The 11 Best HR Management Tools in 2023

The digital landscape for HR management tools is constantly evolving. 

As new, more powerful technology becomes widely available and new ways of working become more embedded in our workplaces, the tools that we use to complete our work and manage our processes are changing faster than ever before.

2023 looks set to be offering a range of exciting HR management tools that can help you grasp all of the challenges, and the opportunities, that a new year presents.

Here are our 11 of the best HR management tools for 2023. 

What to consider when choosing a HR Management tool

When you’re choosing a HR management tool there are a few key points to consider to make sure that you’re buying the right tool for your needs. All of the tools we’ve selected, we’ve picked with these factors in mind.  

1. Cost

Most human resources management tools are included as part of a wider system with other tools. It’s rare to find just one tool available, unless it’s particularly specialised. Usually they are bundled into packages with other tools. This can mean that they have a potentially hefty price, because you’re getting access to a range of other tools at the same time. Some more wiley companies have started offering tailored costs, basically allowing you to ‘pick ‘n mix’ HR tools to create a system that more accurately reflects the needs of your organisation. 

2. Flexibility

There are an awful lot of HR tools out there and not all of them are as useful as they make out. Some, despite the flashy graphics, can be surprisingly unintuitive, clunky and hard-to-use. As a result, it’s best to make sure that the system you’re interested in using has the level of flexibility that you’re looking for. 

3. Try before you buy

Any HR management tool worth considering will allow you to trial it before you commit to signing up for it. If a company won’t let you trial a product, or won’t even demo it in front of you, run a mile. Requests for free trials are expected by HR management tool providers and are pretty standard in the industry.

1. Gusto

Gusto’s versatility and simplicity are some of the key factors that make it such a compelling HR tool. It’s suited best to smaller organisations but could probably be implemented on a larger scale with a bit of clever thinking. 

The beauty of Gusto is in its comprehensiveness. It’s a one-stop-shop for everything to do with HR management and combines the functionality of several tools into one. You can use it to process payroll, manage talent and employee benefits, hire and onboard employees and access detailed analytics and reporting.

2. Deputy

Deputy is another powerful all-in-one app but it really shines when it comes to its employee time management scheduling features. 

It allows you manage all aspects of scheduling easily: from providing user-friendly online timesheets and a deceptively simple clock-in/clock out system through to managing shifts and leave. 

Deputy is also great at using AI to automate bread-and-butter HR scheduling tasks, freeing you up to focus on other priorities at work.

3. Workable

Workable is a comprehensive recruitment tool that enables HR teams to manage all aspects of the hiring process in one place. Designed for organisations of all sizes, it allows you to collaborate with external hiring teams and it’s integrated with over 200 job sites, giving you access to a huge pool of potential job candidates for your vacancies. In short, it’s a pretty powerful tool for its price. 

Another key strength of Workable is its built-in passive candidate sourcing that allows you to target the best candidates for your role in a streamlined, more efficient process than other tools. It also makes great use of artificial intelligence and machine-learning, providing you with intelligent suggestions for possible candidates for your role. 

4. BambooHR

From small shoots, might bamboo groves grow. Aimed at small and medium-sized organisations, BambooHR is well suited to organisations that are transitioning into using digital HR management tools for the first time. 

Featuring all of the essential HR tools that you’ll need to manage a range of teams, BambooHR allows you to have a clear oversight of the most important data related to the employee lifecycle. You’ll be able to pay, hire, onboard and build employee culture, all from one central place, taking some of the hassle out of HR management. 

BambooHR can also automate particular areas of your practice too, like absence requests and payroll, which can help to improve your overall efficiency at work. 

5. Monday.com

Perfect for small HR teams that need to collaborate, Monday.com is particularly well suited to recruitment and onboarding processes, letting you automate some of the more mundane aspects of the processes and giving you a clear overview of each stage. The tool also gives you great visibility of employee wellbeing and learning & development.

