68 Must-have HR Tools you Should Know About in 2021

Full-Featured Systems

Full-featured systems provide a variety of tools to help you manage multiple HR aspects. At the least, this type of software usually includes an employee database, payroll, invoicing, taxes, onboarding, and reports. Here are several multifunctional systems:

• Offers a set of tools to make your business run smoothly. The platform has already built-in CRM, which opens up multiple opportunities. With this software, you can create comprehensive employee databases, knowledge bases, compile reports, communicate in real time, automate your workflows, and much more. The integrated CRM feature lets you keep all your data in a single system. A wide range of communication tools helps collaborate and organize your work with ease.

• This solution combines HR technologies with workforce management capabilities. It offers a comprehensive view of all customer information, payroll and taxes, onboarding, recruitment, document and workforce management, performance reviews, and artificial intelligence.

• This system is designed for small and medium businesses. It focuses on secure employee databases, onboarding, reporting and analytics, custom workflows, editing features, and performance management.

• It is a cloud-based solution suitable for businesses of all sizes. It offers a range of tools for HR management, payroll, workforce planning, learning, and others. The platform has a module for educational institutions that contains recruiting, curriculum management, records, and advising.

Recruitment

Efficient recruitment tools help speed up the process of hiring. This area of HR management includes the most comprehensive set of instruments that are used for applicant tracking, sourcing, onboarding, and pre-employment assessments. Here are various recruitment systems you may want to consider:

Sourcing and applicant tracking

• Allows businesses to automate the entire sourcing process from the qualification of candidates to the campaign distribution.

• This system includes such features as recruitment advertising, employee branding, programmatic job advertising, analytics, and tracking.

• Offers applicant tracking and social recruiting features. It allows HR teams to automate such processes as scheduling interviews and receiving approvals. The platform integrates with multiple applications through a partner program.

• The company provides comprehensive resume databases for finding both passive and active candidates. It collects resumes from thousands of online sources. They cover multiple industries and positions, which makes it easier to find the right candidate.

• Provides information about millions of software engineers and offers various tools to help you browse and filter this data.

• It enables you to search for the right candidates from all over the world. HiringSolved uses intelligent automation and advanced analytics to speed up the process of recruitment. It syncs with popular ATS and HRIS technologies.

• This sourcing project provides a database of qualified candidates that were pre-vetted for education, experience, and skills. You may customize technical assessments and send them to candidates for free.

• It contains resumes and social profiles from over 100 various sources. Its recruitment analytics tool helps you achieve faster results. You can use Careerbuilder's employer resource center that contains materials for recruiters, hiring managers, and CHROs. It is intended to improve the processes of hiring, onboarding, and employee management.

Job descriptions

• Uses artificial intelligence writing tools to analyze job descriptions and recruiter emails and helps improve their quality.

• This tool lets you find out how certain language patterns affect your recruitment processes and brand in general.

Job posting

• It is a good platform for advertising high-turnover positions in retail, customer service, restaurant, healthcare, transportation, and other spheres. The website uses the pay-for-performance model, which means that you pay only when an applicant interacts with your ad. The system can also integrate with your career website and advertise all your jobs that you wish more candidates to see.

• This website allows you to post and edit your job descriptions, set budgets to attract more people to your posts. Sponsored ads are ranked higher in the system's search results, whereas free posts lose visibility over time.

• When you submit a job on this platfrom, the system automatically posts it to over 200 other websites. It collects applications and stores in one place, so you can easily analyze them. Apart from this function, it offers assessments, interview scheduling, hiring templates, tutorials, and expert advice.

Candidate screening

• his platform uses the principles of industrial and organizational psychology and screening tests to help you find the perfect candidate. It allows companies to identify the key behavioral indicators needed to be suitable for a particular position.

• It is an assessment platform that offers personality and skill tests for any industry and position. It helps manage your candidate pipelines. You can also integrate assessments into your current systems and business processes.

• This tool provides a variety of aptitude tests created by leading experts, so you can use specific knowledge to assess your candidates.

• This assessment platform offers an extensive range of cognitive tests to allow companies to identify candidates with the right thinking skills. These assessments help predict how candidates will perform at work if they are hired. Its library contains a collection of topics that can be combined into customized tests to meet your requirements. The system exports score information into commonly used HR systems.

• Modern Hire. It uses automated interview scoring to eliminate bias and ensure more efficient hiring decisions. An AI-powered tool analyzes candidate responses and suggests scores based on job-relevant information and key skills linked to successful performance. It does not evaluate facial expressions or audio properties. The system is suitable for such industries as healthcare, financial services, telecommunications, retail, and insurance.

