline your HR processes “from hire to retire”.
Clients point to the payroll tool as being one of the top functions it provides. It is fully integrated with an employee’s time management card which dramatically reduces error. Employees can access their own information too, which reduces the need for time wasting email back-and-forths.
Not available. Fully upon request.
Great customer service
Customizable automations
Some users find the interface to be unintuitive
Feel like your team is working in silos? Pingboard’s aim is to bring teams together with organizational charts, employee directories, and integrations between tools. By automating everything that goes on behind the scenes, each individual can dedicate more time to efficient, productive work.
A great feature among some of the best HR automation tools, all of Pingboard’s plans offer a 14-day introductory trial before you commit. That’s great news for teams on the lookout for a new tool, because frankly, Pingboard doesn’t offer the same varied functions as many others on this list.
Pricing in USD per month (annual billing)
Team (up to 50 users): $119
Company (up to 100 users): $249
Basic: $149
Plus: $279
Premium: $459
Enterprise: Upon request
Super-clear interface
Quite limited in its capabilities as an HR tool
Fairly pricey for what you get
Workbright focuses on the data collection side of HR with customizable forms that collect all your employee data and lays it out wherever you want it. The idea is that you’ll always have your information to hand, whether you’re hiring, onboarding, resolving conflict, or being audited.
It uses automations to send reminders for missing docs so you can onboard your staff without chasing up your new hires for every little detail. The effect is you reduce the work burden on your HR team when you launch big recruitment drives.
Pricing is approximate. Exact costs depend on add-ons and extras.
1 - 100 employees: $178
101 - 250 employees: $231
251 - 500 employees: $405
501 - 1000 employees: $636
1001 - 2500 employees: $1372
2501 - 5000 employees: $2166
5000+ employees: $3970
Excellent for compliance
Good automations
Limited to data collection and presentation
Goodhire is a specialist recruiting tool that runs background checks on your candidates and organizes drug tests. A great part of your risk management strategy, the Basic + plan covers and SSN trace, a sex offender registry search, global watchlist records, and national criminal records. Moving up to the Professional level, you can cover education and employment verification.
Working on just a click of a button, GoodHire is a great example of the best HR automation tools. It scours databases for crucial information while you can get on with other tasks (or even your coffee break!)
Based on pricing plans for 10 yearly checks or less.
Basic +: $29.99
Essential: $54.99
Professional: $79.99
Tailored background checks
Easy-to-navigate dashboard
Some locations for drug tests are impractical
Now you’ve got an idea of the best HR automation tools on the market, it’s up to you to decide which one you need.
However, if you’ve got limited resources, we would recommend getting the most bang for your buck with an all-rounder like Bitrix24. You can combine powerful tools such as an employee directory, organizational chart, intranet, time management, holiday approval, recruitment technology, and so much more all from one handy platform.
But the real bonus is that for the same affordable price, you can combine it with tools that span your entire business, such as project management software, a customer relationship management system, and all the communication channels you could dream of.
If that sounds like the kind of platform your company needs, sign up to Bitrix24 for free and see what all the fuss is about.