HR Software for Small Businesses

Why does your small business need HR Software?

Some HR challenges are common to businesses of all sizes. Small businesses, with their limited employee size and budget constraints, find it particularly difficult to handle them. Free HR software for small businesses can be their first step towards HR success. Here’s how HR software can take care of those challenges with ease:

Core capabilities of HR software

A small business may not have a dedicated HR team. HR responsibilities usually fall on the founders or one of the managers in the company. In such cases, that person solely takes care of sourcing, screening, hiring, promotions, payroll, and so on. It is humanely difficult to handle so many things at once. HR software makes it easier for the in-charge of these functions by simplifying and automating some processes.
Small businesses manage all their employee records on paper, Google Drive, or on a spreadsheet, prone to human error, and resulting in large processing time. With HR software, all the documents are accessible and organized efficiently.
The right software will let the HR focus on strategy, organization, leadership, performance management and can reduce the workload of the HR team.
With features like feedback submission, employee self-service, canned responses, and various integrations, HR can effortlessly provide a great candidate and employee experience, and help you improve your employer brand.

When should your small business use HR Software:

Many small businesses hesitate to invest in HR software, and some rightly so. This is because they might not spend as much time on HR/admin tasks or recruitment. However, in most other cases, one stands to gain more from such an investment than not. For instance, a small business that is hiring aggressively would need a dedicated HR team, along with an efficient system that can take care of the recruitment process. Here are 4 signs that tell you to invest in HR Software:

Candidate hiring is a black box: You are not able to have a clear view of what's happening with candidate resumes that come in, you are lost in all the communication between your company and the candidate and are struggling to track who has advanced to what stage of your hiring process. It's an obvious cry of help to get recruitment software that fits your small business.
Spreadsheets eat your time: Are you managing the payroll information, benefits, and employee expenses on spreadsheets? In that case, your system is prone to error, is time-consuming, not to mention, inefficient.
Your new hires are clueless and lost on their first day: Small business owners spend their time on analyzing numbers, and making strategic plans for the future. Onboarding plans are not really on their radar. Same applies to the managers, who are busy running the teams. In that process, onboarding and employee engagement often take a backseat, leaving your new employees disgruntled and clueless.
Buried in paperwork: All your employee records, onboarding, offboarding, contracts take up a lot desk space, (or of the cloud storage). A lot of time is wasted on processing these paperworks, updating them, getting them signed and so on.
Your company is growing aggressively: While it is a good thing, it is important to be prepared for the forthcoming complexities it might bring.
High employee turnover: With admin work, document management, compliance and other tasks, managers do not have the time to lead their team effectively and help them with their goals. Employees no longer feel connected to the organization and look for better pursuits.
Struggle with compliance: With so many responsibilities on their plate, managers find it difficult to stay on top of the company regulations, tax reforms, labor laws, and so on.
High turnover rates: With so many tasks eating up their time, small businesses cannot prioritize work culture and employee engagement, which costs them heavily as high employee turnover rates and acts as a barrier to their scaling journeys.

Choosing The Right HR Software For Your Small Business

The first thing to keep in mind while selecting HR software for your business is to have clarity on your requirements and key challenges. Where do your employees spend their time the most? Is it on payroll and benefits? Is document management the biggest problem? Are you looking for a tool that can help you with recruitment? Or do you want to provide a seamless onboarding experience to your candidates?
Once you identify your biggest problem, it becomes easy to find the right solution. Gone are those days when HR solutions were specifically for enterprise companies, keeping their pain points in mind. Identify software vendors that are built just to help small businesses manage their admin related tasks. These tools make life easy for the HR team, giving them more time to focus on people, culture, leadership and organizational development.
Be specific about the features you want in your HR Software. Ideally, HR Software for a small business should be able to help you with candidate sourcing, screening, interview scheduling and so on. It should take care of onboarding too, so that the new hires have an exceptional experience on their first day. It should be able to help you with document management so that no time is wasted on paperwork.
Performance management, benefits, payroll, are additional features that will help your team manage their HR responsibilities efficiently. Ensure that HR software is like your assistant, taking care of all those redundant tasks, and does not add to the existing workload. It should allow more time and resources on strategic business decisions.
Be sure to make use of the free trials that these software vendors offer and don't be in a hurry to pick one. Do extensive research and find out if the features offered by the product are customizable for your specific business needs.
Talk to your peers and colleagues from other companies on the software services/products they are using and get some feedback from them. Look for their reviews on sites like Product hunt, G2Crowd and so on.
Finally, figure out your budget and see how best it can be matched with your organizational needs and what the offerings of the products are.

