• Indeed: Best for general talent needs and those who want their openings seen on the most used job board for job seekers.
• ZipRecruiter: Best for industry-specific talent and sourcing multiple positions at once.

ZipRecruiter vs Indeed: Which platform is right for you?

Pricing

Subscription-based

Sponsored ad-based

Candidate sourcing

Job post distributor

Job post aggregator

Candidate management

Employer dashboard and built-in ATS

Employer dashboard and ATS hybrid

Applicant experience

Apply in ZipRecruiter

Occasionally have to apply on other sources

Reporting

Job posting insights

Job market trends and job posting insights

Visit ZipRecruiter

Visit Indeed

ZipRecruiter

ZipRecruiter has a wide job posting distribution network of over 100 job boards. This means you can post your open positions and ZipRecruiter automatically syndicates them to all of the job boards in its network.

ZipRecruiter also has an intuitive artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm that parses applicant résumés, determines if they may be a match for the open role, and invites candidates to apply. If you have massive hiring quotas and need to fill positions quickly, these features can amass a qualified candidate pool with little effort.

Despite this, the large volume of applications that ZipRecruiter sources for an open job position can be overwhelming. This may be a turn-off if you need more time or resources to screen candidates closely. However, larger employers may appreciate the number of applications, as it allows them to be choosier in their selection without worrying about a lack of qualified applicants.

Indeed

Indeed is perfect if you’re sourcing talent on a budget because it is free. You can post as many open positions as needed without buying into a subscription-based plan.

In addition, you have access to Indeed’s free job hiring insights tool, where you can view trends in job-specific roles. This allows you to strategically pinpoint marketplaces without posting your open position on multiple job boards.

There is one major drawback: Because Indeed is a free tool for both recruiters and job seekers, it is easy for job openings to get lost in the mix of competing job posts. Unless you pay to get your job posting sponsored, Indeed may not be the right fit for sourcing talent for urgently needed positions.

ZipRecruiter vs Indeed: A detailed comparison

Pricing

ZipRecruiter and Indeed follow different pricing ideologies. ZipRecruiter has a subscription-based tier model, whereas Indeed’s pricing requires the purchase of ad space to reach a wider audience. Which model works better depends on several factors, such as hiring needs, budgetary constraints, and the nature of the open role itself.

Pricing

$16 – $24 per post per day; Monthly packages (starting at $299)

Free to post; Sponsored job postings (starting at $5 per day)

Free Plan

No

Yes

Free Trial

Yes

N/A

Budget Control

No

Yes

Candidate sourcing

Although ZipRecruiter and Indeed are job boards in name, how they source candidates differs significantly. As a job distributor, ZipRecruiter focuses on getting job posts to appear in as many places as possible. Meanwhile, as a job aggregator, Indeed collects as many job posts from around the web as possible to appear in one place. Determining the best method ultimately depends on how you plan to interact with each solution during the recruitment process.

ZipRecruiter

ZipRecruiter automatically distributes your job posts to over 100 job boards across the web, except for competitors like Indeed, Monster, and CareerBuilder. ZipRecruiter’s primary goal is to get as many relevant job seekers to see the job post as possible. To aid in this effort, ZipRecruiter uses AI to scan résumés from other job boards and invite qualified candidates to apply.

Depending on the subscription tier, you can leverage additional tools, such as TrafficBoost to promote your position further to subscribers of ZipRecruiter emails. If you have significant hiring needs and are searching for a candidate in highly specialized roles, there is a greater likelihood of a qualified candidate seeing your job post.

However, because ZipRecruiter casts such a wide net when searching for candidates and does not regulate the number of applications received, there is a potential for human resources (HR) teams to be flooded with applicants.

While ZipRecruiter offers screening capabilities to whittle down candidates, small businesses may need more than one person to evaluate incoming candidate applications. On the other hand, larger companies with the resources to effectively manage candidates may appreciate the steady stream of applicants to choose from if a new hire does not work out.

Indeed

Unlike ZipRecruiter, Indeed does not distribute job postings but aggregates them from across the web. In other words, Indeed functions similarly to a job search engine. Job seekers can instantly see job openings from hundreds of online job boards, including specific industries such as engineering, medicine, education, or nonprofits.

This approach can be either a benefit or a drawback for recruiting teams. On the one hand, job aggregator sites like Indeed are attractive to candidates—it functions as one-stop-shopping for open job opportunities. On the other hand, you are at risk of getting your job postings lost in the mix because Indeed does not distribute their postings elsewhere.

Unless you sponsor your job posting and use extra features like Instant Match to increase visibility, you are limited to search result pages in either Indeed or Google. If you are looking to source candidates quickly, you may need to post your open positions to both a career aggregator site like Indeed and a job distributor like ZipRecruiter to increase qualified applicant counts.

Which to choose for candidate sourcing?

ZipRecruiter. Here’s why: By posting to multiple other job search sites, ZipRecruiter garners more traffic to a job post, so you can receive potential candidates quickly. In contrast, as a job aggregator, Indeed’s approach is more job seeker-friendly, but this can hurt your chances of sticking out among competing postings.

Visit ZipRecruiter

Candidate management

Neither ZipRecruiter nor Indeed are complete applicant tracking systems; the tools for managing candidates once sourced are limited.

Both solutions utilize an employer dashboard that collects job applicants in one location to be filtered and screened. Although both ZipRecruiter and Indeed leverage screening questions to assist in ranking qualified candidates, Indeed includes additional features, like skills assessments and interview scheduling, to streamline the hiring process.

Employer Dashboard

Yes

Yes

Screening Questions

Yes

Yes

Skills Assessments

No

Yes

Interview Scheduling

No

Yes

Candidate management software can help you during the hiring process. Read more: Top Candidate Relationship Management Software

ZipRecruiter

ZipRecruiter provides two ways to screen candidates: through screening questions developed by the employer or through ZipRecruiter’s AI. You can use screening questions to reduce the number of applicants for manual screening. These questions can range from simple yes-or-no questions to free-form questions to understand a candidate’s experience better. You can even mark “deal breaker” to hide applicants who did not answer the question satisfactorily.

ZipRecruiter’s AI parses résumés and places potentially great matches higher up in the dashboard over others. After reviewing the résumés and applications, you can then rate the pre-sorted candidates to train the AI to select candidates to fit your criteria more accurately.

Unless integrated with an ATS solution, you will have to look through each candidate’s application manually and reach out directly to candidates to arrange an interview, conduct background checks or reference checks, or collect additional assessments. Because of this, ZipRecruiter may not be cost-effective for small businesses that use it as their only hiring tool.

Indeed

Compared to ZipRecruiter, Indeed bridges the gap between a regular job board and an ATS. Employers can create “screener” questions, similar to ZipRecruiter, to narrow down qualified candidates. Indeed also allows you to select deal-breaker questions to deprioritize candidates who do not answer satisfactorily.

However, qualified candidates can be further filtered using skills assessment, giving you access to over 200 skills tests ranging from data entry to automotive maintenance and even a phone interview for applicants to record responses. You can then compare candidate applications, résumés, and assessments and advance the candidates that best satisfy your requirements.

Indeed includes native interview scheduling for candidates. This, along with Indeed’s skill assessments, screener questions, and filtering functions, helps to quickly develop a shortlist of top candidates. Additional capabilities like messaging candidates, email templates, and note sharing allow you to collaborate with internal stakeholders to streamline hiring without integrating third-party services.

Indeed has the feel of a large-scale ATS without the associated cost. With features to manage candidates from application to job acceptance, Indeed makes the hiring process more efficient, even for businesses with limited hiring needs.

Which to choose for candidate management?

Indeed. Here’s why: Indeed includes ATS functions, such as skills assessments and interview scheduling, to quickly pinpoint qualified candidates to move to the next hiring stage. Moreover, because these features are all native to Indeed, you don’t have to spend time or money bouncing from one solution to another.

Visit Indeed

Applicant experience

To reach suitable candidates, consider what aspects are most important to job seekers when interacting with job listing sites. The best sites allow job seekers to quickly identify positions that fit their skill set, assist in making their applications stand out, and provide opportunities for engagement with hiring employers.

ZipRecruiter and Indeed are free for job seekers and include mobile applications to easily apply to positions from any device. Beyond this, ZipRecruiter and Indeed offer different functions to attract job seekers.

Mobile App

Yes

Yes

Company Pages

No

Yes

AI Assistant

Yes

No

ZipRecruiter

Because it is a job distribution platform, when job seekers use ZipRecruiter, they are applying to positions initially posted to the site and not drawn from other job boards. This means job seekers can apply to open positions with the information uploaded in their ZipRecruiter profile, including any résumés and CVs, without having to repeatedly fill out the same information. For some job posts, job seekers also have the option to apply with one click, further speeding up the application process.

Job seekers can also take advantage of ZipRecruiter’s personal recruitment assistant, “Phil.” A personification of ZipRecruiter’s AI technology, Phil assists job seekers during the hiring process by automatically emailing candidates job alerts, optimizing profiles by adding skills based on their résumés, and even pitching top job seekers directly to employers.

ZipRecruiter’s main appeal to job seekers is its time-saving capabilities, allowing candidates to apply for several jobs with minimal effort. ZipRecruiter’s AI also provides job seekers with a steady supply of open opportunities fitting their skill sets, so they do not have to search for opportunities themselves. As a result, job seekers needing to find a new position fast have a better chance using ZipRecruiter, as it is actively working to find roles, even when they are not using the platform.

Indeed

In contrast to ZipRecruiter, Indeed’s approach to the applicant experience is slightly more nuanced. For example, Indeed does not have an AI pitching job seeker profiles to employers. Moreover, as a job aggregator website, the application process on Indeed can be lengthy for job seekers, as Indeed may direct them to apply on company websites. Instead, because Indeed has been a staple online job board since 2004, it relies on its brand recognition to pull in job seekers and recruiters alike.

Since it is harder for job seekers to apply to many jobs simultaneously, Indeed focuses on providing insights to candidates, so their applications are more intentional. For example, unlike ZipRecruiter, job seekers can see how many days since employers posted a job on each quick summary they see of a job on their homepage, without having to click and scroll through the entire ad. Job seekers can then quickly screen out stale job posts and focus on applying to jobs where there is a greater chance that employers will see their applications.

Like its sister company, Glassdoor, Indeed provides job seekers access to company pages to read company reviews, view open positions, and compare salaries and benefits. Therefore, even if job seekers have to spend more time searching for opportunities on Indeed, the platform allows them to make informed decisions during their job search instead of blindly applying to as many positions as possible.

Which to choose for applicant experience?

It’s a tie. Here’s why: Because both platforms are free for job seekers, they are likely to use both during their search. Moreover, each offers beneficial services to job seekers—from ZipRecruiter’s AI to improve efficiency to Indeed’s company database for insight into a business’s culture. If you can, you should consider utilizing both platforms to source the most complete candidate pool.

Visit Indeed

Visit ZipRecruiter

Reporting

Unless integrated with an ATS, both ZipRecruiter and Indeed offer little in the way of reporting analytics. However, through each platform’s respective recruiting pages, you can gain fundamental insights into the performance of your job postings, such as how long a job post has been active and the number of candidates who applied.

Here’s a quick overview of the metrics available in each platform:

Job Market Trends

No

Yes

Job Performance Pages

Yes

Yes

Job Post Impressions

No

Yes

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

No

Yes

Number of Applicants

Yes

Yes

Spending per Job

N/A

Yes

ZipRecruiter

Despite its price, ZipRecruiter’s reporting capabilities are sparse. Unless investing in a market analysis with specialists in ZipRecruiter’s enterprise solution, smaller businesses can access a basic report showing job location, date posted, TrafficBoost credits used, number of applicants, and conversion percentage.

ZipRecruiter provides a glimpse of salary ranges for similar positions based on the job and location when initially posting a job ad. Beyond that, you may need to integrate with an ATS solution to produce more meaningful metrics on talent acquisition, such as average time to fill, time to hire, or cost per hire.

Smaller companies without an ATS needing actionable insight into their recruitment efforts may have to resort to manual performance tracking methods. ZipRecruiter may not be the answer for companies requiring specific metrics to outperform their competition through a strategic hiring campaign without a large-scale budget.

Indeed

You can access Indeed’s Hiring Insights as long as you have a free account with Indeed. Hiring Insights gives you a macro-view of how a particular job is doing across the U.S. to stay ahead of the competition. For example, you can review data such as an insights map to compare talent pools, trendlines, competition scores, average salaries, and top search terms.

For more granular insights, you can use Indeed Analytics to gauge the performance of posted job ads. Compared to ZipRecruiter’s job performance page, Indeed’s analytics are considerably more thorough. In addition to location and number of candidates, you can see data such as impressions, click-through rates, and cost per click. You can then easily weigh the cost of your hiring efforts against the value of the applicants collected and adjust hiring tactics accordingly.

Which to choose for reporting?

Indeed. Here’s why: With free access to job market trend reports, Indeed makes it easy for you to research and create targeted hiring campaigns before posting a job ad. Unlike ZipRecruiter, Indeed posts job ads in areas that will make the most impact without spending time and money promoting them elsewhere.

Visit Indeed

Indeed vs ZipRecruiter: Ready to choose?

Is ZipRecruiter better than Indeed? That depends. Indeed and ZipRecruiter are two of the most prominent online job board players. Because both platforms are free to use by job seekers, they attract substantial talent pools. As a result, you can use both sites to collect the most diverse candidate pool. Of course, whichever platform you start with depends on what is most valuable to your recruitment efforts: ZipRecruiter for efficiency or Indeed for value.

While ZipRecruiter and Indeed are great ways to advertise your open job positions, their candidate management and reporting capabilities are rather simplistic. For more advanced features, check out our Applicant Tracking System Software Guide to browse solutions to enhance your hiring processes.

The post Indeed vs ZipRecruiter Comparison (2024) appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

Also read: HRIS vs HRMS vs HCM: What Is the Difference?

Rippling vs Gusto: Which is better?

The better overall pick is Rippling. Rippling’s more extensive product portfolio enables companies to do more over a longer period of time. So, unless your business is in an industry where it will reach maturity at mid-size, it’s worth investing in Rippling to scale alongside your team.

Also read: Top HRIS Systems

Prefer a video overview instead? Check it out below!

Rippling: Better for flexibility

Rippling offers a modular workforce management platform, called Rippling Unity, for all HR, finance, and IT data and processes. In addition to improving overall efficiency, the scalable, modular system simplifies your tech stack and eliminates the risk of data loss that comes with using disparate apps.

Depending on your team’s current needs and future goals, you can add individual features such as global payroll, learning management, and headcount planning as the business evolves. Similarly, IT and finance functions like app provisioning and expense management can be added as needed. The pricing for each module isn’t transparent, though, so you’ll have to conduct thorough cost comparisons to evaluate Rippling’s value compared to other solutions that offer what you need.

