5 Best HRMS Software Solutions in 2025

As a human resources (HR) manager, you juggle multiple tasks a day, which can strain you, and even prevent you from taking the best HR decisions. A human resource management system (HRMS) can make your job much easier. In this article, we explain what an HRMS is and take you through the best HRMS software.

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What is a HRMS?

A HRMS is an all-in-one HR software that automates repetitive HR tasks like employee onboarding, payroll, timekeeping, benefits and administration. In addition, it provides talent management capabilities such as recruiting, performance management, learning and training, goal planning, and succession planning. As you can picture, an HRMS can replace labor-intensive processes reliant on paper records and spreadsheets with digitized data and automated processes to lessen manual work and free more of your time for strategic or higher-value work.

The value of an HRMS has increased in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, when HR teams were suddenly faced with managing a remote and distributed workforce. A cloud-based HRMS allows you to connect to your teams from any location and as a self-service portal, enables employees or HR teams to easily update information by logging into their HRMS accounts. An HRMS is also a data goldmine, driving people analytics and better strategies and decisions across the business.

Human resource management has undergone a profound transformation over the past century. According to McKinsey & Company, as the organization of the future takes shape, HR will be the driving force for many initiatives: mapping talent to value, building a more flexible workforce, developing an HR tech ecosystem, and helping C-suite leaders establish purpose, enhance the employee experience, create a more purpose-driven culture, and simplify the organization.

Most HRMS systems, in general, offer the following benefits:

• Improved data management
• Employee self-service
• Central storage for employee handbooks, procedures, and safety guidelines
• Implement and track employee development programs
• On-demand reporting
• Management and tracking of recruiting data
• Integration with other company software, accounting systems, ERP systems, intranets, and other programs

In the rapidly changing world of work, an HRMS can simplify complex HR processes, save time and effort through automation capabilities, and make talent management more sophisticated, ensuring that organizations are hiring and retaining the best talent.

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Top HRMS Software Solutions

An HRMS supports business transformation and must therefore be selected judiciously. Your choice of a HRMS system should help you stay on top of your job and save your hours each week for innovative people strategies. Here are some things to consider when choosing an HRMS software solution.

• Employee data security: It is essential for organizations to safeguard employee data against unauthorized access and cyberattacks. The best HRMS solutions ensure good security with two-factor authentication, encryption, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) compliance.
• Compliance and reporting: HRMS systems often have built-in compliance to help organizations adhere to labor laws, industry regulations, and reporting requirements. This reduces the risk of legal issues and ensuing penalties. Basic features to look for include tax reporting, wage and hour compliance, state and federal employment laws, benefits regulations, and anti-discrimination and anti-harassment prevention.
• Employee experience: A simple user interface and an overall straightforward user experience is vital to encourage employees to adopt self-service options in HRMS platforms.

Now, let's look at the top HRMS software solutions.

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1. Paycor

Paycor is an easy-to-use payroll HRM system for small and medium-sized businesses. While it is best known for payroll, the platform offers automation and tools that make HR management more efficient. Employee self-service is a time-saver for HR teams as employees can sign into Paycor and update their profiles, sign digital documents, or complete any other tasks without HR's intervention. If you don't have an employee who is dedicated to HR, you can manage employee-related responsibilities easily on Paycor. The ideal target audience for the HRMS payroll software are companies with 50 or fewer employees.

General features

Here's a brief overview of Paycor's features:

• Payroll processing: Paycor's autorun payroll feature allows you to schedule payroll in advance to run on a specific day or time, even if you don't log in.
• Tax compliance: Paycor handles payroll taxes in all 50 U.S. states, including tax filing, W-2, and 1099 processing. It provides alerts on tax rates and compliance feedback to help you stay consistent with accurate filing.
• Mobile wallet: Employees can view their wage data on the Paycor mobile wallet, and access up to half their wages before payday, allowing for financial flexibility and helping in managing unexpected expenses.
• Reports and predictive analytics: Paycor puts employee data, including headcount, turnover rate, absenteeism, and compensation levels, at your fingertips. It shows the likelihood of resignations, compensation analysis, and benchmarking trends.
• Team chat: You can send direct chat messages to a single staff member or a group. In addition, you can send emails and mobile push notifications to employees on shift updates and changes, which is especially helpful when employees are working from home.

Information on pricing and plans is not available on the Paycor website. A custom price quote must be obtained from their sales team. Phone support is offered to all customers from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Monday to Friday. Online chat support is also available. A knowledge base offering step-by-step guides and training videos on using Paycor help you get up and running quickly with the software.

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2. Workday

Workday is an enterprise HRMS solution with features that make it easy to manage diverse workforces (employees, contractors, contingent workers, and retirees), procure talent, and ensure global compliance support. It offers customized reports about your workforce, and allows you to set up your home screen to automatically show employee data such as year-to-date turnover, headcount, open positions, and hires and terminations by quarter.

The platform is particularly well-suited for businesses having global branches. It helps you stay on top of regulatory changes in different states or countries to avoid labor or tax violations. You can customize workflows to local branch organizations and ensure global consistency. Workday seamlessly integrates with various HR tools and provides comprehensive analytics and reporting capabilities. Paycor is also available as an iOS and Android mobile app.

