Employee Onboarding Software: Enhancing New Hire Experience and Efficiency

Onboarding employees can be incredibly difficult, even more so if you don’t have the proper employee onboarding software in your toolbelt. In this article, we’ll teach you everything you need to know about employee onboarding software so you can transform your onboarding process and boost employee engagement.  

What is Employee Onboarding Software?

Employee onboarding software refers to a set of tools or resources that streamline the onboarding process. These resources work by streamlining and automating various tasks associated with onboarding new employees by ensuring every new hire integrates seamlessly into the organization as they transition into a new role. The primary goal of employee onboarding software is to make the orientation and training process more efficient, engaging, and consistent from person to person. This type of software can be an integration with HR systems or can exist as a stand-alone solution. 

By leveraging employee onboarding software, organizations can enhance the efficiency of the onboarding process, create a positive experience for new hires, boost employee engagement, and reduce the mental load that comes with manually conducting administrative tasks that are associated with the onboarding process. When new hires receive a positive onboarding process, they are more likely to feel supported and prepared for their roles, helping to increase employee engagement and retention. When browsing employee software, it's important to lookout for the following software features: 

• Employee portals 
• Task management 
• Electronic signatures
• Communication tools
• Feedback and evaluation 
• Compliance management 
• Training and development 
• Integration with HR systems 
• Checklists and progress tracking 
• Digital forms and documentation 

Benefits of Using Employee Onboarding Software

Implementing employee onboarding software can contribute significantly to the overall success of an organization by creating a positive and efficient onboarding experience for new hires. Additional benefits include increased efficiency and time management, consistency in hiring and compliance, improved employee experience and employee engagement, enhanced communication, task automation, cost savings, and more. 

Top Onboarding Software

1. Fellow

In order to effectively onboard new team members, your organization must be running in tip-top shape—and that’s where Fellow comes into play! Fellow is an all-encompassing meeting productivity software that helps organizations drive engagement and productivity by building better meeting habits before, during, and after every meeting. Fellow provides managers and their teams with built-in tools like collaborative meeting agendas, meeting guideline prompts, meeting templates, and real-time feedback functionality for fewer, more impactful meetings. If you're onboarding new teammates, you can leverage one of 8 pre-built meeting agenda templates that were built specifically to set new employees up for success! 

2. Eddy

Eddy is an employee management and onboarding software that empowers users to manage people, payroll, and HR processes. With several intuitive features including job posting functionality, application tracking, document storage, and instant messaging with job candidates, Eddy provides users with a comprehensive employee management solution. In addition, Eddy provides users with employee onboarding software, making it possible to invite new hires to meetings, send welcome messages, and handle preliminary paperwork digitally with electronic signing capability. 

You can access the starter plan with all essential people management functionality for free, or upgrade to one of two paid plans for additional functionality. No matter which plan you choose, you can try it for free.

G2 Rating: 4.8/5 

“I enjoy the ease of keeping track of everything. We use it to clock in and out and keep track of hourly employees. My favorite part is the training portion that allows me to track license and liability insurance expirations with documentation. We use it to keep track of birthdays. It is especially helpful in onboarding and keeping track of new employees and their accreditations and required documents.” -User Review

“Eddy is so great and extremely user friendly! It allows us to house everything in one place with very easy access for our staff. Also love that our applicant tracking is right there to just move over a candidate's information if they are hired.” -User Review

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3. Workday

Workday is a human resource management and employee onboarding software solution that was designed for teams that are experiencing rapid growth. Offering a suite of intuitive features including onboarding software, employee data management, payroll, and benefits administration, learning and development, performance management, and advanced analytics and reporting tools, Workday is the ideal automated onboarding solution to handle complex HR workflows. 

Unfortunately Workday does not offer a free plan, however you can contact the Workday sales department directly to learn more about your employee onboarding software options. 