Also read: Top Rippling Alternatives and Competitors

Gusto: Better for affordability

Gusto started out as a payroll SaaS company, and it’s clear that payroll is its specialty. However, the software has since expanded to include a range of capabilities.

Its intuitive user interface, market-leading support, and affordable price point make it a popular HR software solution for many SMBs. Specifically, companies with fewer than 25 employees or those with complex payroll requirements are ideal Gusto customers.

Also read: Top Gusto Alternatives and Competitors

Rippling vs. Gusto: A detailed comparison

We took an in-depth look at Rippling and Gusto in the areas that will impact your purchasing decision:

Benefits administration

	Rippling’s Add-on	Gusto Simple
EDI	Yes	No
Mobile app	No	No
Compliance	Yes	Yes
Bring-your-own-broker	Yes	Yes

Rippling

Rippling’s benefits administration add-on automates tasks like benefits selection, deduction updates, and COBRA administration. The variety of ways you can set up benefits administration through Rippling’s add-on makes it more flexible than Gusto’s base benefits administration offering, but it comes at an extra cost.

Benefits options

You can choose from more than 4,000 Rippling-supported benefits plans from leading carriers like Aetna, Humana, and Blue Cross Blue Shield. You can also bring your own broker to Rippling and migrate your entire existing benefits packages to Rippling.

That way, employees don’t need to re-enroll or update any of their benefits information as a result of the migration. For new employees, Rippling prompts them during onboarding to select their benefits without intervention from an HR person.

Regulatory compliance

Rippling’s benefits administration includes automated ACA and COBRA compliance. For example, it disseminates ACA as well as COBRA notices and collects premium payments from former employees who elect to continue coverage. However, it doesn’t support HIPAA or ERISA compliance like Gusto does.

Try Rippling

Gusto

Gusto includes benefits administration in its base plan but charges an additional fee to use an external broker. If using a Gusto-brokered benefits provider is not an issue, the simplicity of the benefits selection and administration process makes Gusto a compelling choice.

Benefits selection

Gusto also offers a variety of no-cost (included), low-cost, and premium financial and health benefit options. While these à la carte benefits allow you to customize your benefits package, the costs may add up quickly.

For example, customers of any Gusto plan can add the following benefits:

• Workers’ compensation.
• HSAs and FSAs.
• Commuter benefits.

Rippling includes all three of these benefits, which puts it at an advantage over Gusto Simple.

Regulatory compliance

Gusto helps companies remain compliant and file the right paperwork with the right government agencies. Like Rippling, Gusto offers assistance with ACA and COBRA compliance. However, Gusto Simple also helps maintain compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA).

Gusto’s benefits administration features are included with every plan, and its lowest tier offers more breadth in compliance coverage than Rippling’s add-on. Gusto’s licensed advisors assist companies with benefits selection to put together competitive benefits packages for the right price.

Try Gusto

Which to choose for benefits administration?

It’s a tie. Here’s why:

In terms of managing and administering benefits, Rippling is the better choice. Though you have to opt for the add-on, Rippling’s benefits administration offers more flexibility. It accommodates a range of business situations by allowing you to use its brokered plans, bring your own broker, or migrate existing plans without increasing the total cost or interrupting employees’ coverage. 

Gusto wins for compliance in benefits administration. Gusto Simple includes compliance assistance for ACA, COBRA, HIPAA, and ERISA. In contrast, Rippling’s benefits administration add-on is more limited, covering ACA and COBRA only. Rippling customers have to add the Compliance 360 module to get more comprehensive compliance coverage. 

Try Rippling Try Gusto

Also read: 7 Questions to Consider Before Choosing a Benefits Administration System

Payroll

	Rippling’s Add-on	Gusto Simple
International full-time employee payroll	Yes	No
Mobile app	Yes	Yes
Compliance	Yes	Yes
Financial wellness	No	Yes

To see how Rippling and Gusto stack up against other payroll software tools, check out our Payroll Software Guide.

Rippling

Rippling offers full-service, automated payroll and tax filing for local, state, and federal agencies in the United States. Additionally, Rippling’s presence as a global employer of record (EOR) means you can expand your business internationally without setting up a local entity.

The global payroll function also localizes payroll for international teams, so employees can get paid in the appropriate currency without wasting time waiting for conversions and transfers. Plus, customers with access to this add-on can take advantage of Rippling’s in-country compliance experts to assist with complex laws or sensitive employment issues.

Also read: Top Global Payroll Solutions

Try Rippling

Gusto

One of Gusto’s biggest payroll features is AutoPilot, which automatically calculates and files payroll taxes based on up-to-date tax laws. Plus, employees can take advantage of early direct deposit, budgeting tools, and other financial wellness benefits via the Gusto Wallet app.

With respect to payroll compliance, Gusto helps employers send W-2s and 1099s to employees in a timely manner during tax season. For an additional fee, you can select the state tax registration add-on to let Gusto handle state and local paperwork.

However, Gusto Simple lacks the payroll compliance features that Rippling’s payroll add-on includes. To get the same functionality, Gusto Simple customers must upgrade to Plus.

Gusto also offers optional international payroll for contractors located in 95 countries and has launched a beta partnership with Remote to support part-time or full-time employees located abroad. Global payroll support has historically been one of Rippling’s main advantages over Gusto, so the launch of Gusto Global shifts the balance a bit.

Try Gusto

Which to choose for payroll?

Rippling. Here’s why:

Unless you only have employees in one state, it’s worth choosing Rippling’s payroll add-on. It offers many of the same automation and compliance features as Gusto and then some. You can also sync the benefits and time-tracking modules or integrate third-party software.

Furthermore, Rippling’s global payroll functionality is worth the investment to manage employee data, payroll, compliance, and more wherever your company operates.

Try Rippling

Also read: How to Choose the Right Small Business Payroll Software

Onboarding

	Rippling Unity	Gusto Simple
Native onboarding	Yes	Yes
Document management	Yes	Yes
Self-onboarding	Yes	Yes
Mobile onboarding	Yes	No
Customizable onboarding workflow	Yes	No

Rippling

Rippling Unity doesn’t include recruiting, so customers will need to either integrate with third-party recruiting software—provided they have the Enterprise tier—or add the Talent Management module. However, Rippling’s Unity tiers do include native, automated onboarding capabilities that require little intervention from HR staff.

Global onboarding

When a new employee is hired, an admin selects the new employee’s country and employment type — contractor, full-time, part-time, etc. — the start date, and whether the employee is eligible for benefits. From there, Rippling deploys the rest of the onboarding flow specifically for that country and employment type. Country-specific information is built into Rippling from the start, so HR staff only need to be concerned with correctly classifying each employee.

Rippling also reflects cultural differences in terminology for working conditions, so every field is tailored to the new employee’s work location. Localization of employee data saves HR staff time because they don’t have to research each country’s unique employee data identifiers or maintain duplicate versions of the same onboarding forms for each country.

A new employee in India, for instance, won’t be prompted to enter a Social Security number since those are for U.S.-based employees only. Instead, their form will ask for their Universal Account Number, and instead of salary, the offer letter and compensation section of the employee profile will display the cost to company.

Provisioning

Rippling Unity’s differentiating feature from Gusto’s onboarding is that it automatically provisions the new employee’s access to apps and tools they need to do their job. The native onboarding function can automatically add new employees to certain Slack channels, for example. As a bonus, new employees can complete onboarding from Rippling’s mobile app.

Try Rippling

Gusto

Gusto’s Simple plan offers native, albeit limited, onboarding functionality along with the option to integrate with third-party recruiting software. So, similar to Rippling, Gusto customers have to upgrade to unlock access to Gusto’s native recruiting tools like job postings and the applicant tracking system (ATS).

Onboarding checklist

Gusto’s onboarding features support customized offer letters, but the Simple plan is not customizable and is designed for a primarily U.S.-based workforce. Gusto’s onboarding checklist includes suggestions of typical stages in the onboarding process which should suffice if you have basic onboarding procedures. If you want more control over what to include in your onboarding workflow, though, you’ll need to upgrade to Plus or Premium.

Provisioning

Gusto Simple helps set up a new employee’s email account via Microsoft 365 or Gmail, but it stops short of full-service app or device provisioning. Gusto also requires new employees to complete onboarding tasks on a desktop device, as Gusto doesn’t provide mobile access to onboarding.

Try Gusto

Which to choose for onboarding?

Rippling. Here’s why:

Comparing Rippling and Gusto’s native onboarding features available in their respective basic tiers, Rippling’s Unity platform includes more robust automated functionality. With Gusto, you have to upgrade to get access to the same kind of functionality. Rippling’s mobile experience also makes it easier for employees to finish onboarding from any device.

Try Rippling

Rippling vs. Gusto: Which software is right for you?

The primary differentiator between Rippling and Gusto is geographic focus: Rippling targets companies hiring internationally, while Gusto focuses on companies that operate in the United States. Moreover, Rippling’s modular structure offers enough flexibility to support a business at each stage of growth.

Small, established companies that want budget-friendly flexibility should go with Gusto. Conversely, startups and mid-sized companies poised for rapid growth will likely save money in the long run by opting for Rippling.

If neither software meets your company’s unique needs, explore other solutions on the market through our HR Software Guide​​.

The post Rippling vs Gusto appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

Gusto vs Zenefits: A detailed comparison

Pricing

Zenefits and Gusto approach their pricing in unique ways, making it challenging to understand which vendor is more cost-effective. The cost analysis depends on what a company needs to accomplish and the size of its staff.

Gusto

Gusto’s pricing structure starts with a low base price and scales up depending on the number of users. It’s worth pointing out, however, that Gusto has a five-employee minimum. This means that even if a company has only three or four employees, they will be paying the same rate as if they had five.

Gusto offers three tiers of pricing for most businesses. The features each package includes are broken down in the table below:

	Simple	Plus	Premium
Base cost per month (USD)	$40	$60	Contact sales
Cost per user, per month (USD)	$6	$9	Contact sales
Payroll	Single-state	Multi-state	Multi-state
Onboarding	Basic	Advanced	Advanced
Recruiting	Not available	Basic	Basic
Gusto-brokered benefits administration	Included	Included	Included
Bring-your-own-broker	Not available	Add-on	Included
Time tracking	Third-party integration	Included	Included
Performance management	Not available	Not available	Included
Employee engagement	Not available	Not available	Included
Analytics	Basic	Advanced	Advanced
Customer support	Basic	Full, with optional upgrade available	Dedicated
Advisory services	Not available	Add-on	Included
Mobile app	Not available	Not available	Not available

Gusto also offers a contractor-only plan for businesses that outsource all of their staffing needs to freelancers and other contract workers. This plan includes unlimited contractor payments in all 50 states, plus the option to pay an additional fee for international contractor payments if needed. It also includes some necessary compliance features, like 1099-NEC forms and new hire reporting for required states.

The contractor-only plan is more affordable than the other plans, with a base cost of $35 (USD) plus $6 per contractor. However, the plan does not include any features for managing full-time employees, so it won’t be suitable for businesses that use both full-time staff and contractors.

Additionally, Gusto offers a range of services that companies can add to supplement the core features. These include:

• International contractor payments.
• State tax registration.
• Bring-your-own-broker.
• Workers’ compensation.
• HSAs and FSAs.
• Life and disability insurance.
• 401(k) retirement savings.
• 529 college savings.
• Commuter benefits.
• R&D tax credit services.
• Priority support.
• Federal and state compliance alerts.
• Direct access to certified HR experts.
• HR resource center.

Some add-ons, like workers’ compensation and commuter benefits, are available with all plans, but many are only available for the mid-range Plus tier. For example, customers who opt for the Simple tier don’t have the option to use their own health insurance broker, but Plus subscribers can pay an extra fee for this flexibility. Premium customers have this option included in their plan.

As a company’s list of needs grows, they may consider upgrading to the Premium tier rather than paying for each add-on individually. In these instances, Gusto’s total cost will likely be higher than what customers would pay for the same functionality with Zenefits.

Get a one-month free discount on your invoice after you subscribe and run your first payroll with Gusto. Other terms and conditions apply.

Zenefits

Zenefits’ approach to pricing is a bit more straightforward, but the per-user cost is higher than Gusto. However, Zenefits includes a wider range of core HR features in each plan rather than listing them as separate add-ons, so the total cost may be lower for businesses that need robust employee management tools.

The features included in each plan are broken down in the table below:

	Essentials	Growth	Zen
Cost per user, per month (USD)	$8	$16	$21
Payroll	Add-on	Add-on	Add-on
Automated onboarding	Included	Included	Included
Recruiting	Add-on	Add-on	Add-on
Zenefits-brokered benefits administration	Included	Included	Included
Bring-your-own-broker	Add-on	Add-on	Add-on
Time tracking	Included	Included	Included
Performance management	Not available	Included	Included
Employee engagement	Not available	Not available	Included
Analytics	Pre-set dashboard	Full people analytics and compensation management suite	Full people analytics and compensation management suite
Customer support	Included	Included	Included
Advisory services	Add-on	Add-on	Add-on
Mobile app	Included	Included	Included

Zenefits’ list of add-ons includes:

• Payroll.
• Advisory services.
• Bring your own broker.
• Recruiting.

Which to choose for pricing?

It’s a tie. Here’s why:

There are three primary distinctions to highlight in terms of pricing between Zenefits and Gusto:

1. Gusto includes payroll functions in every plan, whereas Zenefits only offers it as an add-on.
2. Gusto offers basic recruiting tools in its Plus and Premium plans, but Zenefits’ recruiting add-on is arguably a better investment for teams that need substantial recruiting support.
3. Zenefits’ middle package includes features like performance management, while Gusto users have to upgrade.

Gusto is more cost-effective for small businesses that have relatively basic needs beyond payroll. Zenefits, on the other hand, has more value for its price for a larger number of features and users. A smaller company that wants to keep costs down would likely find the right balance of budget and functionality with Gusto — that is, until the headcount warrants an upgrade to Gusto Premium or a switch to Zenefits Growth.

To illustrate, a company with 50 or more employees saves at least 15% in total cost when choosing Gusto’s middle plan, but adding on more functionality reduces the savings. For example, at $6 per month per employee for bring-your-own-broker, adding this to Gusto’s middle tier will cost $300 more per month, while Zenefits’ add-on would cost $250 more.

With this context in mind, Zenefits’ approach to pricing will have the biggest benefit for midsize companies that have ambitious growth plans for the near future, as they will money and stress in the long run, even if it means the short-term cost is higher than it would be with Gusto. Smaller companies, however, may prefer Gusto’s flexibility in adding extra functionality as needed.