Key Features in Small business HR Software:

Applicant Tracking system: HR teams do not have to spend the entire month trying to fill in one position. With an ATS solution, they can handle multiple job postings, screen and schedule interviews, send offer letters and do much more.
Employee Self-service: Don't keep your employees waiting on the paperwork and time-offs. Let them update their information, apply for time-off at the click of a button, and provide access to all the employee documents.
Employee onboarding: Give your new employees a great first day experience. Send them the onboarding kit way ahead of their day one. Get their feedback through experience surveys, collect their e-signatures on time, and help them socialise with the team.
Employee Database management: Have all your employee documents under one roof, making it easy to access for both for the employees and the HR team.
HR Reports: Take informed decisions with a powerful HR reporting system and contribute effectively to the organization’s growth.

Further, you can look for PTO management, HR reports, performance management, and other additional features too.

Here’s how Freshteam HR Software can help

Hiring becomes seamless

Right from candidate sourcing till sending an offer letter to the candidate, Freshteam will take care of all the processes, giving you more time to focus on providing an exceptional hiring experience to the candidates.

Best HR software for small business - seamless hiring

Provide a delightful onboarding experience

Don’t let the new hires feel clueless on their first day. With Freshteam onboarding, get started with all the paperworks and e-signatures the moment they accept the offer. Now, your new hire can spend their first day learning about their job responsibilities and socialising with the team.

Best HR software for small business - onboarding

Employee data at your fingertips

Next time, when an employee needs to change their address or update their phone number, they can do it directly using the employee self-service platform, without having to talk to the HR team. Everything gets done in a matter of seconds.

Best HR software for small business - Employee data

Bring all your documents in one place

Don’t run helter-skelter with paperwork. Freshteam will save all the documents under one roof. Employment contract, payslips, benefits, and similar documents will be saved under the individual employee’s profile, making it accessible to both the employees and the HR team.

Best HR software for small business - No paperwork

Stay on top of the Time-off

Let your employees know about your time-off policy and let them apply for time-offs in a single click. With time-off approvals and time-off reports, managers can plan the team's workflow in a better manner as well as act on absenteeism trends if they are a cause for concern.

Best HR software for small business - Time-off policy

Keep a hawk's eye on the HR reports

Numbers don’t lie. With curated and customizable reports, you can always know how your hiring process is faring. Learn which job board is more efficient, which recruiter did the highest number of interviews, which team hired the most, and a lot more.

Best HR software for small business - Customized reports

They love us. You will too.

“Before Freshteam, the recruitment process was such a drag. Now, only 25% of my time is spent on recruiting rather than the 75% for that day. Also, three hours spent on the onboarding takes less than 15 minutes with Freshteam, thus giving me a chance to bond with the new employee.”

Maria Schaeuffler

HR Manager

SunPower by Hooked on Solar

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“We track closing times to hire a person quite precisely, and we try to respect the SLAs that we set. With Freshteam, we did manage to close a position 10-20% faster. If I think about it, it's probably because it allows much faster communication and collaboration on the projects.”

Adrien Ulens

Deputy CEO

Gogoprint

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“With Freshteam, we are now able to track the complete employee lifecycle basically. We can quickly browse through the employee directory and employee profiles. We are also able to manage our employees’ onboarding, probation period, and offboarding smoothly via Freshteam”

Elona Attard

Customer Success Lead

Red Acre Ltd

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“Job posting was a headache and tracking applicants all over the place was a mammoth task. Freshteam has cut down that time by at least 3 times. I now actually look forward to going through our applicants.”