G2 Rating: 4.0/5 

“Workday is really designed to make anything you need to do possible, if you understand the system and its possible configurations. I love that workday allows you to look into the history of business processes and to augment those processes as well. Workday is the best tool for HR and this comes after many years of working with ADP.”- User Review

“Doing something seemingly simple is either VERY difficult to figure out or impossible. For instance, changing the hours on a previously approved vacation time is something I don't think there is a way to do (if there is, I have never been able to figure it out) so I have to cancel the previous request and then re-enter a new one to change the time. Adjusting the time on a Vacation request SHOULD be a simple task. I could go on and on listing multiple examples like this where the system is next to impossible to figure out.”- User Review

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 4. Freshteam

Freshteam is where HR technology and employee onboarding software collide to create a comprehensive HR solution designed for small to medium sized businesses. Developed by Freshworks, Freshteam helps HR teams manage the entire recruitment lifecycle, onboarding and offboarding, time-off, and employee information and can be accessed from both desktop and mobile devices. 

If you're looking to modernize how employees engage with your HR department while centralizing operations for a more modern employee experience, Freshteam may be the employee onboarding software for you! The best part? You can get started for free.

G2 Rating: 4.4/5 

“Freshteams helps us to streamline communication and project management. It has helped our team to collaborate more efficiently and boost productivity. Managers can keep track of all leaves, attendance, and time management.” -User Review

“One downside of the tool is that there are a number of bugs which keep on occurring showing an error. Although these are not very frequent, they act as a setback for a fast-paced hiring environment. There also is this occurrence which has been very frequent in the past few months i.e., once you draft a mail to the candidate and send it across the page shows an error 404. Though it shows an error, yet the mail is sent to the candidate. At times the same mail is sent twice to the candidate. This is a major drawback in the software as the experience is not smooth enough.” -User Review

5. Rippling

Struggling to comply with onboarding best practices? Rippling takes the guesswork out of the onboarding process by automating employee onboarding, global payroll operations, time-off requests, tax withholdings, and benefits administration. Additionally, Rippling Ensures compliance with local, state, and federal regulations so you never have to worry about any legal implications. 

From onboarding to offboarding, Rippling empowers you to manage and automate all of your people operations. To get started, Rippling is $11/ user/ month. For additional functionality, you can contact Rippling directly for a customized quote. Whether you’re a workforce of 2 or 2,000, Rippling will help you streamline your onboarding process. 

G2 Rating: 4.8/5 

“Rippling is great for me as an admin at a start-up (1.5-year-old company in the insurtech space.) It allows me to review folks' training and assign them new ones from a large library of courses, view personnel and key information, and the SSO functionality is fantastic. We route almost all of our other tech tools through Rippling, so having a one-stop shop for all our logins is hugely helpful. They are also very responsive when we have issues. We usually hear back from them in one day.” -User Review

6. Zenefits

Zenefits is a people operations and employee onboarding software solution for HR payroll, and benefits. If you’ve been looking for a simple tool to help you streamline onboarding, benefits, payroll, and PTO, Zenefits eliminates several administrative tasks by automating practices that would otherwise fall on your plate. From PTO tracking to streamlined ORG charts, performance reviews, and much more, Zenefits encompasses everything you need to make people management easy. 

Zenefits offers three paid plans. Unlike other employee onboarding software, this tool allows you to choose your base plan and add additional functionality with “add-ons”. This means you can create a customized solution that caters to your unique needs. 