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Benefits administration

Both Gusto and Zenefits allow customers to keep their existing benefits brokers, although this comes at an extra cost. This is valuable for companies that already have a benefits package but are looking to switch platforms for payroll, onboarding, or other functionalities.

Regardless of what benefits companies choose with these vendors, both of them help keep businesses compliant with the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Moreover, Gusto and Zenefits integrate data across employee onboarding, payroll, and benefits administration modules, eliminating the need for repetitive data entry.

In spite of great overlap in terms of benefits administration, Gusto and Zenefits differ in terms of set-up, compliance, carrier management, and mobile accessibility.

Here’s a quick overview of how Gusto and Zenefits compare in terms of benefits administration. They both offer compliance and bring-your-own-broker (BYOB) support, but they’re mirror opposites in their electronic data interchange (EDI), mobile app, and financial wellness offerings.

	Benefits Administration
	Gusto	Zenefits
EDI	no	y
Mobile app	n	y
Financial wellness	y	n
Compliance	y	y
BYOB	y	y

Gusto

Gusto’s benefits administration features are included with every plan. This is beneficial for businesses that need help with benefits as well as payroll, but companies that have an existing payroll solution may be paying for additional Gusto capabilities that they don’t need.

Benefits selection

Gusto’s licensed advisors assist companies with benefits selection to put together competitive benefits packages for the right price. Not only does this save time, but using these brokers also saves money, since bring-your-own-broker incurs an additional fee and isn’t available with Gusto’s lowest pricing tier.

Gusto offers a variety of no-cost (included), low-cost, and premium financial and health benefit options. While these á la carte benefits allow customers to customize their benefits packages, the costs may add up quickly.

For example, upgrading to one of the two higher price tiers (Plus and Premium) unlocks access to more of Gusto’s benefits, which include:

• Workers’ compensation.
• Health savings accounts (HSAs) and flexible spending accounts (FSAs).
• Commuter benefits.

With Zenefits, on the other hand, customers can add most benefits without worrying about increasing the total cost of maintaining the software.

Compliance

Gusto helps companies remain compliant and file the right paperwork with the right government agencies. It offers assistance with:

• Affordable Care Act (ACA).
• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
• Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA).

Yet, Zenefits helps with ACA, COBRA, and ERISA compliance but not for HIPAA. Moreover, Gusto has automated compliance alerts for state and federal regulations but only in its top two plans. Zenefits’ Compliance Assistant, on the other hand, is available with all plans.

EDI

One drawback to consider is that Gusto’s benefits administration features don’t support electronic data interchange (EDI). EDI connection provides a secure, convenient way to automatically communicate changes to carriers, such as an employer’s changes to the benefits package or an employee’s changes to their selection.

Not having EDI means HR teams will likely need to spend extra time and energy contacting carriers and making benefits changes manually during open enrollment.

Zenefits

Zenefits’ benefits offering is straightforward because it doesn’t separate benefits into different pricing groups like Gusto does. This makes Zenefits’ approach beneficial for businesses that want to manage a wide range of benefits from a single platform without adding to the overall cost. 

Benefits selection

Zenefits helps companies without a benefits strategy put together a customized benefits package but for an extra fee. Gusto, on the other hand, provides help via licensed advisors for all its plans. 

Compliance

While Gusto offers federal and state compliance alerts in its top two plans, Zenefits has more robust automation features for benefits administration compliance. Zenefits automates compliance through its Compliance Assistant, which is included in all plans. 

The Compliance Assistant helps companies stay on top of federal compliance regulations for benefits, payroll, and HR. It allows users to set custom deadline reminders and sync them to work calendars, so they never miss a deadline. 

The Compliance Assistant dashboard provides at-a-glance information about the status of the company’s compliance. This feature relieves HR staff of the burden of staying current with changing regulations.

EDI

EDI connection with insurance carriers is available with TriNet Zenefits as an add-on. This is especially useful for companies that offer a wide range of benefits and/or have a large workforce that exceeds the capacity of what the HR team can handle manually.

Which to choose for benefits administration?

Zenefits. Here’s why:

Zenefits offers a more comprehensive benefits package that allows customers to choose from a wide variety of employee benefits without worrying about cost fluctuations.

In addition, bringing your own benefits broker to Zenefits’ system incurs an add-on fee, but this option is available for all plans. Its compliance features are also more robust than Gusto’s, which offers peace of mind for small HR teams that don’t have the bandwidth to monitor compliance measures closely.

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Also read: 7 Questions to Consider Before Choosing a Benefits Administration System

Payroll

Both Gusto and Zenefits facilitate data integration between payroll and the rest of the HR ecosystem, namely onboarding, time tracking, and benefits. This prevents payroll errors associated with manual entry and eliminates the need to enter information more than once.

They also both offer assistance with compliance by automatically calculating taxes and facilitating organized, properly-formatted tax document management.

Gusto and Zenefits both offer a lot of automated features in their respective payroll systems, such as automatic tax calculations and filings. However, what exactly each one automates differs slightly.

	Payroll
	Gusto	Zenefits
International contractor payroll	y	n
Robust reporting	n	y
Automated payroll	y	n

Gusto

Gusto offers full-service payroll in different scopes depending on the plan. The Simple tier includes single-state payroll, while Plus offers multi-state payroll. Companies with distributed, remote work models that opt for Gusto will likely need to start out with the Plus plan. Gusto also offers international contractor payroll in more than 80 countries, which is a plus for companies that employ contingent workers around the globe.

Gusto’s winning feature is its AutoPilot, which allows HR to set up payroll to run automatically. Zenefits offers automations to remind staff to run payroll on time, but this pales in comparison to the benefits of Gusto’s fully automated system.

Gusto integrates with Quickbooks, but they’re also competing payroll vendors. Compare them: Gusto vs Quickbooks

Zenefits

Zenefits offers payroll as an add-on module for its all-in-one HR platform or as a standalone product. This provides customers the flexibility of using existing payroll software while benefiting from the rest of the Zenefits platform.

When syncing with onboarding, Zenefits automatically prorates payment based on an employee’s date of hire. It also automatically calculates deductions from paychecks based on what the employee selects during self-onboarding or annual open enrollment periods. This means that no one from HR has to manually enter the appropriate payroll deductions; the employee selects benefits, and Zenefits adjusts paycheck deductions accordingly.

Zenefits offers a variety of report types, so HR leaders can surface insights on virtually any aspect of their payroll operations. These types include:

• Payroll timeline reporting.
• General ledger reporting that syncs with accounting software.
• Job cost and labor distribution reporting.

Gusto offers similar reporting features, but they’re found in its time-tracking module.

Which to choose for payroll?

Gusto. Here’s why:

Gusto’s set-it-and-forget-it AutoPilot feature for automating payroll is a clear winner. Its international contractor payroll capability is an added bonus that Zenefits does not offer.

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Time and attendance tracking

Both vendors enable remote clock-in and clock-out and offer reporting tools to gain insight into key metrics such as total workforce costs and how much time is being spent on various projects.

Zenefits’ and Gusto’s mobile and desktop apps facilitate easy clock-in and clock-out, so employees can log their work at the right time and place. Both also offer geolocation features to give a manager visibility into an employee’s location when they start and stop work and prevent time card fraud.

The geolocation feature is particularly useful to help field service management companies optimize service routes and boost employee accountability, among other benefits.

	Time and Attendance Tracking
	Gusto	Zenefits
Geolocation	y	y
Built-in scheduling	n	y
Integration with payroll	y	y

Gusto

Gusto offers a time-tracking tool that’s only available in its top two price tier, but its most basic plan allows for integration with a company’s own time-tracking tool of choice.

Its native time-tracking tool integrates with payroll but not with other areas of HR, which makes it tricky to align employee time-off benefits with the amount of time they request and receive. This may require managers and employees to cross-check between the time-tracking and benefits modules when managing time off.

HR teams can customize PTO policies and select paid holidays through the time-tracking tool that then syncs with payroll

Employees manage time-off requests directly in Gusto’s time-tracking tool, which is more intuitive when compared to Zenefits’ approach. Approved time off syncs with both payroll and with Gusto’s built-in calendar. Alternatively, users can integrate Gusto with a third-party calendar such as Google, Outlook, or iCal. However, employee scheduling requires integration with a third-party app like When I Work or ClockShark.

Gusto features time-tracking reports that are similar to what Zenefits offers but with some variation. For instance, in Gusto’s time-tracking software, users can generate workforce cost reports based on hours worked but not by labor type, which may be a drawback for companies that work with employees as well as contractors.

Zenefits

Employee time tracking is included in all Zenefits plans and syncs with the HR, benefits, and payroll modules. Zenefits’ differentiator is that it packages time tracking with employee scheduling.

Zenefits has a built-in scheduling tool that enables shift managers to create and edit shifts and send push notifications to employees when schedules are ready. It syncs with time-off requests in the HR module, so managers don’t mistakenly schedule employees during their time off.

Zenefits has built-in compliance tools to keep the company compliant with labor laws related to employee break time and overtime. It also includes time card fraud protection features. For example, businesses can require employees to take a picture of themselves at clock-in to ensure it’s actually the designated employee using the clock-in mechanism. This helps prevent buddy punches and reduces the need to closely monitor the time clock.

Which to choose for time and attendance tracking?

Zenefits. Here’s why:

Gusto and Zenefits both offer comparable time-tracking tools. However, Gusto doesn’t provide access to its native time-tracking feature with all plans like Zenefits does.

Furthermore, Gusto doesn’t have built-in features to manage time tracking, time off, and employee scheduling all in one place. The comprehensive data syncing with Zenefits’ built-in tools means there’s a smaller chance of incompatibility with third-party tools.

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Recruiting

Zenefits and Gusto enable recruiting in different ways. Gusto’s recruiting tools are native to the software, whereas Zenefits users reap the benefits of its partnership with JazzHR. Both platforms integrate with popular recruiting tools like Greenhouse and Lever.

	Recruiting
	Gusto	Zenefits
Candidate screening tools	n	y
Syndicated job posting	n	y
Applicant tracking	y	y

Gusto

Companies can use Gusto’s built-in recruiting tools to create job listings and track candidates. However, companies should note that these features are not available in Gusto’s basic plan, which means customers must upgrade their entire package to be able to use the software for hiring purposes.

Alternatively, customers can integrate third-party recruiting software. This approach comes with its own set of technical challenges and budgetary considerations, but it may be more effective for ambitious hiring goals.

Gusto Recruiting enables job posting and applicant tracking, but it doesn’t syndicate job posts, so recruiters are responsible for sharing the post link manually. When assessing candidates, hiring teams can collaborate by sharing feedback on candidate scorecards.

Gusto’s recruiting features allow hiring teams to transition candidates who have accepted offers into the onboarding process. This helps ensure the new hire experience is as smooth as possible. Plus, having these tools connected provides HR with more comprehensive analytics and insights about how to improve the hiring process.

Zenefits

Zenefits offers recruiting as an add-on powered by JazzHR at any pricing level. In contrast, Gusto doesn’t offer job posting, ATS capabilities, or other advanced recruiting features in its basic package. With Zenefits, users can leverage the power of JazzHR to recruit, track, and hire candidates without leaving the Zenefits platform.

Companies that opt for the recruiting add-on can syndicate job posts across various job boards and social media networks to improve hiring efficiency and reach a wider pool of candidates. The applicant tracking system allows hiring managers to rank and track applicants through the application journey.

Zenefits also features automation for matching sought-after skills with the right candidates. This kind of screening capability is not available with Gusto at any subscription level.

Which to choose for recruiting?

Zenefits. Here’s why:

Zenefits offers recruiting as an optional add-on for any price tier, while Gusto’s recruiting features are only available for the top two tiers.

Compared to Gusto, customers who opt for Zenefits’ recruiting add-on also have access to a wider range of hiring features like syndicated job posts, automated communications, and candidate screening. These extra features add to the overall cost of the platform, but they provide a level of functionality that’s unavailable with Gusto.

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Employee onboarding

Both Zenefits and Gusto offer tools to streamline the process of getting new employees up to speed quickly. However, each vendor’s approach offers unique advantages for different kinds of businesses.

In terms of similarities, Gusto and Zenefits provide customizable templates for key documents in the onboarding process, such as confidentiality agreements and direct deposit forms. With both vendors, new employees can sign documents digitally, and HR teams can set up automatic app provisioning for third-party tools like Slack and Google Workspace.

From there, these two differ in how they approach the rest of the onboarding process.

	Onboarding
	Gusto	Zenefits
Templates	y	y
Background check	n	y
Integration with ATS	y	n
Self onboarding	n	y
Mobile app	n	y

Gusto

Gusto features an onboarding checklist that includes suggestions of typical stages in the onboarding process, but HR professionals can add steps that are tailored to their company’s particular needs. For example, tasks on the onboarding checklist may include setting up the new hire’s email account, adding them to payroll, ordering their business cards, and giving them an office tour.

The various tasks on the checklist can be delegated to an entire HR team, which can help keep things running smoothly and ensure nothing slips through the cracks. However, the lack of automated onboarding capabilities means that the whole process will take more time and manual effort than it would with Zenefits.

Zenefits

Zenefits’ employee onboarding works on a browser and via the Zenefits mobile app. The software empowers employees to take control of their own onboarding process without needing to reach out to HR every step of the way. HR administrators can monitor new employees’ progress to ensure all tasks are completed in a timely manner.

Thanks to its partnership with Checkr, Zenefits also conducts fast and comprehensive background checks on new hires directly from the platform to expedite the process.

Which to choose for employee onboarding?

Zenefits. Here’s why:

Zenefits puts onboarding completely in the hands of the employee, requiring little to no touch from HR along the way. Zenefits also includes integration with a background check tool, which is a crucial part of any company’s hiring process.

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Gusto vs Zenefits: Ready to choose?

Zenefits and Gusto are two of the most popular HR software solutions on the market, and for good reason. They both offer a range of functionalities at a more competitive cost than larger platforms like SAP SuccessFactors and UKG. Each vendor offers unique advantages for different types of buyers, but the right choice will support your company’s HR goals now and in the future.

If neither software meets your company’s unique needs, explore other solutions on the market through our HR Software Guide​​.

The post Gusto vs Zenefits appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

Modern solutions are more affordable, easier to install, and require very little maintenance, which means many companies are ditching their legacy systems for sleeker, faster options. Others are considering a purchase for the first time.

ALSO READ: Best HR Software for Small Business

If you’re shopping for HR software, you’ve probably come across Namely and Zenefits. These two cloud-based vendors, although young, have become favorites among small-business and some mid-market HR teams. Both of their solutions are an affordable way to simplify human resource management and get away from paperwork, but they have different strengths and different price tags.