• This project provides an opportunity to conduct live interviews and assess coding skills in a real-time environment. Its in-built code editor supports over 20 programming languages and contains predefined code stubs for each question. It also offers a large collection of ready-to-use skill assessments designed by subject experts. You can create your own test, define the number of questions and its duration.

• It is a tech recruiting project. It offers online code tests and enables you to conduct tech interviews remotely. So you can screen engineers in a flexible way. Codility also provides a library of technical recruitment training materials that include free ebooks, guides, and other resources.

Digital interviewing

• It is a video interviewing platform. It helps simplify the process for remote or busy candidates. You can record all your interviews and analyze them later. All your recordings are kept in a centralized database.

• It is one of the leading platforms in video interviewing. The system integrates with applicant tracking and calendar systems to help you optimize hiring processes. Apart from digital interviewing, this software includes such features as conversational AI, assessments, and automated scheduling. It puts a strong focus on audio and video quality.

Objective recruitment

Some businesses apply the human resource tool of blind hiring. It implies anonymizing a candidate's personal information that usually includes their ethnic background, age, and gender. It allows hiring managers to be more objective when evaluating a candidate's knowledge and skills required for a certain position. Here are some platforms that offer such method:

• It focuses on reducing bias in your candidate selection process. The tool enables you to conduct blind interviews and evaluate people based on their skills and job readiness. It also offers a growth mindset assessment and workshop to help companies apply the concept of talents and skills being malleable, not fixed.

• It provides an opportunity to practice technical mock interviews with engineers from top companies and receive detailed feedback. Candidates can meet with their interviewers anonymously, only with chat and audio. It helps identify weak points and gain self-confidence.

Onboarding HR tools

• It lets you digitize the process of onboarding, increase employee engagement and motivation, and keep teams connected. The platform offers a demo version and a range of integrations.

• It provides a set of tools for strategic onboarding. Using this system helps automate the process of onboarding, create an easy experience for your new employees, and increase their retention.

• This software allows you to organize and manage hiring tasks and employee paperwork in a digital space. You can create a personalized welcome page for each new employee. The tool also includes such HR features as employee data management and performance, and time-off tracking. The platform offers a free trial version.

• Onboarding is one of the main functions of this software. It provides a single system of record, customizable templates, eSignature forms, and integration with E-Verify. Apart from onboarding, you can use such instruments as employee engagement, talent management, payroll, benefits administration, and time and attendance.

Talent Management

Talent management is intended to attract, hire, and retain high-performing workers. It improves business performance by using various practices that make employees more productive. Today, many companies realize that people are their most valuable asset, so they introduce various talent management strategies to keep their teams motivated.

Talent management instruments usually include this set of HR tools:

• Employee recruitment and onboarding;

• Performance management;

• Employee engagement;

• Education and development;

• Compensation and succession planning.

Using these instruments allows companies to streamline their talent management processes. Here are several tools you might find helpful:

• The platform offers a set of tools for all your talent management and learning needs. Using it helps identify gaps in skills and training. The package includes such features as a unified core HR, performance management, learning management system, analytics, and recruitment tools. Also, it provides a solution for Microsoft teams. You can test the system out for free.

• This software helps organizations recruit, develop, and engage their people. It focuses on improving access to education through online learning. The platform enables you to efficiently train your entire business ecosystem that may include partners, dealers, distributors, association members, and others. The company offers a free demo version.

Performance management

These HR tools mostly focus on performance management:

• This instrument provides an opportunity to use customizable forms for performance reviews, collect and analyze management data, and keep your team on track with real-time coaching. Other tools include 360 feedback, compensation recommendations, succession planning, and approval routing.

• The company presents itself as a human-centered platform that helps businesses unlock peak performance. It offers a multifaceted approach to performance reviews, real-time feedback, and employee recognition. Among other features are weekly check-ins and 1-on-1s agendas that help connect managers with their teams.

• This performance management software allows you to set SMART goals and OKRs, facilitate coaching conversations, provide feedback, and create engagement surveys. Also, the platform makes it easier to create performance reviews by using customizable questions, flexible scheduling, and automatic reminders. You may select a base review style. It can be a standard performance review, 360 feedback, leadership reviews, or you can create your own review settings from scratch.

• With Spidergap, you can create easy-to-understand feedback reports, customize questionnaires and email templates.