G2 Rating: 4.0/5 

“Zenefits would be perfect if only it had dedicated support reps assigned to customer accounts. The amount of time spent getting new/random customer service rep up to speed with the backstory and context for a question can be rather inefficient and frustrating. The implementation process took longer than originally estimated, but that's common with company transitions to new programs.” -User Review

“Zenefits houses all our core HR functions in one place - from payroll, to onboarding, to PTO, to benefits. We're a small team but we've still got to manage as many processes as a big organization. It's so great to have a platform that keeps it all running in sync without a lot of manual tracking, updating, calculating, emailing, and all that other stuff that we love to do.”- User Review

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7. Bamboo HR

Bamboo HR is a comprehensive people management and employee onboarding software solution that centralizes employee data and streamlines several HR practices through automation. Bamboo HR offers an interactive and user-friendly experience, making it easy to navigate for internal employees as well as new hires. With several intuitive features including pre boarding and onboarding support, time tracking, application tracking, payment processing, and performance assessments, Bamboo HR is both a comprehensive and efficient solution. 

To simplify your HR practices, you can get started with Bamboo HR by choosing from one of two plans. Reach out to the Bamboo HR team directly to learn more about which plan may be best for you. 

G2 Rating: 4.5/5 

“Despite BambooHR's many advantages, I think the pricing structure is one of its less appealing features. Being a tiny startup, we are particularly concerned with expenses, and BambooHR's pricing might be quite expensive for companies with little funding like us. It would be advantageous if BambooHR provided more customizable pricing options or plans designed to meet the requirements and phases of growth of smaller businesses like ours.” -User Review

 8. Deel

Deel is a global payroll and compliance platform that empowers users to streamline internal hiring and onboarding. From features that help create contracts, finalize hires, and manage payroll, Deel is an all-encompassing employee onboarding software solution that makes it possible to boost employee engagement and manage compliance with international labor laws when hiring globally. 

Deel has empowered thousands of organizations worldwide with unmatched speed and flexibility, with one easy-to-use system that centralizes global hiring, payroll, and HR. With comprehensive functionality comes a hefty price tag with Deel starting out at $599 a month. It's important to note that this figure is not per user.

 G2 Rating: 4.6/5 

“The extensive array of payment options provided by Deel greatly simplifies the process of paying our team. Whether it's regular salaries which we do bi-monthly or one-time expenses, payments can be effortlessly executed. The addition of new staff members is a straightforward and expeditious procedure. Setting up and generating contracts is a seamless experience. We rely on the Deel platform for bi-monthly salary disbursements, as well as for incorporating perks or expenses, and I find myself using the system at least on a weekly basis.” -User Review

“I've been a long-time user of the Deel platform, and their consistently prompt responses to my inquiries, coupled with their user-friendly and comprehensible help options, have made my experience highly satisfactory over the years. I do not have any complaints.” -User Review

9. Gusto

Gusto is an HR management and employee onboarding software solution that integrates seamlessly with several platforms like Slack, Xero, and QuickBooks. With several intuitive features like built in reporting for gathering insights on payroll, workforce, and employee surveys, hiring, employee onboarding, and full-service payroll functionality, benefits management, and performance reviews, Gusto provides small-to medium sized with a comprehensive HR management solution. 

With Gusto, you can get the payroll, benefits, and HR tools your organization needs in one place. Additionally, Gusto automatically calculates and syncs your teams’ hours, PTO, and holidays with Payroll. The best part? Gusto offers flexible plans and features with honest pricing and no hidden fees. Plans start out at just $40/month plus $6/ month/ person and extend to customized quotes for premium solutions. 

G2 Rating: 4.3/5 

“As a small business owner, finding a HR platform that allowed the option to customize the services was a challenge until we stumbled upon Gusto. During our research, we found that the majority of the competitors' platforms and products were too complex for our needs. After reading the reviews for Gusto, we decided to give it a shot and what a great decision it has been! What we like most: Auto-Pilot Payroll option, taxes are automatically filed, and assistance with staying compliant. Gusto has been extremely beneficial for us. We highly recommend Gusto to any small business looking for a reliable, all-in-one HR solution.” -User Review

Invest in Employee Onboarding Software Today 

The long-term benefits of investing in employee onboarding software are incomparable. Taking the tips, tricks, and recommendations listed in this article into consideration when moving forward with employee onboarding software will ensure you have the resources and knowledge necessary to make an informed decision.