- monday.com: Best overall
- Paycor: Best for larger companies
- BambooHR: Best for employee satisfaction
- Workday: Best for managing global employees
- Rippling: Best for training employees
- Zenefits: Best for goal management
- ClickUp: Best for customizable solutions
- UKG Pro: Best for life-work management
- ADP Workforce Now: Best for new hire onboarding
- Sage HR: Best for performance reviews
Updated: Aug 2, 2024, 10:46pm
Managing the people at your company is a core part of your role in human resources (HR). To do that efficiently, you need employee management software that gives you full control over onboarding, benefits administration, scheduling and more. The leading employee management apps include these features as well as internal communication capabilities and all-digital paperwork. Forbes Advisor has compiled a list of the best employee management software to help you discover the right solution for your business.
- The Best Employee Management Software of 2024
- Why You Can Trust Forbes Advisor Small Business
- Forbes Advisor Ratings
- What Is Employee Management Software?
- How To Choose the Best Employee Management Software
- How Much Does Employee Management Software Cost?
- Methodology
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
- Next Up In Business
The Best Employee Management Software of 2024
Why You Can Trust Forbes Advisor Small Business
The Forbes Advisor Small Business team is committed to bringing you unbiased rankings and information with full editorial independence. We use product data, strategic methodologies and expert insights to inform all of our content and guide you in making the best decisions for your business journey.
We reviewed 25 HR management systems using a detailed methodology to help you choose from the 10 best employee management software for small businesses. Our ratings consider factors, including general and unique features, customer reviews on third-party sites, pricing and our own expert scoring system. All ratings are determined solely by our editorial team.
Forbes Advisor Ratings
Company | Forbes Advisor Rating | Starting price | Free trial | Standout features | LEARN MORE | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
monday.com | 5.0 | Free; $9 per seat, per month (three-seat minimum) | 14 days | Highly customizable, flexible and user-friendly | View More | ||||
Paycor | 4.9 | Must contact for quote | 30 days | Real-time notifications and reminders, let employees pick shifts, surveys | Learn More | On Paycor's Website | |||
BambooHR | 4.6 | Must contact for quote | Seven days | Employee records, time tracking, payroll, satisfaction tools | Learn More | On BambooHR's Website | |||
Workday | 4.6 | Must contact for quote | By request | Payroll, scheduling, absence management | Learn More | Read Forbes' Review | |||
Rippling | 4.5 | $8 per user per month | Not available | Manage HR, IT and finance in one place | Learn More | On Rippling's Website | |||
Zenefits | 4.5 | $8 per month, per employee | 14 days | Scheduling, time off tracking, automated onboarding | View More | ||||
ClickUp | 4.4 | Free; $7 per member, per month (billed annually) | Not available | Highly flexible project management software, prebuilt templates | Learn More | On ClickUp's Website | |||
UKG Pro | 4.2 | Must contact for quote | Not available | AI integrations, real-time productivity analytics and custom employee groups | Learn More | Read Forbes' Review | |||
ADP Workforce Now | 4.1 | Must contact for quote | Not available | Employee development tracking, custom reports and surveys and onboarding workflows | Learn More | Read Forbes' Review | |||
Sage HR | 4.0 | $6 per employee, per month | 30 days | Custom workflow builder, custom employee fields and shared vacation calendar | Learn More | Read Forbes' Review |
What Is Employee Management Software?
Employee management software helps HR professionals streamline and automate tasks related to managing employees. It provides an all-in-one solution for handling a wide range of human resource functions, from onboarding to training to scheduling. With employee management software, you can reduce your workload while enhancing productivity, communication and collaboration across your organization.
How To Choose the Best Employee Management Software
Choosing the best employee management software depends on your company’s specific needs. Here are a few helpful tips to get you thinking about what you might really want in this type of software.
Essential Features
- Automation features: Automation features let you set up certain actions based on predetermined factors to save you time.
- Scheduling and PTO: Being able to track who’s working and when is a major feature of employee management software.
- Hierarchical company views: A great software provides accurate and up-to-date job titles, salaries, skills and contact information for every employee on staff.
- Performance reviews: Whether it’s 360 feedback or simple manager notes, the software you choose should have some way to track how an employee is performing.