• Small improvements. This software makes it easy to define and set objectives, collect information that helps improve employee experience, conduct structured performance check-ins and 360s. The platform integrates with such tools as Gmail, Slack, Zapier, Okta, Sapling, and more.

Employee engagement HR tools

• This software is designed to help you build your company culture by recognizing and rewarding your employees. You can run award and incentive programs that include spot bonuses, wellness initiatives, and milestone celebrations. The system integrates with various collaboration tools and such instruments as Zenefits, ADP, Workday, Okta, OneLogin, and others. Recent bonuses can be shown in a public feed or displayed on screens in your workspace. It helps employees feel their work is recognized and valued.

• It helps increase employee engagement by providing effective recognition via Cheers for Peers and cultural value tags. You can receive detailed reports and get insight on how to improve your company culture. Apart from engagement management, TINYpulse offers such features as performance and coaching, annual surveys, and multiple integrations with external applications. You may request a free demo version.

• This human resource tool offers a range of features to measure and improve employee engagement. You can use automated dashboards to keep track of key indicators and determine priority topics, assign tasks and managers for your engagement initiatives. You may set notifications and reminders to ensure your tasks are completed. Encouraging conversations among team members is easy with org charts and instant messengers. Swile offers a free demo version.

• It offers such products as Connect, Recognize, Lead, and Listen. Motivosity enables you to improve communication on all levels and provides automatic translations between 71 languages. Other features include an influence currency to help teams recognize and appreciate each other, 1-on-1s, succession planning and priority tracking.

• With Officevibe, you can use customizable templates to get fully anonymous feedback from your team, create one-on-one agendas, and track progress. The system easily integrates into your workflows.

• It allows you to collect frequent and anonymous employee feedback, receive scientific QWL analysis that determines the performance of your workforce. This scientific method can expose the subtle weaknesses that other instruments cannot detect, and deliver in-depth reports. Employees may complete customized polls using any device. The platform has a demo version.

• Culture Amp. This software allows you to conduct research-backed surveys created by experts. You can customize them according to your needs. Its analytics tools include heatmaps, trend lines, text analysis, and others. Apart from employee engagement, it offers performance management and employee development features. The platform automatically syncs with your HR systems, so your people data is always up-to-date. External integrations include Workday, Namely, Personio, Rippling, and more. It also provides a library of expert resources for team leaders.

Education

Offering educational and training opportunities to your team provides you with a competitive advantage. It helps improve employee retention and has a positive impact on your business in general. Companies that provide comprehensive training programs have a higher profit margin than those that refuse to invest in corporate education.

To efficiently train your team, partners, and clients, you can use learning management systems (LMS). These systems enable you to create, manage, and deliver e-learning programs. With an LMS, employees may access their training materials from anywhere, which makes it easier to complete online education.

Here is a range of useful instruments:

• It is intended to help businesses create and manage their training activities, build and sell online courses, and track employee performance. It offers an intuitive interface, which makes learning an enjoyable process. You can customize your website within several hours since the system has high adaptability. The platform supports over 40 languages.

• It is an LMS and performance management platform that enables you to create onboarding programs, compliance training for various teams and departments. It has a mobile solution to provide easy access to training content.

• This cloud-based software allows you to create various types of learning content, such as onboarding and compliance training, customer and employee education, extended enterprise and marketing training, and more. It also provides a collection of ready-made courses that cover a range of soft skills your employees need to perform well at work. The system is mobile-optimized and supports iOS and Android platforms.

• This tool is designed to help companies create and deliver training content and measure its effectiveness. Docebo provides a set of analytics instruments to understand what impact your learning programs have on your business.

• It is a cloud-based solution that offers online learning for every segment of your business. It provides an opportunity to manage your entire training program from a secure, centralized location. It has an online library of professionally created, video-based courses that cover areas such as compliance, customer service, health and safety, cyber security, and others. The library is regularly updated and also contains workbooks, infographics, and handouts. The platform integrates with multiple software applications and information systems and provides access to API. You can access the system using mobile devices.

• iSpring Suite. It is a PowerPoint-based tool designed to help you create courses, quizzes, and video lessons. Its content library includes ready-made blocks with slide templates, character and location images. Access to API enables you to integrate it with various systems of your company. Integration with Zoom lets you conduct HD live meetings with your learners. The system automatically notifies users about upcoming events. The platform is mobile-friendly and provides round-the-clock technical support.

Productivity and Efficiency

Staying organized is crucial for HR departments since there are so many tasks to take care of. The following applications can help manage your work processes:

• It offers a unified workspace for each project or activity, which helps to centralize your data, tasks, and tools. With Wimi, you can control access to your workspace using its advanced access rights management.