To help you decide which is right for your business, we’ll compare Namely vs. Zenefits based on systems, pricing, features, and brokerage services.

Namely vs. Zenefits: Company Overview

Namely was founded in 2012 by Matt Straz as a solution designed to “free people from the shackles of back-office HR administration,” and help them “. . . become strategic drivers of employee culture and engagement.”

Since then, Namely has raised over $100 million in venture funding. Although still a private company, they’ve secured contracts with over 500 clients. Notable customers include Kayak.com, Vox Media, and Upwork.

Zenefits found its roots a year later as a benefits administration platform and insurance brokerage serving the small business and startup community. Between 2014 and 2015, the company grew revenue by a factor of 20. They’ve received over $583 million in venture funding from a number of different firms.

Zenefits now boasts over 20,000 small business customers in the U.S., including BetterCloud, FiscalNote, and DUFL.

Systems and Pricing

Zenefits offers a free “core HR” solution (yes, actually free) that includes most of the features you’d expect to see in a best-of-breed app: onboarding, ACA compliance, PTO tracking, employee directory, and basic reporting. The software is free because Zenefits makes most of their money from brokerage services, which earn a hefty commission from third-party providers.

You will pay a monthly fee per employee, however, if you add time and attendance tracking. Other fees may apply to health savings accounts and commuter services. Zenefits’ payroll feature will remain free until December 2016.

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While Namely doesn’t offer a free platform, their software is packaged in modules, so you’ll only pay for what you use. They offer a core HR module, payroll, benefits management and brokerage, and a “talent” module. On average, you’ll pay more per month for Namely but gain access to a wider range of features. Whatever features you purchase will be accessible from a single login page and web-based application.

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Administrative Features

Solutions that focus on the administrative aspects of human resources (time tracking, payroll, benefits admin) are often referred to as “core HR software.” While these tasks aren’t necessarily the most glamorous, they are some of the most mission-critical, so it’s important to choose a vendor that covers your bases.

Namely’s administrative features are built around a central employee database with custom employee profiles. Managers can track and approve time-off requests, create workflows for salary changes and promotions, keep a company calendar, and pull reports on HR data, as needed. Important company documents can be stored directly in the system.

Namely makes payroll a breeze with automatic syncing and benefits deductions. The system can also manage all of your tax filing and year-end reporting, from W2s to 1099s and ACA forms. The built-in time tracking feature lets you feed hours worked directly into your payroll calculations. If you have questions or need help, you can contact the dedicated payroll and tax support team.

For the moment, Zenefits includes payroll with their free edition, but they charge a per-user fee for time and attendance tracking. Let’s be honest; it’ll be difficult to administer accurate payroll if you don’t know how long and when your employees are working, so you’ll probably need both features. You can make calculations and file payroll taxes in all 50 states from directly within the system or update your data each period by syncing with another provider.

Other core HR features included with Zenefits’ free edition include benefits/insurance administration, onboarding, employee records management, ACA reporting, and time-off tracking. Zenefits also integrates with COBRA, so you can manage coverage and premiums without logging into a separate system.

Strategic HR Features

Strategic HR is another subset of the software category that refers to aspects of HR management beyond basic administration. Most tools in this category cover some portion of the “talent management” spectrum, from basic recruiting/onboarding to employee development and training.

This is where Namely shines. Unlike its competitor Zenefits, which stops at onboarding, Namely helps HR managers cultivate, measure, and reward talent among employees. You can create custom performance reviews and unique goals for each employee, as well as team and company goals.

Employees can track news and updates in the company social feed and congratulate each other on recent accomplishments (e.g. a work anniversary, a promotion). They can also submit confidential feedback through company surveys (assuming you send these out).

Taken as a whole, these features will help your team focus on growth, visibility, and improvement without the usual cloak and dagger office politics.

Zenefits can’t compete on any of these features yet, but then, they don’t pretend to be a talent management solution.

Benefits Brokerage

Both vendors give you the option — at no additional cost — to use their services to find insurance plans and providers that meet your needs. Picking an insurance provider can be quite a hassle, as you well know. The ability to search plans directly from your HR platform and get expert advice means can save you countless hours and the inconvenience of working with an outside broker.

Of course, you’ll need to list the software vendor as your “broker of record,” but that shouldn’t have any significant impact on financials or compliance.

Namely Brokerage Services:

• Medical, dental, vision, life & disability, FSA & HSA
• Unique plans like pet and identity theft insurance
• Expert consulting team
• “Deep” carrier relationships
• Open enrollment support
• COBRA, ERISA, and ACA compliance
• Partnership with Cigna (online benefits marketplace)

Zenefits Brokerage Services:

• Medical, dental, vision, life & disability, FSA & HSA
• Expert guidance
• 31,000 insurance plans with 400+ carriers
• Benefits “debit card” to manage HSA, FSA, and commuter benefits
• COBRA integration

Making Your Final Decision

In the end, Namely and Zenefits both have their own strengths and drawbacks. If you’re looking for the cheapest, easiest way to manage basic HR data and payroll, it’s hard to beat Zenefits’ free (or almost free) platform.

If you’re looking for a system to run your whole HR strategy including performance and talent management, Namely is the obvious choice. Thanks to their flexible, per-user subscription, cost stays manageable while you’re small and scalable while you grow.

If you still can’t decide between Namely vs. Zenefits or want to compare other HR software products, use our HR software category page to get a custom recommendation.

Top Human Resources Software Recommendations

The post Namely vs. Zenefits: Choosing the Right HR Software appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

Both of these solutions offer time and attendance, payroll, hiring, and talent management features. However, ADP’s offerings are suited for companies of all sizes, while Paycom’s solution targets medium to large enterprise companies.

The size of your business isn’t the only factor you should keep in mind when comparing Paycom and ADP. This article compares payroll packages, time and attendance modules, and human resources (HR) talent management tools for each vendor, so you can choose the right one for your business.

What Is ADP?

ADP provides payroll, HR, and tax services software. ADP’s products are designed to be used by small and midsize businesses. This is one of the most popular payroll solutions in the world, and it is used by over 990,000 companies across 140 countries.

While ADP offers an excellent suite of software features, it may be overwhelming for businesses that don’t require advanced software.

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What Is Paycom?

Paycom is a cloud-based payroll solution that has expanded into other areas of HR software. In fact, Paycom offers five categories of HR software solutions: payroll, time and labor management, HR management, talent acquisition, and talent management.

Paycom is designed to be used by medium, large, and enterprise businesses that need more sophisticated HR solutions but aren’t ready for enterprise-level software yet.

ADP vs. Paycom: Payroll

Payroll is the flagship offering from both ADP and Paycom, but each company packages its payroll offerings slightly differently.

ADP’s payroll solutions

ADP provides payroll services for small business owners and medium-sized enterprises in the U.S. and across the world. You can purchase payroll as a stand-alone module to integrate with existing HR or time and attendance systems, or you can purchase ADP as a total HR platform.

Both employees and managers can access pay stubs and work history through a self-service mobile app or browser-based employee portal. ADP payroll also offers automated functionality to streamline the process and reduce the chances of human error, which means it calculates and pays payroll taxes to ensure federal, state, and local compliance support.

With ADP, employers get multiple payment options: direct deposit, check delivery, in-house check printing, and payroll cards.

Paycom’s payroll solutions

Paycom offers complete payroll and business financial services for medium to large enterprises. Paycom has cloud capabilities with data proliferation, meaning you don’t have to enter payroll data over and over again across the app. It also offers a self-service payroll option for employees called Beti, so they can access their payroll documents without having to go through a manager.

Paycom offers several financial tools that help improve your company’s financial security, including payroll reconciliation software (Paycom Pay) and general ledger consolidation (GL concierge). Other features include reimbursing employees for expense tracking with automatic payroll syncing, automatic calculations for wage garnishments, and debiting and depositing payroll taxes and remitting filings for payroll tax management.

ADP vs. Paycom: Time and Labor Management

Time and attendance are great features to have integrated with your payroll software.

ADP’s time and labor management features

ADP gives you several options to manage your time and attendance, including using your existing third-party time clock. The ADP time and attendance system lets employees clock in at a computer terminal, through a mobile device, or using specialized hardware.

The tools automatically track and calculate the time worked and port that information over to payroll services. If customers want to go the extra mile, ADP’s Time Kiosk uses optional facial recognition to log employees in and voice activation to start and end a shift, take a meal break, transfer jobs, and more.

ADP manages time-off and vacation requests through an employee self-service portal that cross-references with payroll. Companies can delegate approvals and requests through a streamlined dashboard, where managers track current employees’ time, address needs for upcoming shifts, and complete ongoing time approvals. The tools also include regulation control for breaks and documentation for audits.

Paycom’s time and labor management features

Paycom’s time and attendance reporting works similarly to ADP’s. Employees clock in and out in a Paycom app, and administrative controls verify the accuracy of that data. Once time is approved, those numbers sync across the app, preventing duplicate entries. HR can set up custom rules that align with your attendance policies including rounding, working after midnight, and holiday pay.

Because all of the data for Paycom time and attendance is digital, you can pull reporting to understand attendance and working trends across departments and for employees. This analysis can help HR teams and managers build schedules and policies that improve productivity and reduce inconsistencies.

ADP vs. Paycom: HR and Talent Management

Both ADP and Paycom offer various tools to support HR tasks like talent acquisition, talent management, and HR management.

ADP’s HR and talent management capabilities

ADP offers two systems for talent management: a recruiting and hiring module and a management and growth module. These recruiting and hiring tools help teams automate manual tasks, build great job descriptions, post to job boards, and manage the digital paper trail associated with hiring.

The ADP talent management and growth performance module includes tools to promote leadership and learning across the company with goal-setting and performance management metrics. The tools promote real-time coaching of individuals and continual feedback between managers and their direct reports.

ADP also offers several HR management tools that customers can purchase individually or include in the larger HR platform. The benefits administration tools will connect with your existing tools, like payroll, HR, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, and include data tools that help both the company and the individual employee choose the best plans. Choose from retirement, group health insurance, business insurance (including worker’s compensation), and liability administration.

Paycom’s HR and talent management capabilities

On the other hand, Paycom has a full applicant tracking system where you can build job descriptions, submit them across job boards, and track applicants throughout the hiring process. It also offers onboarding checklists to reduce manual tasks and lower time-to-hire metrics.

Paycom’s HR management tools are organized around document management and process automation to give employees access to their HR documentation and speed up approval processes across the board. Users can assign tasks, collect electronic signatures, change document permissions, and reduce paper usage through the app.

The HR management tools connect directly with Paycom’s payroll modules, which means HR professionals can approve benefits, and the changes populate in payroll automatically. The HR processes also include helpful features like manager portals, surveys, COBRA benefits administration, Affordable Care Act compliance, and 401(k) reporting.

ADP vs. Paycom: How to Choose?

ADP and Paycom offer a lot of the same HR features, but the tools serve different business owners.

ADP is designed to provide comprehensive HCM functionality for most businesses, and its offerings lend themselves toward build-as-you-go modules. Of particular note, ADP also offers a more limited package of payroll and HR software marketed towards smaller businesses.

Thus, ADP is a great choice for smaller yet growing businesses that want payroll and HR software that can scale with their company. If your business gets to be very large or goes international, ADP might no longer cut it, but for most small and medium-sized businesses, it provides a great balance between features and ease of use.

On the other hand, Paycom comes enterprise-ready with many options that may be more than small businesses can afford or manage. As a result, Paycom may be too complicated and expensive for smaller businesses with limited resources.

However, larger businesses looking for an all-in-one HR software platform that encompasses payroll, time and attendance, HR management, and talent management should definitely look into Paycom.

In some cases, neither ADP nor Paycom is exactly the right fit. Perhaps you need a comprehensive HR solution that also offers a mobile-first experience. Or maybe you need a payroll solution that’s embedded in your company’s accounting software. If you’re still not sure whether ADP or Paycom is right for you, check out our Payroll Software Product Selection Tool to receive a list of recommendations tailored to your needs in five minutes.

The post ADP vs Paycom: Payroll Software Comparison appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

Researching which vendor is right for you can be both challenging and time-consuming. Whether you are considering switching from one vendor to the other or have narrowed down your options to either Lever or Greenhouse software, use our detailed comparison below to help make your decision.

Also read: Best Applicant Tracking System for Small Business

Lever vs. Greenhouse: Which ATS is Right For You?

Lever: Best for growing companies aiming to streamline hiring processes

Where many human resource management (HRM) solutions have expanded their software to cover other core HR functions such as payroll and onboarding, Lever remains dedicated to optimizing its recruiting platform to remain accessible to businesses in multiple industries.

Lever boasts a simple user interface (UI) that does not require hours of training to implement in an organization. With 24/7 customer support, professional service teams, and prebuilt email templates and offer letters, smaller or growing businesses aiming for quick implementation and simplified recruitment processes may find more success with Lever than Greenhouse. However, Lever lacks a mobile application for on-the-go teams, upfront pricing, or a free trial.

Greenhouse: Best for larger companies focused on optimizing user experience

Compared to Lever, Greenhouse focuses on providing a positive user experience to both applicants and recruiters alike. Larger companies needing to coordinate among multiple teams may appreciate Greenhouse’s collaboration tools and detailed recruitment workflows.

Additionally, Greenhouse includes a variety of DE&I initiatives in every stage of its recruiting process, such as candidate name pronunciation recordings. Companies aiming for candidates to feel more invested and involved in the hiring process may value these features in Greenhouse over Lever. However, because of Greenhouse’s conscientious approach to hiring, it may not be the best solution for companies hoping to source and hire quickly.

Lever vs. Greenhouse: A Detailed Comparison

Candidate sourcing

Lever and Greenhouse offer solutions to obtain a robust applicant pool for any position. Like most ATS solutions, Lever and Greenhouse take advantage of candidate sourcing opportunities through options like career pages and online job board distribution. However, where Lever focuses on simple tools to gather candidate information quickly, Greenhouse provides recruiters with multiple methods of sourcing candidates, including a mobile application to source candidates on the go.

Lever

Lever focuses on simplistic processes to start sourcing candidates as soon as possible. Recruiters can create a new job opening through Lever’s application and choose to post it either internally, externally, or both. Once users make a job opening, they can post the opening to their career site, online job boards, or through social media referral links.

Career page

Users can post their job openings on a custom career page through Lever’s server. Lever will generate a URL for the company to add to its website or to share with potential candidates. Applicants can then apply through the career site and sync their LinkedIn accounts.

Lever’s career pages cater to small businesses with limited resources or no IT staff. With minimal technical knowledge, users can customize their internal and external career pages with open postings, company logos, and colors to match their brand. Meanwhile, businesses with web developers can use Lever’s API to connect with their organization’s custom job site or modify Lever’s hosted job site to suit their company’s needs better. Lever even allows more advanced users with third-party tracking cookies to embed tracking pixels on their career page to record candidate conversion rates.