General features

Workday provides a complete understanding of your workforce, skills, and capabilities. Here are some of its features:

• Work experience optimization through workforce sentiment analysis, workplace safety programs, compensation management, hybrid or remote work management, and employee development opportunities.
• Workforce analytics, offering over 2,800 pre-built customizable dashboards and allowing you to set user access rules. Insights offered include your top business drivers, business risks and opportunities, your company's average compa-ratio over time, employee feedback trends, upskill worker opportunities, ethnic representation at company management levels, turnover rates, and more.
• Career and staff planning, providing an understanding of existing workforce skills, and skill gaps and trends

Workday is a lot more powerful and scalable than its peers. But its advanced capabilities make it slightly less intuitive to use, something you can overcome with its customer support features, including product overview training, a library of resources, webinars, and a Q&A community. All customers receive 24/7 support. Pricing details are not mentioned on the website and must be sought from their sales team. Pricing is on the higher side, underscoring its suitability for mid-size and large companies.

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3. Zoho People

Affordable and user-friendly, Zoho People is great for small and medium-sized companies, although it also offers an enterprise-level plan. If you're a start-up looking for free HRMS software with basic features for the time being, Zoho People's (forever) free plan for 5 users is for you. It provides an employee database and time-off management.

The HR platform itself is comprehensive, simplifying common HR tasks such as time and attendance, performance assessment, payroll management, employee engagement, and learning and development. On the performance management side, you can set your own appraisal cycle, tie employee salary to performance, and base reviews on the ratings of multiple people. An integrated time tracker allows your employees to easily clock in and the time they checked in automatically shows on the calendar. They can then submit timesheets for each project and client, using this data.

A chat feature allows HR teammates to stay in touch and collaborate easily. Zoho People has reporting features, showing a complete employee list, monthly pay stub, employee records, vacation schedules, and other data. You can customize the dashboard to show the most important information first and stay updated with the relevant information at a glance.

Mobile self-service gives employees easy access to their HR data from anywhere.  Zoho People offers native integration with various popular payroll software, including its own payroll solution Zoho Payroll.

General features

The HRMS software offers five paid plans, with higher-priced plans adding more features. Here's a look at some features of Zoho People:

• Employee onboarding
• Employee database management
• Performance management
• Time off management
• Job scheduling
• Time tracking
• Billing and invoice integration
• Performance appraisals
• Timesheet management
• Advanced HR analytics
• Employee query management
• Employee self-service
• Discussion forums

The platform is user-friendly with responsive customer support. All users get 24/5 email support for all plans at no additional cost. Premium support is available for a fee. Check out plans here.

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4. UKG Pro

UKG Pro offers payroll, people analytics, benefits administration, and other features. It uses artificial intelligence (AI) to provide analytics insights into payroll, pay equity, and other measures, offering data visualizations like heat maps, bubble charts, scatter graphics, and more. It integrates with various other systems and is highly scalable, making it best suited for growing businesses and enterprises. iOS and Android versions are available for download on your mobile phones.

General features

Here's a partial list of UKG Pro's features:

• Onboarding
• Performance management
• Payroll
• Document management
• Time and attendance management
• Succession and compensation management
• Benefits administration
• Compliance support
• Organizational chart
• Strategic workforce planning
• Communication and collaboration
• Reports and analytics

The platform is easy to use and offers several options for configuration to your needs. However, some may find the vast number of features a bit intimidating. The UKG community center, a comprehensive knowledge base, helps with users' questions. Phone support is available 24/7, with mainly intended for payroll-related and other time-sensitive issues. The UKG Pro license starts at $600 per year for every five users. Details on pricing and plans are sparse and can be sought from the company's sales team.

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5. Namely

Namely's fully integrated HR solutions help mid-market companies manage several HR processes in a single location. Namely HR is available on multiple plans, with the entry level plan for $9/user/month offering payroll management and core HR features. The higher-tier plans add onboarding, recruiting, compliance support, performance management, benefits administration, workers' compensation plans, timekeeping, and more. The platform also offers managed payroll and benefits services for companies that wish to outsource the tasks.

Namely is easy to use and comes with equally simple employee self-service. The mobile version of the HRMS is well-designed, making it easy to view timesheets, request time-off, and engage with colleagues.

General features

Namely offers core and additional HR features; what you get depends on the plan you're on. Here's a partial list of Namely's features:

• Handbooks and policies
• Onboarding
• Employee recognition
• Payroll
• Reporting
• Performance management
• Compliance support
• HR analytics
• Recruiting
• Goals and recognition

Namely HR offers 24/7 phone support. As mentioned earlier, you can choose from one of four plans, including - if so required - managed services, which are available on the pricier options. Check out pricing here.

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Conclusion

Recruitment is a key responsibility of the HR department. As a complex task, recruiting poses many challenges to HR professionals. Common issues include attracting the right candidates, recruiting the right people, hiring quickly, ensuring a great candidate experience, eliminating bias in recruitment, and establishing a strong employer brand.

Human resource management systems that have a recruitment module screen candidates and applications and help manage specific pre-interview checks and other assessment stages. For more enhanced recruiting where the focus is on consistently finding the right job-candidate fit, conducting reference checks efficiently, and making bias-free selections, a dedicated talent management system will be necessary. HiPeople, an AI-powered assessment and reference checks platform is designed to help you hire top talent.

HiPeople's assessment library has pre-designed tests with the option to add custom questions, which evaluate candidates on hard skills, soft skills, personality and culture fit, cognitive abilities, and language proficiency. There's an assessment for just about every job role in the healthcare, technology, and BPO and outsourcing industries.

To give an example, the hard skills you can test for a tech role include computer science fundamentals, C programming, database development, data pipelines, DevOps, full-stack engineering, Linux, Kubernetes, and more. Want to run cognitive ability tests? Advanced logical thinking, numerical reasoning, and problem solving are among the options. If you want something other than the 1000+ job-specific templates curated by the platform's people specialists, you can have its AI generate tests for various job roles.

HiPeople is an excellent supporting tool with your HRMS, making talent management more efficient and effective. See HiPeople in action with a demo.