- Employee satisfaction tracking: This might come in the form of employee surveys or feedback modules and should include a way to analyze the results, either through sentiment analysis or statistics.
- Benefits administration: Benefits administration includes health insurance, life insurance and other perks you offer your employees.
- Payroll: Because payroll so often ties into scheduling and hour tracking, it should all be integrated into the same program for simplicity’s sake.
- Learning management: Employees should never stagnate, so you want software that offers training and learning modules.
Software Integrations
Browse each software’s app integration list before nailing down your selection to make sure it’s compatible with the other software you already use. Why is this important? It can streamline your efforts and eliminate double entry of data across multiple platforms.
For example, you might want your employee management software to integrate with any external accounting software or payroll systems you use, such as QuickBooks or Gusto. It might also make sense to integrate with communication or project management tools, such as Slack or Asana.
Support and Ease of Use
The best employee management software has multiple forms of customer support available 24/7. Always check what forms of customer support a company offers. Does it have a phone number you can call if you have a quick question? Or does it only offer online chat support?
As for ease of use, try to demo a product before using it. That way, you can get a feel for the software and check out the user interface and layout. You might also read reviews to see how other users have rated the usability of the software. Ideally, you want software that has good UX and a mobile app for on-the-go management.
How Much Does Employee Management Software Cost?
Based on our research, employee management software can cost anywhere from $350 to $1,000 a month for a 50-person company. Prices may go down if you employ fewer people or up if you have more than that.
Most employee management software providers price the software based on the number of users. There may be a set fee per month and then an additional charge for every employee.
Some software options also have an add-on structure, where you pay for different modules you want. This can sometimes be cheaper if you just want a few features, but if you want every available feature, it might end up being more expensive than an all-in-one solution.
Methodology
To curate the list of the best employee management software, we started with 25 of the top HR systems on the market. Then, we ranked them all in five different areas. Each criterion had a different weight depending on how important it is for employee managers:
Here are some of the categories Forbes Advisor used to rank the providers that made the top of the list.
Pricing – 10%
Factors, such as upfront pricing, offering a free trial and the number of different pricing plans a provider offered, all factored in our rankings for employee management software. Companies with transparent pricing received slightly higher ratings than those offering custom pricing after prospective customers fill out a lead capture form or make a call to a sales department. Pricing accounted for 10% of our scoring.
General Features – 30%
The number of available general features software offers allowed it to fare better in our rankings than those with limited features. Some of the general features we looked for in this category included mobile app access, providing peer reviews and an applicant tracking system (ATS) and allowing users to provide reviews and offer employee feedback. Benefits administration, reporting dashboards and task assigning and management capabilities also scored well in our metrics. General features added up to 30% of the total score.
Additional Features – 20%
We also wanted to ensure each software provider offered unique features that customers would find useful. Some of the most important ones we looked for included third-party software integrations, shift scheduling and engagement tools, tax functionality and custom branding. Offering PTO tracking and live customer support was also good-to-have features for each provider. We weighted additional features as 20% of our final score.
Third-party Reviews – 10%
We considered reviews from real users of the software as part of our evaluation. We looked at products scoring 3.5 or higher out of 5 on G2 and Capterra and having at least 300 reviews that score that high on both sites to get the fullest picture of reality and reduce bias. These reviews accounted for 15% of the total score.
Expert Analysis – 30%
Our final analysis considered each software in relation to each one’s stand-out features, value for the money, high popularity and ease of use, with the provider doing better in each of these criteria scoring higher. Altogether, this made up 30% of the total score.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is the best employee management software?
Our top pick for employee management software is monday.com because it lets you manage every aspect of an employee’s development, pay and benefits all from one centralized workspace. Learn more in our monday.com review.
What is the purpose of employee management software?
With employee management software, you can track employees’ performance and help them meet their goals. You can also monitor their hours and ensure they’re being paid appropriately. For extra help with that, you may want dedicated payroll software as well.
What are the benefits of employee management software?
Employee management software can make it far easier to onboard, train and schedule employees. It also simplifies benefits administration, payroll and employee records. On the whole, it should save you a ton of time and give you more insights into employee performance and satisfaction.
What features are desirable in employee management software?
Some of the features to look for in employee management software include a time tracker, shift scheduling system, attendance management system, central employee database, performance management system, HR workflow automation and integrations with third-party applications and software.