Job board integrations

Lever offers over 30 job board integrations, including native solutions with Indeed and LinkedIn. If a job board integration is unavailable through Lever, users can manually post their job on another job site and then record the posting on Lever for tracking purposes.

For example, suppose a business wants to post an opening on a university’s job site. In that case, they can post their job opening manually on the university’s website, copy the job opening link, and paste it for tracking in Lever. Thus, businesses looking to post their jobs in more niche areas can still collect valuable recruitment metrics to determine the quality of candidates from varying job boards.

Manual sourcing methods

Lever allows users to manually add prospects through direct input or internal employee referrals. Lever also includes a Google Chrome extension that parses candidate information from sites like LinkedIn, Gmail, Facebook, GitHub, and Wellfound (formerly AngelList).

Suppose the prospect does not have a candidate profile created for them in Lever. Lever’s Chrome extension will parse information from their profiles and attach them to a specified job opportunity. This feature is handy for companies looking to save time from manually inputting prospects they discover by happenstance.

Greenhouse

Compared to Lever, Greenhouse offers a much more extensive array of both native and third-party job board ATS integrations for candidate sourcing. Additionally, Greenhouse takes a more accessible approach to its candidate sourcing by offering creative ways to gather prospects’ data, including an in-person option. Greenhouse’s goal is to provide multiple, customizable avenues to source candidates instead of the quick, out-of-the-box features valued by Lever.

Career page

Like Lever, users can create external company job boards hosted by Greenhouse. Alongside the job opening, employers can customize job boards with videos, images, or company logos. However, companies must purchase the Greenhouse Recruiting Advanced package to access additional career page features, such as internal-only job boards and support for integration with an API-driven company career page. In contrast, all of these come standard in Lever’s starter tier.

Greenhouse also integrates with LinkedIn, Indeed, and SEEK right from their company career page. So instead of prospects manually entering their information to apply, they can sync their data from these sites to simplify the application process.

Job board integrations

Native integration with traditional job boards, such as LinkedIn, Indeed, Monster, ZipRecruiter, and Arbeitnow, comes standard with Greenhouse. But while users can make job posts for free on these platforms, posting to additional or more niche boards comes with an extra cost. Nevertheless, Greenhouse boasts a job ad market with over 1,000 job boards. Therefore, businesses looking for talent in highly specialized roles, like coding or engineering, or hoping to diversify their workforce, may find this feature especially useful.

Manual sourcing methods

Like Lever, Greenhouse users can manually input prospect data or use a Google Chrome extension for parsing candidate data from Wellfound, GitHub, Indeed, and LinkedIn. In addition, recruiters can manually upload or drag and drop résumés into the extension for data retrieval. Unlike Lever’s extension, however, Greenhouse’s extension maintains overwhelmingly negative user reviews in the Chrome Web Store from users, arguing its lack of functionality and poor navigation.

Yet, a rather unique feature of Greenhouse is its Mobile Events Application for iOS devices. The app is designed for HR teams sourcing in-person candidates from recruitment events. For example, if an employer participates in a job fair or hosts a company event, prospects can input their own data in the app to be added for consideration. The applicant can also take a photo of their résumé to include with their application. From there, hiring teams can add additional feedback or notes to the candidate’s application for follow-up later.

Which to choose for candidate sourcing

Greenhouse. Here’s why: Although Lever features a more user-friendly career page builder and stable Google Chrome extension, Greenhouse offers more varied methods to source candidates from diverse environments. Moreover, HR teams focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) initiatives can utilize Greenhouse’s job ad market by posting their openings to job boards targeting underrepresented groups without manually searching and posting to these sites themselves.

Customers wishing to stick to posting openings on traditional job boards will also appreciate Greenhouse’s free native integration with LinkedIn, Indeed, Monster, ZipRecruiter, and Arbeitnow compared to Lever’s LinkedIn and Indeed. Thus, Greenhouse customers have more opportunities to streamline job posts across multiple platforms compared to Lever.

Candidate management

Lever and Greenhouse take similar approaches to candidate tracking, preferring unified pipelines that favor a holistic view of the company’s overall hiring efforts. Users must utilize filtering and tagging to categorize candidates by job, origin, or source. During the interview process, users can advance applicants to the next stage directly from their profiles. Alternatively, users can leverage bulk actions to reject or move candidates through the hiring process en masse.

However, where Lever focuses on targeting and moving the candidates through the hiring process at speed, Greenhouse takes a more leveled and thoughtful approach to candidate management. Determining which approach works depends on what is more valuable to the hiring team: automation or customization.

Lever

Lever’s candidate management is structured to give everyone in the organization an overarching view of the company’s recruitment efforts. Its goal is to provide users with similar user interfaces, so recruitment teams can navigate incoming candidate applications with minimal training.

Candidate pipeline

All candidate applications for all positions are located in Lever’s dashboard. Users can organize their candidates in multiple ways through tabs and filters, such as by interview stages, job postings, origins, or sources. To progress or reject candidates in the hiring process, recruiters must enter the candidate’s profile through the particular opportunity they applied for and move them to the appropriate stage.

All users can automatically progress candidates to different stages of the interview process based on when they communicate with the applicant. With Lever’s additional automation add-on, users can create more customized automated workflows to free up time from repetitive pipeline tasks.

For example, recruiters can create a conditional formatting rule to archive or progress candidates in the hiring process based on answers to application questions, such as years of experience in a field. As a result, HR teams with a high volume of candidates can save countless hours by manually moving candidates from one stage to the next.

Application review

Although users can review candidate applications and résumés manually through a candidate’s profile or applied opportunity, Lever’s Fast Resume Review can speed up the process significantly. Users can review all applications sprint-style by selecting an open job opportunity and advancing, archiving, or skipping applicants in one module. At the end of the sprint, Lever records the length of time and the number of applicants screened for businesses needing to make decisions on efficiency.

Greenhouse

Greenhouse users have more customization over their pipelines, offering both list and visual views for candidate stage progression. Despite this, Greenhouse offers few automated features in its starter package, with more options available with its automation add-on.

Candidate pipeline

Candidates move through the hiring funnel in Greenhouse much the way they do in Lever. Recruiters can access a candidate’s application through a specific job and choose to progress or reject the candidate to the next stage. Similar to Lever, there are options for users to select several candidates to move forward or reject in bulk.

What stands out in Greenhouse is its Visual Pipeline, which provides companies with a summary view of the active candidates in a particular job’s hiring funnel. Within this view, users can drag and drop candidates to different stages without accessing their profiles. Likewise, users can quickly see how many candidates are in each funnel section to decide where to focus most of their recruitment efforts.

Although Greenhouse includes automations to remind internal teams to take specific actions, such as completing an interview scorecard, Greenhouse Recruiting Essentials does not come with any other workflow automations. As a result, HR teams looking for auto-advance or -reject capabilities based on particular job application criteria must purchase either Greenhouse Recruiting Advanced or Greenhouse Recruiting Expert tiers.

Application review

Like Lever, Greenhouse users can select applicants one at a time to review and progress or reject to the next stage of the hiring process. To review several applications at once, users have a process similar to Lever’s Fast Resume Review known as their Application Review stage. Greenhouse users can also add a subset of candidates to review by employing their bulk application review option. Users can progress or reject a specific set of candidates within Application Review, outside of the total number of applicants for that particular job opening.

Which to choose for candidate management

It’s a tie. Here’s why: For teams needing to hire quickly, Lever users can take advantage of its prebuilt candidate stage automations and Fast Resume Review to get as many qualified candidates as possible into the interview phase. Meanwhile, Greenhouse offers several methods to view and advance or reject candidates, which is ideal for users requiring more diversified workflows.

Interview management

Lever and Greenhouse take a structured interview approach to hiring. This involves hiring managers creating interview rubrics for a position, so that every candidate for a particular role is judged by the same set of criteria. The goal of structured interviewing is to promote consistency among all interviewers for a position and reduce bias.

Lever and Greenhouse employ interview kits and candidate scorecards to put structured interviewing into practice. Additional candidate feedback can be left within the scorecards or notes for the team to review. Hiring teams can also use mentions to ping other team members for further input or thoughts on candidate progression.

Where Lever and Greenhouse differ in interview management is in their approach to interview scheduling and email outreach programs.

Lever

Lever continues prioritizing automation in every aspect of its interview management, from interview scheduling to calendar synchronization and email outreach campaigns.

Interview scheduling

Users schedule interviews entirely within Lever without having to email candidates individually. Although users can manually schedule interviews and set up interview panels within one window, HR teams can economize their time by utilizing Lever’s Easy Book feature. Through Easy Book, users sync their Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 accounts to Lever to integrate calendars. Interviewers then email candidates a Lever-created URL, wherein candidates can select an open timeslot in the recruiter’s schedule that works best for them.

Once the interviewee selects the time that works best for them, Lever automatically emails both the recruiter and interviewee of the desired interview, including any necessary video call links to Zoom, Teams, or Google Meet. Easy Book also allows users to add multiple interviewers to the event, select the timeframe the interview event is open for, and set an expiration date.

Email outreach

A standout feature of Lever’s interview management is its Nurture automated email campaigns. The goal of a nurture campaign is multifold: companies can entice passive candidates into applying for an open position or keep applicants engaged during the interview process.

For example, HR teams can customize their Nurture campaigns by sending one to three “touchpoint” emails to candidates at specific points in time regarding details of open positions or interview updates. This ensures a steady supply of potential candidates in evergreen positions, and an applicant does not go cold in case an interview does not work out.

Greenhouse

Unlike Lever, Greenhouse emphasizes a positive candidate experience during the interview phase of the recruitment process by having employers cater to candidate availability. However, this results in HR teams spending significantly more time in back-and-forth communication with candidates before the interview.

Likewise, with a shortage of interview-related automations in the Greenhouse Recruiting Essentials tier, users are forced to spend more time on administrative tasks related to applicant engagement instead of creating insightful interview plans.

Interview scheduling

Like Lever, Greenhouse integrates with Google Calendar and Outlook 365, along with the added integration of Calendly. To schedule an interview, recruiters must access a prospect’s profile and manually schedule the interview itinerary based on the candidates’ and other interviewers’ availability.

Greenhouse does offer candidates the ability to self-schedule their interviews in much the same way as Lever’s Easy Book feature. However, candidate self-scheduling is exclusive to Greenhouse Recruiting’s higher-paying Advanced or Expert subscription tiers compared to Lever’s Easy Book.

Email outreach

With Greenhouse’s Sourcing Automation add-on, users can create custom email campaigns to both source and engage candidates in much the same way as Lever’s Nurture feature. Users can create a series of emails to target prospects after a series of predetermined triggers—for example, not hearing from a candidate after a certain amount of time. In addition, users can customize the number of steps to take within each email campaign to ensure a steady stream of candidates between interviews.

Which to choose for interview management

Lever. Here’s why: Big and small HR teams can take advantage of the time savings associated with Lever’s interview management automations. Because of Greenhouse’s candidate-focused recruitment approach, employers have to spend more time during the recruitment process on communications with candidates. However, with Lever, users do not have to sacrifice cost for basic time-saving automated features compared to the required add-ons or higher paying tiers for similar functions in Greenhouse.

Recruitment analytics

Recruitment analytics are integral to understanding where bottlenecks occur in the recruiting funnel, so employers can take appropriate action to rectify any inefficiencies in their processes. Lever and Greenhouse include basic reporting metrics in their lowest subscription tiers, such as time to hire and source quality, with more customizable functions that can be added with their subscription tiers and add-ons.

Lever

In August 2022, Lever moved from its legacy reports system to its Visual Insights dashboards. In doing so, Lever aimed to make quality recruitment metrics more accessible to everyone in an organization, including employees with little experience with data analytics. Customers have several different dashboards where they can select from preassembled reports and charts highlighting particular metrics.

For example, users can navigate to their Pipeline Dashboard in Visual Insights to view analytics related to a candidate’s movement through the recruitment pipeline, such as time to hire or the average time spent in any one particular stage. Users can configure the available charts further by manipulating filter parameters.

Lever also includes basic DE&I analytics, including an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and Diversity Dashboard featuring anonymized reports outlining the diversity of a company’s current talent pipeline. Users can receive even more dashboards, including candidate surveys, requisition, and nurturing as well as the time to fill metrics with Lever’s Enterprise subscription. With Lever’s Advanced Analytics add-on, users can also access a predictive analytics tool and Lever’s Data Explorer to build custom reports and visualizations.

Greenhouse

Like Lever, companies can access recruitment analytics by accessing multiple dashboards in Greenhouse’s Reports tab. Dashboards include Offers and hiring, Recruiting efficiency, Sourcing, and Pipeline health. Clicking on a particular dashboard brings users to a summary page with widgets outlining major recruitment statistics. For example, Recruiting efficiency includes quick stats like average time to fill and average time to hire upfront without having to run a report manually.

Users can configure their dashboards with select widgets and filters for a quick view of particular metrics. For more in-depth reports, all Greenhouse users can access the Essential reports section for other reports like pipeline demographics and candidate surveys.

A standout feature of Greenhouse on all subscription tiers is user access to Greenhouse Predicts, which uses machine learning to analyze current pipelines to forecast when a candidate will accept an offer and start with the organization. The predictions can assist recruiters in determining which areas of the recruitment pipeline they need to focus their efforts on while providing estimated turnaround times to hiring managers and executives.

Finally, in Greenhouse Recruiting Advanced or Expert subscription tiers, users can create and save unique reports through Greenhouse’s Report Builder. Through custom columns and filters, recruiters can build reports to answer more specific questions to their organization, such as analyzing recruiting efforts between particular office locations.

Which to choose for interview management

Greenhouse. Here’s why: Greenhouse offers more customizable reporting features and basic predictive analytics across its subscription tiers than Lever. With the combination of dashboards and essential reports, HR teams of all sizes can benefit from robust reporting capabilities without having to purchase more expensive subscription tiers or add-ons.

DE&I and bias eliminators

Lever and Greenhouse each include specific elements, such as report analytics and DE&I dashboards, to assess DE&I strategies during the hiring process. However, where Lever primarily focuses on its reporting and analytics for employers to draw meaningful insights on DE&I initiatives, Greenhouse makes an effort to include DE&I in several ways, from facilitating structured hiring kick-off meetings before a job opening to candidate-focused communications.

Lever

Lever provides HR teams with various reporting options to facilitate organizational DE&I efforts. For example, HR teams can gain insight into bias in their pay practices by accessing Lever’s EEO or Diversity dashboards to compare compensation based on particular demographics.