• It is a simple-to-use platform for managing tasks and communication. Redbooth offers a wide range of functions, including dashboards, project timelines, productivity reports, and HD meetings.

• It is very useful for creating to-do lists and for strategic planning. You can assign tasks, so team members can see what work they need to prioritize and when it should be completed. The system syncs with over 100 external applications.

• With this software, you can customize your workflows using a visual board and a variety of templates. Groups, items, and updates are synchronized in real time. You can link visual boards together, send notifications to your team members, and add files.

• Using this platform will help you organize your documents, monitor projects, and interact with colleagues and external parties. It offers an online proofing tool that enables you to review and approve various files.

Communication

It is hard to imagine people without interacting with each other, especially at their workplace. Effective communication helps solve problems and make better decisions. Having reliable tools at your disposal ensures that important messages will not get lost. Here are some instruments you can use for efficient communication:

• This employee communication platform is intended to improve internal communication for organizations worldwide. Its all-in-one application provides many benefits, including streamlined communication and HR efforts, an excellent user experience, higher employee engagement, and accelerated data sharing. The app includes a news feed, so your employees can easily find important messages, newsletters, and any company updates. The platform also contains an extensive library of templates with pre-written content. You can edit the text according to your preferences. SnapComms offers a free trial version.

• It is a business messaging app that helps teams stay connected and get access to the information they need. With Slack, you can keep all your work communication in one system, collaborate with external teams, make voice and video calls. Its workflow builder enables you to automate your routine work inside and outside Slack. You do not need any coding skills for that. Another great function is file sharing. You can share documents, files, images, and videos from your computer, mobile device, or a cloud storage service. The system syncs with Google Drive, Office 365, Box, and more.

• It helps businesses streamline internal communications and enhance collaboration. The app simplifies the way team members organize, manage, share, and analyze content. The platform has a free trial edition.

• This internal communications app lets businesses connect every employee to important company updates. It includes such features as commenting, likes, local editors, and automatic translation. Instant push notifications make it hard to overlook an important message. The platform provides a range of templates to create one place for all your crucial content. For instance, guidelines, safety information, and training modules. The app syncs with your current HR tools. Team members can download it from any app store, and new employees may sign in for the first time using a company email address or an instant access code. You can request a free demo before purchasing the app.

• This unified communications and collaboration solution is designed to keep teams connected no matter where they are. It is widely used by small and mid-sized companies since the prices are affordable. The main features include phone calls, chats, online meetings, webinars, and trainings. The platform focuses on the quality of video and audio, so its GoToRoom function is designed to deliver an immersive meeting experience. It also syncs with your Google or Microsoft calendar, which makes it easy to join any meeting. You can subscribe to its resource center that contains a range of educational webinars, videos, and articles.

• It is an all-in-one cloud-based solution. Fuze is perfect for remote workers since it helps users communicate from anywhere and across various devices. Its main functions include calling, recording, video conferencing, instant messaging, and file sharing. The platform provides standard features of a PBX system while also offering a visual calling experience and screen sharing. It integrates with Google and Microsoft suites, Bullhorn, Office 365, Salesforce, and more.

• Webex by Cisco. It provides HD conferences with file sharing and collaboration features for various types of meetings, such as online training sessions, presentations, virtual events, staff meetings, and customer support. Other features include phone calls, team messaging, file sharing, audience engagement with polling, and real-time translation between multiple languages. The system is mobile optimized and is available on iOS, Android, and BlackBerry platforms.

• This software is primarily intended for delivering instant remote support to customers and employees. Apart from that, it offers an efficient collaboration platform for conducting meetings, presentations, and training webinars.

• It unites your conversations, work items, and tools in one system. The platform provides group and personal chats for effective communication. You can see updates from other tools, receive notifications, use screen sharing, and invite external users to join your team discussions. Flowdock integrates with a wide range of external applications, such as Asana, Assembla, Aha, Breeze, Blossom, and many more.

• It is designed for organizations of any size to help build efficient communication. The main features include personalized news streams, urgent notifications, social networking, file sharing, real-time chats, and private messaging. It has a resource library with e-books, blogs, infographics, case studies, whitepapers, and resource kits.

• This project offers a private team network for secure collaboration. It enables more control over private communication. The key features are text chats, calls, broadcast messages, chat rooms, screenshots, screen sharing, and interactive messaging. It provides a demo version.