Perhaps Monday.com’s biggest draw is the fact that it can be personalised relatively easily to meet the needs of your team and your situation, with the software allowing you to import data from other pieces of software, like Excel or Google Drive. 

6. Rippling

Rippling is one of the titans of HR management. As a piece of software, it’s obvious why it’s so popular. It gathers all of the essential human resources areas that you might need to manage in one place, like payroll, benefits, onboarding, offboarding, learning and development and analytics to name a few areas. It also features a practical IT management section, where you can directly organise the IT side of HR teams. 

Simple, endlessly versatile and nice to look too, you can also integrate the app with other team and project management software, like Slack, Google Workspace, Netsuite and Microsoft 365, giving you even further versatility. 

7. SageHR

You might associate the name Sage more with accounting and payroll rather than human resources but SageHR is a powerful HR-focused tool and one of the company’s best kept secrets.

Offered by the same company that owns the ubiquitous payroll software, SageHR is a powerful HR management tool that simplifies the work of a HR department by organising areas into distinct ’modules’. These modules can be added or taken away from your overall project, depending on the specific fields that are relevant to your organisation. 

SageHR integrates pretty seamlessly into other Sage systems, so it’s a practical choice if you know that your organisation already uses a product from the company and you want to blend your products together to work collaboratively. 

8. Lattice

Lattice is a HR management system that’s made up of a series of mix-and-match tools. You can use these to help you build a platform that’s perfectly suited to the needs of your business. It’s made up of a core Unified Workforce Management system and other modules that you can add on depending on what you need. 

One of the most unique functions that Lattice offers is its intuitive employee engagement module that allows you to listen to the views and thoughts of your workforce at scale. 

It’s actually one of the first tools that combines employee performance data with engagement data, letting you examine engagement in your company analytically and implement clear measures to improve it. 

9. BrightHR

Focusing on helping you simplify the management of functions like shifts and rotas, holidays, absence, expenses and training, BrightHR is a breath of fresh air when it comes to HR management tools.

With a clean, easy-to-use interface, it allows you to manage HR teams at scale whilst not losing any of the simplicity that makes it a joy to use. 

Some key additional perks of the platform is the fact that it offers unlimited cloud storage for HR documents, access to an employee assistance programme, Bright Wellbeing & Counselling, and free access to Bright Advice – an advice line that puts you in touch with HR experts when you need guidance. 

10. Eden Workplace

Particularly suited to hybrid workplaces, Eden Workplace allows you to manage teams both in-person and remotely. 

Eden can help you manage desk booking, room scheduling, visitor management, deliveries, team safety, performance management and employee surveys, making it a great all-round employee management system for a pandemic-era workplace. 

Pricing is worked out on an à la carte basis, with you only paying for features that you actually need and will use. This sets Eden apart from a lot of other competitors who offer flat prices that don’t give you a great level of choice over the product that you’re getting. 

11. Workday

Workday  is renowned for its intuitiveness and customisability, not to mention the detailed workforce planning that it allows you to do. You can adapt Workday to pretty much any HR context and use it to manage teams at scale, but it’s best suited for larger organisations. 

At its core, Workday lets you control the usual functions that you’d expect to see in a HR management system: think payroll, talent management etc.

But the beauty of the system comes in the advanced planning tools that you’ll have access to and the intelligent data core that powers the system. Workday allows you to chart organisations, consider potential opportunities and threats and use machine-learning to identify employees for promotion and development. If you’re looking to get your hands on a tool that can help with complex workforce planning, Workday is a good option to choose. 

2023 HR management tools: how to find the best?

As you can see, there are a wide range of HR tools available to help your organisation and HR department manage everything from payroll through to onboarding and development digitally. Consider the total package you’re getting, whether it reflects the specific needs of your organisation and whether or not you can try it out. If you bear those things in mind, finding the perfect HR management tool for your organisation this year will be easier than you think. 

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