Lever users can also take advantage of third-party integrations that modify Lever’s programming and aid in making recruitment unbiased. For example, Unbiasify is a third-party application that integrates with Lever and hides candidate names and faces when sourcing them from websites such as LinkedIn or Twitter. This way, hiring teams can ensure a candidate was sourced based on predetermined job criteria while mitigating bias.

Candidates can also select the pronouns they are most comfortable with when they apply to a job opening. However, Lever users must manually enable this question while setting up their job post’s application; Lever does not make this a standard candidate question during the hiring process.

Diversity surveys

Lever’s Diversity Surveys allows users to collect voluntary and anonymized demographic information from applicants after applying for the job. Unlike EEO surveys, diversity surveys are entirely customizable and intended to help with an organization’s DE&I initiatives. For example, users can create multiple diversity surveys to target specific locations to assess diversity within that area.

Companies with remote workers or sourcing a global talent force can use this data to compare the diversity in their domestic and international locations. Moreover, recruiters can determine which groups are over or underrepresented in certain job positions and take action to fix it.

Greenhouse

Like Lever, Greenhouse integrates with third-party applications, like MeVitae, to anonymize protected characteristics within résumés and CVs. Users can also use Greenhouse’s job ad market to distribute their job posting to underrepresented groups and its candidate surveys and reporting tools to identify inequalities between groups in their recruiting pipeline.

However, instead of limiting DE&I functionality to candidate sourcing tools and reporting, Greenhouse intentionally includes such features in every aspect of its software. For example, before recruiters post a job opening or begin sourcing candidates, Greenhouse encourages hiring teams to participate in structured hiring role kick-off meetings. These meetings define the job’s business objective, identify the skills and qualifications of an ideal candidate, and outline the hiring team’s responsibilities. Greenhouse even provides job kickoff forms to facilitate these discussions.

By outlining the qualifications and experience needed for a role before job posting distribution, hiring teams are less likely to base their hiring decision on things prone to bias, such as intuition.

Candidate-focused features

While Lever users must choose to include a pronoun selection question in their job posting questions, in Greenhouse, this feature comes standard during the interview phase. Additionally, Greenhouse allows candidates to record their name pronunciation when they receive their interview calendar invite.

By offering these candidate-focused features, Greenhouse assists companies in making their DE&I efforts explicit to incoming talent. As a result, companies can promote a positive brand while making candidates feel seen and heard.

Unconscious bias nudges

Another unique callout for Greenhouse is their unconscious bias “nudges.” Users can configure these reminders to appear at various points in the hiring process, such as when creating a job post, reviewing candidate applications, or scoring a candidate after an interview. Nudges remind hiring teams to check their personal biases and to focus on qualifications relevant to the job.

Often, candidates from underrepresented backgrounds may be at a disadvantage when it comes to applications or interviews. Nudges can assist hiring teams in recognizing these circumstances, so they can make hiring decisions that promote the diversity of the overall organization.

Which to choose for DE&I initiatives and bias eliminators?

Greenhouse. Here’s why: Unlike Lever, Greenhouse’s software allows employers to be reactive and proactive in their DE&I efforts. For example, Lever leaves the responsibility to employers to enact candidate pronoun recognition or to take action when reporting reveals inequitable hiring practices. In contrast, Greenhouse’s candidate name pronunciation and unconscious bias nudges remind organizations to be objective in their hiring. They also highlight to candidates the ways the company is striving toward inclusivity.

Lever vs. Greenhouse: Ready to Choose?

Choosing which software is best for your business depends on your hiring goals. If you value efficiency, Lever’s lowest-paying tier comes with many standard automations for teams to source and hire a candidate quickly. If you value a positive candidate experience to promote brand awareness and boost sourcing efforts, choose Greenhouse to include in your HR tech stack.

However, if neither software meets your needs, check out our ATS Software and Recruitment Software guides to browse other solutions.

The post Lever vs Greenhouse Comparison 2024 appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

• Give praise
• Measure employee performance
• Garner employee feedback about the workplace

These two employee engagement tools often get compared to each other; while they do have a lot of similarities, they also have some key differences. Understanding your business’s unique needs will help you determine which solution is right for you while comparing these two platforms.

Assembly vs. Kudos: Employee Recognition

Don’t neglect employee engagement, as it is key to an organization’s success and has actually dropped for the first time in the last decade. Feeling undervalued is a major contributing factor to a lack of engagement. In fact, lack of recognition is the reason behind more than three out of four exits, according to OC Tanner Research data from pre-pandemic times. This number is likely to be higher now, given the balance of power shifting toward employees. 

Having a tool to share recognition of achievements is therefore an excellent start to foster a more supportive workplace culture. Both Assembly and Kudos allow users to recognize top performers. 

Did an employee demonstrate a core company value or help out last minute? Assembly’s employee recognition program allocates a monthly amount of points to each employee. Throughout the month, users send points to team members they want to recognize, and those points can be redeemed for rewards.

Read more: 5 Inspired Digital Rewards & Recognition for Remote Workers

You can also nominate employees for Employee of the Month (or whatever reward you want to create) and celebrate their birthdays or work anniversaries within the program.

Comparatively, Kudos offers an employee recognition solution. Similar to Assembly, Kudos operates based on a points allocation system, which can be redeemed for specified awards, such as gift cards.

However, there are a few key features to call out. For one, Kudos allows users to send various levels of recognition that distinguish between appreciation and outstanding performance. For example, to show appreciation, the system allows employees to send recognition alongside a celebratory note and GIF, as well as custom badges for special occasions. Employee activity is posted to a Kudos Wall that showcases everyone’s recognition in a highly visible way.

The other callout for Kudos is that the vendor has added tangible rewards, experiences, donations, and other types of rewards to its catalog.

Kudos’ employee engagement platform also offers a Culture Accelerator to amplify and streamline your culture programs and a Spaces area to store photos and create custom content that reflects your company culture.

Read more: 9 Employee Recruitment Strategies to Improve Your Hiring Process

Not only is recognition important for morale, it’s important for personal motivation, too. Providing employees a way to show appreciation for one another is key to motivating them in their work. In fact, 37% of workers said that frequent recognition for their personal achievements would encourage them to produce better work. 

Assembly vs. Kudos: Employee Performance Management

Employee engagement platforms help cultivate an atmosphere of praise for top performers, but how do you monitor and improve employee performance? Performance management is another avenue by which to engage employees. It also helps detect and manage employee burnout. 

Assembly includes a performance management tool by providing structure, transparency, and accountability for one-on-one meetings between employees and their managers. It gives a dedicated space to:

• Document goals, KPIs, and outcomes 
• Create and edit points for discussion 
• Collect feedback from the meeting 
• Capture notes from past one-on-one meetings

In this match-up, Assembly is the standalone solution when it comes to engaging employees with a performance management tool. Kudos relies on the power of recognition alone to boost motivation. It does not offer a concrete performance management tool to provide context to employee development and manager-employee relationships. 

When you can gauge an employee’s performance, you can, in turn, give more praise but more importantly also coach them in their professional development and even give them a raise. These things demonstrate more than anything else your organization’s commitment to employee experience, development, and satisfaction.

Visit Assembly Visit Kudos

Read more: The Importance of Performance Management

Assembly vs. Kudos: Employee Satisfaction

If your organization seeks regular employee feedback about their happiness as employees of your organization, Assembly is the engagement software to go with, as it offers more variety in the types of survey tools. Kudos offers sentiment analysis pulse surveys that connect directly to its analytics to help HR professionals discover trends in employee satisfaction. 

Assembly makes it easy to track employee sentiment and get a better sense of overall employee experience. It accomplishes this through anonymous employee feedback collected through a variety ot survey types, such as:

• Career development surveys
• Manager feedback surveys
• Pulse surveys
• Employee net promoter score (eNPS) surveys

All of these have customizable templates, so human resources does not have to draft these from scratch.

The pulse survey, for example, is a tool to quickly measure employee experience on a regular basis. Starting with an employee engagement survey template, Assembly users can reorder questions, select question types, and even tweak the wording in questions to surface precisely the insights you’re looking for.

Surveys are a great way to set up internal communication—whether through anonymous feedback or a more open, candid form of employee feedback—to manage employee experience and engagement. Beyond giving and receiving recognition, survey tools like Assembly make it a cut above Kudos, providing deeper insights into what it’s like to work at your organization.

Assembly vs. Kudos: Analytics

An employee survey tool is of no use without analysis of survey results so human resources and management can gain actionable insight from employee feedback. That’s why Assembly and Kudos offer analytics to help your organization improve employee retention, reduce employee turnover, analyze the employee lifecycle, and discover what makes for engaged employees. 

Assembly just launched their new FLOW Insights analytics toolkit in early 2022, meaning Kudos is no longer the only employee engagement software to offer analytics. However, Assembly’s website does not tout this new offering. Assembly provides analytics tools that generate reports and at-a-glance insights in one central dashboard. 

For instance, it’s possible to see how many people responded to an employee satisfaction survey broken down by department, average time to complete, and what percentage of respondents selected each rating or answer.

On the other hand, analytics have been a part of Kudos for a while. In Kudos, each employee recognition message can be tagged with what company values the employee has exhibited (for instance, “creative thinking” or “teamwork”).

With Kudos analytics, the user can track trends over time to see which company values are most demonstrated among employees and which ones are languishing behind. Kudos also lets you see who is giving and receiving kudos to gain more insight into team dynamics.

The post Assembly vs. Kudos appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

Greenhouse and Teamtailor are two recruiting software solutions on the market today that offer ATS functionality as a separate tool or as part of their respective platforms.

Applicant tracking system (ATS) software and recruitment software enable companies to simplify and streamline their recruiting and hiring process.

An ATS software solution helps HR professionals with specific functions for recruiting and hiring, such as posting open roles, tracking applications, identifying qualified candidates, and more. As such it meets the needs for SMBs or businesses with specialized hiring needs.

Different from an ATS, recruitment software is a broader solution that meets comprehensive hiring needs. With recruiting software, HR professionals manage not only the recruiting and hiring functions inherent to an ATS, but also payroll, employee benefits, timesheets, performance tracking, and more. In short, ATS is a part of recruiting software.

In this guide, we’ll compare the two vendors in terms of how they approach the main touch points along the hiring journey: recruiting, applicant tracking, and interviewing. We’ll also compare these vendors’ pricing models.

You can also check out our video overview below.

Greenhouse: An Overview

Greenhouse is a hiring platform that includes the following features:

• Mobile app for on-the-go recruiting
• Job board
• Resume parsing 
• Virtual interviewing tools
• Templates for job postings, offer letters, and other forms of communication with candidates
• More than 30 pre-built reporting formats
• Onboarding tools

Greenhouse is popular among small and medium-sized businesses but can accommodate organizations of any size.

Teamtailor: An Overview

Teamtailor is a branded ATS platform designed to simplify the recruiting and hiring process from one place. Key features include:

• Mobile app for on-the-go recruiting
• Job board
• Virtual interviewing tools
• Templates for job postings, offer letters, and other forms of communication with candidates
• Reporting and analytics tools
• Automations to keep the hiring process moving
• GDPR compliance
• Easy-to-build, interactive career site

It’s popular among small, growing businesses and doesn’t quite enjoy the same recognition as Greenhouse yet. However, Teamtailor is an up and coming vendor to keep an eye on in the ATS recruiting software space. 

Greenhouse vs Teamtailor: Recruiting

Greenhouse enables hiring teams to reach, nurture, and classify top talent. Reach the right candidates by first optimizing job listings in one place and then instantly publish job posts to over a thousand job boards. 

If you don’t want to post it anywhere and everywhere, Greenhouse generates recommendations on where to post jobs. Recommendations are based on job ad placement that generated a lot of highly qualified applicants. 

Greenhouse also automatically capture prospective candidates’ contact information with the Sourcing Automation add-on to start and track a personalized relationship with a candidate over time. 

Read more about the role AI plays in hiring: How AI is Helping Recruiters Find Talent

Not all recruiting happens online. Greenhouse’s mobile app functionality also includes an Events feature. This allows hiring managers to work with prospect data at in-person events, such as job fairs and recruiting events, eliminating the hassle of keeping track of business cards, resumes, and other documents.

Read more: Best HR Apps for Mobile

Greenhouse has a way to include employees in the recruiting process with its incentivized referral program. This feature provides ready-to-go social media posts that employees can easily share to their networks with customized links that allow HR teams to track where references came from.

Teamtailor incorporates a range of features to help companies reach and communicate with the right candidates and increase your company’s visibility among job seekers:

• A mobile app
• Employee referral system
• Campaign pages and emails
• Free and paid job boards
• Social media integrations
• SEO functionality 

The mobile app allows users to manage applications and communicate with candidates on the go. Users can review and rate candidates and add notes to applications right from their mobile device. Employees can also leverage their professional contacts to help recruit new employees with Teamtailor’s employee referral system. 

Teamtailor enables users to craft branded campaign pages and emails that speak directly to candidates. Its user-friendly interface contains drag-and-drop block components to easily build the page. From there, simply link it to social media networks to drive traffic.

To manage all this visibility, it’s easy to gain oversight over recruiting efforts with Teamtailor’s customized recruiting funnel. This helps companies build an automatic pipeline of qualified candidates and manage relationships with them. Recruiting funnels feature custom stages, triggers, and bulk actions, HR professionals can easily manage recruiting relationships in the best way that suits them.

Winner: We love Teamtailor’s user-friendly landing page building blocks and the customized recruiting funnel.

Read more: The Best Tools for Effective Employee Recruitment

Greenhouse vs Teamtailor: Applicant Tracking

Before applications begin rolling in, it’s crucial to have an easy way to create and post a vacancy in your organization. Though Greenhouse doesn’t have a built-in career site builder, it features a third-party integration, Ongig, that helps users easily create and customize a branded job board that integrates with your careers page.

Every role is different, so the hiring workflow should be as well. Greenhouse allows you to customize hiring plans for every role and tailor it to each member of the hiring team.

For example, while all members of the hiring team will want to see a content production candidate’s resume, the hiring manager will need to be able to access, track, and report on the candidate’s entire journey through the pipeline. Greenhouse also allows HR administrators to keep the entire hiring team on the same page by:

• Controlling user access and permissions
• Setting up automatic alerts and notifications
• Centralizing communications 

Greenhouse simplifies the search process with its automatic resume parsing that works in 25 other languages besides English. This feature comes in handy when sifting through hundreds of applications.

As with Greenhouse, Teamtailor allows HR team members to customize job application forms and prompts based on the role. In step with recent job search trends, Teamtailor even has the option of allowing candidates to upload videos. 

However, video applications do open the door for bias, implicit or otherwise. Unlike Greenhouse, Teamtailor does not include features that help mitigate bias throughout the recruitment and hiring processes.

Whatever way you choose to customize your job applications, they will live on a customized, branded career page available through Teamtailor. These career landing pages provide candidates with the information they need while conveying your company’s brand and culture.

Teamtailor does have a resume checker for keywords, but it’s unclear whether this is an automatic resume parser or a part of its manual search functionality. Given user reviews about wanting more out of Teamtailor’s parsing capabilities, the latter appears to be the case.  

Teamtailor also offers centralized automatic communications supported with templates to avoid manual repetitive messaging. After selecting and fine tuning messages for interview invitations or rejections, you can schedule when the messages should be sent. 

Winner: Greenhouse wins for automatic resume parsing.

Greenhouse vs Teamtailor: Interviewing

Greenhouse includes features to eliminate implicit bias every step of the way, especially as you narrow in on and engage with candidates you want to invite for an interview.

Before evaluating candidates, Greenhouse supports a fair and equitable procedure by having all members of the hiring team agree on candidate “scorecard” criteria beforehand. Greenhouse also provides the option to set up anonymous take-home assignments to increase evaluation objectivity among hiring team members. 

With Greenhouse, candidates also have the opportunity to pre-record their names. This way, the hiring team has the chance to pronounce it correctly when it comes time to interview the candidate. Candidates may also indicate their personal pronouns, so that hiring team members know how to refer to them when discussing their qualifications and interview performance

Greenhouse integrates with popular video conferencing tools like Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams to make conducting interviews easy. It also facilitates easy scheduling, allowing candidates to select a time that works best for them.

When evaluating and selecting candidates for interviews, Teamtailor empowers HR to do more with less. For instance, hiring managers can undertake bulk actions, like inviting ten candidates to interview, simultaneously. 

Teamtailor’s collaboration features are quite comparable to Greenhouse. You can invite colleagues to participate in your hiring processes as well as assign and track team member tasks. Users can tag other members of the hiring team with Teamtailor’s application annotation feature. The hiring team can also add notes and ratings to applications whether in the mobile app or on a desktop.

Interview scheduling features in Teamtailor make it easy to agree on meeting and interview times with colleagues and candidates. Simply send the options to your candidates and let them pick a time most suitable to their schedule.

From there, make use of Teamtailor’s supported third-party video conferencing tools, such as Jobma and Willow. From the website, it’s unclear whether it functions with Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams. 

Winner: Greenhouse wins for features that support DEI and integration with popular video conferencing tools.

Inclusive hiring starts with a diverse recruiting team. Read more about it here: How to Select a Diverse Interview Panel and Improve Your Recruitment Strategy

Greenhouse vs Teamtailor: Pricing

Greenhouse does not offer a free trial and doesn’t appear to offer its three product tiers any longer. Instead it has two main products–Greenhouse Welcome and Greenhouse Onboarding–to meet different needs. 

Greenhouse Welcome focuses primarily on the new hire experience. It includes recruiting, onboarding, and reporting tools and is best suited to smaller businesses that need core ATS and recruiting software functions.

Greenhouse Onboarding, on the other hand, is more built out. It includes all features of Greenhouse Welcome plus:

• New hire document administration and signing tools
• Access to a broad integration ecosystem of more than 300 partners, including ADP, Bamboo, Namely, and more 

This option is more suitable for medium to large enterprise customers. Interested customers must contact Greenhouse directly to obtain pricing information for these products.

Teamtailor offers a free trial, but no pricing information on its website. Its single product plan seems pretty straightforward, as it includes all features and unlimited users. This makes it a good option for smaller businesses who desire a simple, comprehensive solution. Teamtailor’s recruiting software features and price scales up or down accordingly based on company size and needs. 

Winner: We like Teamtailor’s straightforward pricing plan that includes all features and unlimited users. Unless you need specialized hiring and recruiting workflows, this solution will work with any business size.

Greenhouse vs Teamtailor: Strengths and Weaknesses

Greenhouse’s strengths are its:

• Automated job posting and resume parsing
• Organized candidate evaluation system
• Inclusive hiring features

Greenhouse’s weaknesses are its:

• Clunky reporting tools
• Non-user-friendly interfaces
• Customer support

Teamtailor’s strengths are its:

• User access control
• User-friendly career and campaign landing pages
• Customer support
• Easy implementation
• Straightforward, singular product tier

Teamtailor’s weaknesses are its:

• Manual resume search and parsing
• Limited integration with mainstream third-party tools, like Zoom and Google Meet 
• Lack of onboarding features for new hires

Which One is Right For You? Greenhouse vs Teamtailor

Neither vendor is a magic bullet solution. Greenhouse and Teamtailor are comparable when it comes to:

• Collaboration
• Branded career sites
• Automated workflows and communication with candidates
• Social media integration
• Easy interview scheduling 

Greenhouse is a better fit for businesses of any size, since it has two different pricing tiers to meet different needs, better automation features, and integrates with popular third-party tools. It also carries its customers throughout the entire hiring journey, from recruiting to onboarding.

Read more: Tips for Onboarding Remote Employees

Teamtailor is the better option for smaller businesses that only need basic, easy-to-use features for recruiting and hiring but not necessarily for the onboarding process. The great news is that as your company grows, you won’t need to upgrade your plan and user count, as Teamtailor flexes with your company.

Greenhouse and Teamtailor are a tie when it comes down to the compared features, so start with the vendor that wins on the features your organization cares about the most.

Read next: Best Applicant Tracking Systems

The post Greenhouse vs Teamtailor: Recruitment & ATS Solutions appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

UKG vs ADP: Which is better?

UKG Pro and ADP Workforce Now are two major human resources (HR) software solutions with comparable payroll, benefits administration, recruiting, onboarding, and performance management features. Both products target mid-to-large-size employers needing a range of customizable HR features in an all-in-one platform. However, where UKG Pro is tailored to businesses valuing a feature-rich and intuitive experience for their employees, ADP is mainly aimed at scaling businesses needing advisory support and the flexibility to add features as they grow.

Whether you’re looking to switch from UKG Pro to ADP Workforce Now or have narrowed down your list to these two, consider how they compare based on price and other top features. If neither meets your needs, check out our HR Software Guide for other solutions.

Rather watch a video overview of UKG and ADP? Check it out below.

UKG Pro: Better for mid-to-large-sized businesses focused on employee experience

With the merging of Ultimate Software Incorporated and Kronos Incorporated in 2020, the resulting Ultimate Kronos Group (UKG) is one of the largest human capital management (HCM) platforms on the market today. With software solutions suitable to businesses of varying sizes and needs, UKG Pro is geared toward mid-to-large-sized companies wanting to optimize the employee experience.

In every UKG Pro feature, UKG illustrates how it benefits the company and the employee. With employee-focused features like dynamic dashboards, mobile applications, career learning modules, financial wellness, and simplified benefits administration, UKG reduces the administrative burden on HR teams while ensuring the employee remains top-of-mind in every feature.

Also read: HRIS vs. HRMS vs. HCM

ADP Workforce Now: Better for scaling businesses needing flexibility

ADP is one of the world’s largest HR software companies, with over 70 years of experience. Similar to UKG, ADP offers a range of products, from standalone solutions for specific HR needs — like time and attendance or talent acquisition — to full-service, all-in-one human resources information systems (HRIS). ADP Workforce Now is one such HRIS, with tiered pricing, advisory services, and other add-on features to accommodate fast-growing businesses as they scale.

ADP offers some of the most comprehensive HRIS products on the market, but it is not always the right solution for everyone. Check out our Top 6 ADP Vendor Competitors & Alternatives for comparable ADP products.

UKG vs ADP: A detailed comparison

Pricing

UKG and ADP do not disclose prices on their websites; interested buyers must contact their sales team for a quote. UKG Pro follows similar HR software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies, with employers paying a monthly fee based on the number of employees in their organization and the modules they need. In contrast, ADP Workforce Now has clearly defined subscription tiers and add-on modules, granting buyers some idea of their options before contacting ADP for a quote. 

Nevertheless, UKG and ADP’s hidden fees make it difficult to conclude which one offers the most value for the money. Businesses should, therefore, take note of their employee headcount and compare both platforms’ available features below to determine which one best satisfies their needs.

Payroll

UKG Pro and ADP Workforce Now offer comparable payroll software features, including expert tax support, on-demand pay capabilities, and an employee self-service mobile application. However, they differ primarily in their approaches to supporting payroll processes as companies move into international markets.

UKG Pro

UKG Pro offers out-of-the-box payroll features, like employee mobile time-tracking that syncs with payroll processes, and compliance features, such as continuous software updates to support U.S. and Canadian payroll tax laws. Likewise, UKG keeps users apprised of compliance and regulatory changes through their online library, HR360.

Despite this, UKG Pro is limited in the scope of features offered for multinational corporations. Users must either work with a UKG-trusted third-party vendor in another country or purchase UKG Global Payroll, optimized for employees in 100+ countries. However, in either situation, companies must work directly or indirectly with a third-party vendor that runs payroll in that country, which could result in payroll delays.

Thus, considering UKG Pro’s price tag, multinational corporations may be disappointed in UKG Pro’s international payroll capabilities. For mid-to-large-sized companies growing rapidly, waiting for information on their international payrolls from third-party providers is inconvenient and could slow down the company’s accounting and HR processes.

ADP Workforce Now

Much of ADP Workforce Now’s payroll functionality is on par with UKG Pro’s: both offer tax compliance assistance, on-demand pay, pay card options for employees, and mobile device time-tracking capabilities that sync with payroll (if users select ADP’s Premium tier). However, where ADP differs the most from UKG is in its ability to support employers with a global workforce.

ADP Workforce Now, in combination with its ADP Celergo or ADP GlobalView Payroll, can provide payroll, benefits, and other workforce management support for employees in over 140 countries. Because of ADP’s long-established presence in HR software, many of these countries already have a local ADP presence. As a result, companies do not have to rely on indirect vendors to complete payroll on their behalf.

Likewise, ADP provides human resources outsourcing (HRO) services or professional employer organization (PEO) options to companies to simplify payroll processes and ensure compliance with all federal, state, local, or global regulations. ADP’s software automates many rote payroll tasks while their HR services place a majority of employment law compliance on their shoulders. As a result, even lean HR teams can address massive payroll needs with little effort.

Which to choose for payroll?

ADP Workforce Now. Here’s why. ADP Workforce Now has more flexible ways to support employers with international payroll needs. Because both UKG Pro and ADP Workforce Now provide nearly equivalent payroll features in their platforms, ADP’s international payroll capabilities and HRO and PEO services may be the deciding factor for organizations just starting their global presence and needing extra guidance and support.

Try ADP Workforce Now

Benefits administration

UKG Pro and ADP Workforce Now are designed to accommodate employers with already established benefit plans. Both products integrate with major insurance carriers so employers can manage employee benefits plans, including employee enrollments, changes, terminations, or qualifying life events, directly in the software. These changes are then automatically communicated to carriers. 

However, UKG Pro’s approach to benefits administration is more employee-centric, concerned ultimately with aiding employees in making the right decisions for their particular situations. While ADP Workforce Now offers similar capabilities, it primarily focuses on providing features to help employers remain compliant.

UKG Pro

With the acquisition of Everything Benefits by UKG in 2021, UKG Pro is optimized to support employer benefit plans through integrations with insurance carriers like Anthem, United Healthcare, and MetLife. UKG also supports self-service benefits for employees during all qualifying life events. Employees can compare benefit options side-by-side, receive personalized benefit plan recommendations based on their particular life circumstances, and even leverage videos and documents to educate themselves on the different plans.

Additionally, employees can take advantage of financial wellness tools through UKG Wallet. Employees can track and pay upcoming bills, set savings goals, use in-app discounts, and even talk to financial coaches. Not only does this give employees knowledge about their finances when needed, but it also makes them feel supported by their employers in their financial health journeys. 

Finally, the UKG Pro Giving feature allows employees to donate to charitable organizations through one-time or recurring paycheck deductions. This is an excellent way to increase employee retention: employers give employees a chance to make a difference through their paychecks with minimal effort while simultaneously improving their company brand and reputation.

ADP Workforce Now

Similar to UKG Pro, ADP Workforce integrates with several insurance carriers, so it is easy for employers to set up their own benefits plans through the platform. Likewise, ADP Workforce now also offers an interview-based tool to assist employees in determining what benefits are right for them during specific trigger events, like new hire onboarding or open enrollment. ADP Workforce Now also provides similar financial wellness tools through ADP’s myWisely mobile application.

While compliance remains an essential factor in UKG Pro and ADP Workforce Now platforms, ADP contains extra safeguards to ensure companies follow all regulatory requirements. For example, sending COBRA notifications to employees for necessary trigger events like terminations are included in both ADP’s enhanced and premium tiers. UKG Pro users, on the other hand, must pay an additional cost for COBRA administration.

In conjunction with additional professional services, ADP Workforce Now may be more beneficial to companies with complicated workforce structures. Employers working out of multiple states and countries may need ADP’s extra hand-holding to understand and comply with competing tax and other benefit regulations.

Which to choose for benefits administration?

It’s a tie. Here’s why: UKG Pro and ADP Workforce Now contain similar benefits administration features, so choosing one over the other is a matter of preference. For a richer, more supportive benefits experience for employees, companies should select Pro UKG for their financial counseling and charity giving options that ADP lacks.

On the other hand, employers with complex workforces may enjoy ADP Workforce Now’s additional benefits support options to help companies navigate compliance issues without needing to pay extra.

Try ADP Workforce Now Try UKG Pro

Recruiting

UKG Pro includes recruiting features as a standard module in its HRIS platform. In contrast, ADP Workforce Now users must pay extra for their talent acquisition add-on. Despite this, ADP Workforce Now’s talent acquisition management contains more enhanced functionality through their partnership with ZipRecruiter, such as a customized career site and access to over 25,000 job boards.

UKG Pro

UKG Pro contains many staple recruitment software features, such as:

• Distribution to over 3000 job boards with UKG’s partners.
• Generation of offer letters based on pre-made templates.
• Screening questions to narrow down the candidate field.
• Pre-employment background checks.
• Data transfer for smooth onboarding.

Compared to ADP Workforce now, UKG Pro’s recruiting is more focused on facilitating an easy application experience for potential candidates. For example, UKG Pro accommodates job descriptions in multiple languages so candidates of varying backgrounds can easily view and apply for positions, broadening a company’s job posting reach.

Additional features, like integrations with LinkedIn for résumé parsing and Google, Microsoft Exchange, and Microsoft Outlook for interview calendar syncing, allow candidates to apply and track their job statuses easily. By simplifying the application process, UKG Pro ensures employers retain a healthy supply of candidates to satisfy their various recruitment goals.

ADP Workforce Now

Unlike UKG Pro, ADP Workforce Now users must pay an extra fee to add talent acquisition to a core subscription tier. However, through its partnership with ZipRecruiter, ADP Workforce Now users can access automations and larger talent pools compared to UKG Pro users.

For example, ADP Workforce Now automatically distributes job posts to over 25,000 job boards. In addition, ADP users take advantage of ZipRecruiter’s artificial intelligence (AI), which searches for qualified candidates for company job posts and invites them to apply.

Employers can also increase candidate engagement through custom career sites and text messages and video communication with candidates. For employers with high-volume hiring needs and small HR teams, ADP may be the perfect choice to find qualified candidates fast.

Which to choose for recruiting?

ADP Workforce Now. Here’s why. Despite being an add-on, ADP Workforce Now’s Talent Acquisition has significantly more functionality than UKG due to its partnership with ZipRecruiter. With AI capabilities and an extensive job post distribution network, ADP can easily support HR teams with consistent or critical hiring needs.

Try ADP Workforce Now

Performance management

Similar to recruiting, UKG Pro already includes a performance management module as part of its overall suite. ADP Workforce Now customers, on the other hand, must purchase performance, compensation, and learning management modules as additional features to any of their subscription tiers.

Despite this, both platforms offer similar talent management features, from continuous feedback to performance cycle management, learning and development courses, and goal setting and tracking.

UKG Pro

Included in UKG Pro’s suite are several essential performance management features, such as:

• Goal tracking.
• Continuous feedback.
• 360-degree reviews.
• Performance and compensation review cycles.
• Training courses.

What sets UKG Pro’s talent management apart from ADP Workforce Now, however, is its emphasis on coaching and upskilling current employees. For instance, UKG Pro users can create a branded training academy with training courses featuring customized, third-party, or pre-built lessons for employees to access on their schedule. In addition, employers can utilize the academy to issue required, organization-wide training or support individual employees’ career goals.

Similarly, UKG Pro’s platform encourages managers and employees to develop meaningful one-on-one meetings through centralized meeting notes and the ability to request feedback anytime. This keeps employees apprised of their performance and fosters trust in the organization, as employees are free to engage in performance follow-ups on an ongoing basis.

ADP Workforce Now

ADP Workforce Now offers similar features to UKG Pro for talent management, including the following: 

• 70,000 pre-built development courses.
• Employee self-enrollment in training courses. 
• Goal assignment and tracking.
• Sentiment analysis surveys. 
• Performance and compensation review cycles.

However, what differentiates ADP from UKG is that ADP’s performance management approach focuses on providing employers with the tools to make strategic workforce decisions.

For example, HR managers can take advantage of market insights through data from over 30 million employees during performance and compensation review cycles. With this information, managers can make sure that employees’ pay, bonuses, merit increases, and stock awards remain equitable and competitive within their industry. For employers concerned with increasing turnover rates, this employee data could be the first step in improving retention efforts.

Which to choose for performance management?

UKG Pro. Here’s why. UKG Pro already includes performance, compensation, and learning management modules in their all-in-one suite — in contrast, ADP Workforce Now users must purchase these add-on features separately. Moreover, UKG Pro’s coaching, feedback, and upskilling features are great ways for organizations to motivate underperforming employees and foster cultures of continuous improvement.

Try UKG Pro

UKG vs ADP: Ready to choose?

UKG Pro and ADP Workforce Now are two of the biggest names for midsize businesses looking to consolidate their HR tech stack for a more streamlined experience. However, choosing the right one depends on what HR software aspects are most important to you.

For a more intuitive, employee-focused experience, choose UKG Pro for its benefit packages and focus on employee career development. For fast-growing businesses needing flexible solutions to accommodate them as they scale, choose ADP Workforce Now for its advisory services and breadth of product add-ons.

However, if none of these solutions fit, check out our HR Software Guide to browse other software on the market.

The post UKG vs ADP Comparison 2024 appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

Workday vs. SAP SuccessFactors: Which is better?

Workday: Best for mid-to-large businesses requiring in-depth reporting analytics

Workday HCM is one of the most popular cloud-based HR platforms in the U.S., with modules supporting the entire employee life cycle. Outside of core HR functions like document retention, payroll, and benefits administration, Workday also features the following:

Although Workday has started to expand its capabilities beyond human resources (HR) to include finance and IT, it remains a very U.S.-centric HR software compared to other HCM solutions.

Nevertheless, large companies looking for meaningful insights on employee performance, benefits, and workforce data should consider Workday. With its user-friendly analytics and reports, Workday makes it easy to strategize for future company endeavors.

Watch our Workday demo:

SAP SuccessFactors: Best for global enterprises looking to consolidate their HR tech stack

SAP SuccessFactors is a cloud-based HCM suite comprised of several stand-alone HR products for global, enterprise-level businesses. In addition to all of Workday’s features, SAP offers a vast library of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software to support company operations, including:

However, what differentiates SAP SuccessFactors from Workday is its features specifically for multinational corporations. With multiple language capabilities in its payroll, recruiting, and benefits administration modules, companies with SAP SuccessFactors do not have to rely on various HR solutions to support core HR functions for their international teams.

Moreover, SAP SuccessFactors’ array of solutions can help executives and HR leaders consolidate their entire companies’ tech stack into one. With APIs and connectors for enterprises juggling on-premises and cloud software, SAP SuccessFactors can streamline the business and workforce experience into a single source of truth.

SAP isn’t the only ERP system on the market — check out our Top 6 SAP ERP Alternatives for comparable products for your business.

Workday vs. SAP SuccessFactors: A detailed comparison

Watch our video comparison of Workday and SAP SuccessFactors:

Pricing

Like most HCM solutions, neither Workday nor SAP discloses their prices for Workday HCM or SAP SuccessFactors HXM Suite. Additionally, neither company offers trials or free versions.

You’ll have to contact the sales department of the respective companies for a detailed quote based on your number of employees, required modules, software implementation requirements, and advisory services needed.

Need a better idea of how to budget for your HR software investment? Read: How Much Does HR Software Cost?

Payroll

Workday HCM and SAP SuccessFactors include payroll as a core HR feature in their software. However, where Workday HCM focuses on providing the tools and guidance for employees to remain in control of their pay, SAP SuccessFactors emphasizes its global payroll functionality to support multinational corporations.

Workday HCM

Workday provides companies with basic functionality for payroll, including accommodating multiple payroll schedules and structures while keeping companies up to date with tax and payroll compliance in varying jurisdictions.

However, compared to ​​SAP SuccessFactors, Workday’s native global payroll capabilities are limited to U.S., Canada, U.K., and France. Workday payroll compliance support is also limited to those countries.

Suppose your company requires payroll support in countries other than those four, or you already use a local payroll provider in certain countries. In that case, you will need either Workday Global Payroll Cloud or Workday Cloud Connect for Third-Party Payroll. With these, you can deploy, integrate, and manage payroll in an additional 100 countries.

Despite Workday’s lackluster global payroll, its payroll reports and employee-focused payroll features set it apart from SAP SuccessFactors. For example, Workday utilizes a continuous payroll functionality, where any HR changes that affect payroll are immediately recalculated and viewable in pay reports, such as the payroll calculation pipeline.

In addition, Workday allows U.S. employees to take advantage of on-demand pay from their mobile app, an excellent perk for employers to attract and retain talent.

SAP SuccessFactors

SAP SuccessFactors HXM Suite includes all of the payroll capabilities of its stand-alone SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll product, including automatic tax calculations and compliance updates in multiple jurisdictions and off-cycle payroll support.

Like Workday, SAP SuccessFactors also offers continuous payroll functionality to reduce payroll processing time for company HR teams.

However, SAP SuccessFactors payroll features are more global-friendly than Workday. It has native, embedded payroll support for over 48 countries.

Moreover, SAP provides companies access to multiple, country-specific data during payroll, including seamless integration of global time tracking and benefits information to simplify cross-company payroll processing. International employees, in turn, receive a localized payroll feel while companies ensure compliance with varying countries’ laws and norms.

Which to choose for payroll?

SAP SuccessFactors. Here’s why:

SAP SuccessFactors offers comparable payroll features to Workday, plus additional global options. Despite Workday’s native on-demand payroll option that SAP SuccessFactors lacks, users can easily leverage a third-party partner integration for this employee benefit.

Moreover, unlike Workday’s pre-built option, scaling companies can add international payroll support as needed with SAP SuccessFactors. That way, companies can save money by only paying for what they need as their payroll needs evolve.

Visit SAP

Benefits administration

Workday and SAP SuccessFactors provide similar experiences for companies and employees wanting to take control of their benefit offerings, such as employee self-guided enrollment. But the main difference between Workday and SAP SuccessFactors benefits administration lies in the number of native benefits compliance support for U.S. versus international teams.

Workday HCM

Although Workday HCM can provide global compliance updates, companies must partner with a third party for international benefits administration. Workday can, however, centralize global benefits data on companies’ benefits dashboards to understand their benefits programs’ impact quickly.

Workday excels, however, in its medical, dental, vision, 401(k), COBRA, and FSA administration offerings for U.S.-based employees. HR teams can leverage Workday Cloud Connect for Benefits to automatically share and update employee benefits information with over 300 benefits providers and reduce the work associated with manually notifying these providers of benefits changes.

Likewise, companies can stay ahead of ACA compliance requirements for their variable-hour employees through Workday’s Affordable Care Act Dashboard. For the same functionality, SAP SuccessFactors’ customers must add on SAP U.S. Benefits Administration by Benefitfocus, making Workday an ideal solution for companies primarily operating out of the U.S.

SAP SuccessFactors

SAP SuccessFactors caters to global enterprises by making it easy to manage international employees’ insurance plans, pensions, savings, and reimbursements all in one place. ​​With compliance support in over 100 locales, SAP SuccessFactors can unify benefits management without resorting to multiple governance systems.

For example, ​within SAP SuccessFactors, companies can customize their benefits workflow processes to accommodate open enrollment in the U.S. or superannuation plans in Australia. SAP SuccessFactors even supports electronic data interchange (EDI) with overseas carriers to diminish data exchange administrative work for HR professionals.

Which to choose for benefits administration?

SAP SuccessFactors. Here’s why:

Although companies with U.S.-based employees will have to purchase SAP U.S. Benefits Administration by Benefitfocus for additional ACA administration and compliance support, ​​SAP SuccessFactors’ customizable international benefits administration capabilities are great for companies with diverse workforces. This versatility is valuable for companies that expect to expand and leverage talent in global markets.

Visit SAP

Workforce management

Workday and SAP SuccessFactors provide advanced recruitment, onboarding, and time-tracking features. Each vendor makes it easy to visualize and track changes at every point of the employee’s tenure while giving insight into workforce changes and process bottlenecks.

Workday HCM

Workday includes talent management features to simplify day-to-day employee processes, including geofencing capabilities for time-tracking and voice-activated time-off requests. However, Workday’s contingent talent management features are especially attractive for enterprises with varying worker classifications.

For instance, through Workday’s VNDLY, companies can analyze their skill gaps and automate job requisition creation to source candidates quickly for varying projects. In addition, gig workers, independent contractors, and freelancers receive unified sourcing to offboarding experiences.

Finally, companies can monitor their budget spending and headcount to ensure their labor costs align with their bottom line.

SAP SuccessFactors

SAP SuccessFactors’ talent management features, like its payroll and benefits administration, are heavily global-focused. For instance, SAP SuccessFactors’ time-tracking features are dynamic and based on the employee’s profile location. This allows companies to comply with differing break rules, overtime, and on-call regulations by country.

Recruiting teams also have an easier time with remote or global talent acquisition, as SAP SuccessFactors provides companies with access to 4,000 source channels in over 80 countries. Recruiting and onboarding practices are also supported in over 46 languages so that companies can source quality talent while accommodating local languages and customs.

Which to choose for benefits administration?

Workday. Here’s why:

Workday can accommodate global workforces in both time-tracking and recruitment, even if it is less intuitive than SAP SuccessFactors. However, Workday’s worker-focused features and compliance monitoring across worker classifications make it an appealing choice for companies with complicated worker dynamics.

Visit Workday

Performance management

Like most HCM solutions, Workday and SAP SuccessFactors invest in their talent optimization capabilities so companies can monitor and up-skill their internal workforces and stay ahead of the competition. Both provide performance tracking, goal setting, employee feedback, and learning modules but differ in their approaches.

Workday HCM

Workday leverages AI and machine learning to organize and make sense of employee data from performance review cycles, employee feedback, and skills assessments to help companies identify top performers and align them with appropriate opportunities. Workday’s AI even monitors potential employee flight risks based on performance and feedback so companies can prepare necessary succession strategies.

Additionally, Workday software allows employees to record their skills so managers can track and validate skill sets over time. With this data, companies can quickly pinpoint skill deficiencies and provide upskilling opportunities aligning with an employee’s career goals. In doing so, businesses can close skill gaps and strengthen ties with employees by investing in their professional development.

SAP SuccessFactors

Where Workday focuses on bigger-picture performance and engagement monitoring, SAP SuccessFactors focuses on optimizing these processes for more efficiency. Take, for example, the features embedded in SAP SuccessFactors’ performance management modules below.

• Mobile app: Employees can add, change, and update their progress on company goals through their mobile devices, allowing managers and HR teams to remain apprised of goal progression at any time.
• Goals library: Employees can choose from a library of over 500 ready-to-use SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely) goals for simple career development.
• Writing assistant: During review cycle, continuous feedback, or 360-degree feedback sessions, managers can use the writing assistant to provide a well-rounded and constructive response to their direct reports.

Along with reporting adaptive insights to reduce bias, performance, and pay disparity, SAP SuccessFactors ensures businesses maximize their workforce potential and minimize administrative workloads.

Which to choose for benefits administration?

SAP SuccessFactors. Here’s why:​

Besides its time-saving functions, SAP includes a much more robust selection of products and features that promote continuous employee learning and development, such as mentoring and fellowship opportunities.

Businesses might appreciate Workday’s user-friendly performance analytics for quick insights into employee satisfaction and talent gaps. However, SAP SuccessFactors’ performance management features make it easy for employees to track goals and develop skills for a more holistic career development experience.

Visit SAP

Workday vs. SAP SuccessFactors: Ready to choose?

Workday HCM and ​​SAP SuccessFactors HXM Suite each have benefits and drawbacks that could make or break it as your business’s HCM solution.

Choose Workday if your company is based primarily in the U.S. and values data-rich, insightful reports across your workforce and finances. However, if you need to manage workforces and company HR processes across the globe, choose SAP SuccessFactors for its international support and diverse products.

If you’re still undecided with Workday or SAP SuccessFactors is the right fit for your company, take a look at our HR Software Guide for other solutions.

The post Workday vs. SAP SuccessFactors appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.