Top 5 HR Software to Boost Team Collaboration

Human resources (HR) plays a vital role in any business.

Yet, 56% of HR leaders say that their organizations’ HR technology doesn’t meet their needs.

That’s pretty crazy when you consider that HR is tasked with handling such a diverse workload. It requires a high level of organization and the ability to coordinate and collaborate with the various departments and individuals within the company—which is why they need their tools.

Denying your HR department the tools it needs can actually harm your business. Whether it’s because of cost concerns or resistance to change, the returns from investing in your HR team are well worth it.

The right software can make these challenges significantly easier to manage and ultimately ensure that operations run smoothly.  

This blog highlights the top 5 HR software to boost team collaboration and help your HR professionals perform at their best.

How do HR tools that promote collaboration help your business?

Sure, tools make life easier. But it’s important to know exactly how they do so in order to choose the best ones for your needs. 

So, what exactly are the benefits of improving collaboration? 

A higher level of organization: As professionals who are in charge of administrative tasks, managing various kinds of documentation is a big part of HR’s role. Having all your files in a centralized database saves time by making documents easy to find, share, and edit. 

Streamlined communication: 80% of employees prefer to get immediate feedback rather than waiting for performance reviews. Additionally, faster communication isn’t just great for feedback, it speeds up decision-making and creates are more agile workforce. 

Improved employee satisfaction: Everyone needs time off. However, it’s important that your team takes time off in a way that respects the needs of the job. A leave management software can help prevent employee burnout while ensuring employee availability during heavy work periods. 

Smoother operations: Ultimately, boosting collaboration means making operations more efficient. If you’re company is more organized and is able to communicate clearly, it means fewer mistakes and a greater output.

Top 5 HR Software to Boost Team Collaboration

We’ve compiled 5 of the top software for HR professionals to boost collaboration in small to medium-sized organizations. Each tool was selected based on its specific benefits for HR tasks like program management, communication, collaboration, and vacation tracking. 

Vacation Tracker

Vacation Tracker is a leave management tool with an intuitive dashboard that provides clear visibility into team availability along with information detailing who is off, as well as when and why. 

Each employee has access to their own profile, allowing them to see their PTO balance and history and request time off. 

With Vacation Tracker Complete, you can introduce even more flexibility into PTO by tracking your leave in days or hours. 

You can set the holiday schedule you want to track based on different regions. You can also manually set specific accrual rates, determine how many PTO days to offer, and set blackout periods for when you need all hands on deck.

What makes this tool a game-changer is that you can automate a lot of the reporting and all of PTO tracking. The platform will automatically update PTO balances based on your settings so HR can focus on other, more pertinent tasks. 

Vacation Tracker comes with a ton of customizations and additional features that make leave tracking easy! If you want to learn more, you can book a demo and get the full tour. 

Features:

• Unlimited Locations and Departments: Manage multiple locations and departments within your organization effortlessly, allowing you to tailor leave policies and tracking for each specific group. 

• Export Reports and Set Notifications: Easily export detailed leave reports and set automated notifications for upcoming leave, approvals, and other important updates, ensuring that everyone stays informed.

• Automate Accruals and Set Accrual Caps: Automatically calculate and track leave accruals for your employees, including setting accrual caps to manage and control leave balances effectively. 

• Enable TOIL (Comp Leave): Turn overtime into well-deserved time off. 

Integrations:

• Slack
• Microsoft Teams
• Google Workspace
• Email

Pricing:

• Core – $1 per user/monthly
• Complete – $3 per user/monthly

Slack

Slack is a collaboration tool that facilitates communication between colleagues through instant messaging and audio and video calls. 

You can message people privately or organize groups into public or private channels. To grant access to the relevant individuals, the admin simply needs to invite them. It’s also super easy to grab a specific individual’s attention. Need to ask Ana from Creative to design the perfect image for an ad you’re working on? Just @her, and she’ll be notified! 

Credited: Slack

Another cool feature of Slack is its search function, which allows you to access older conversations. You can just type “/search” in the message console, followed by the keywords. What’s more, you can refine your search by applying filters like which channel or individual to search and specifying when the conversation occurred. You can also pin messages so your team can have quick access to pertinent information. 

P.S. If you want to communicate in Slack like a pro, we teach you everything you need to know about Slack etiquette in our blog “Slack Team Communication Best Practices.”

Features:

• Instant messaging (voice, video, and live calls) 
• Organizes conversations into channels
• Has a searchable history
• Easy to use

Integrations:

• Gsuite
• Vacation Tracker
• Atlassian
• GitHub
• Asana
• OneDrive
• InVision
• And more!
   

Pricing:

• Pro – $8.25 USD per person/month or $7.25 per person/month (billed yearly)
• Business+ – $15 USD per person/month or $12.50 per person/month (billed yearly)
• Enterprise Grid – Custom pricing

Asana

Using project management software has been shown to improve communication by up to 52%. Asana is a simple yet sophisticated tool that provides clear visibility into who is doing what and when, making it easy for teams to organize, collaborate, plan, and execute tasks. 

One of Asana’s standout features is that you can break down large projects into smaller, more manageable stages. You can include briefs that describe the project in detail, add notes and file attachments, create and assign subtasks, and set milestones and deadlines. 

Credited: Asana

There are also privacy settings that allow you to add and grant permissions to select employees and make certain projects visible to the relevant team members. 

Another great feature is Asana’s different project views (list, board, timeline, and calendar views), which provide unique perspectives. One that’s particularly useful is the timeline view, which visually shows you when different tasks start and finish.  

Features: 

• Excellent for organizing and tracking tasks and projects
• team collaboration with comments and file attachments.
• Offers various views to suit different project management styles.
• Customizable workflows.

Integrations:

• Zoom
• Outlook
• Gmail
• Adobe Creative Cloud 
• OneDrive 
• Office365 
• Google Drive
• And more!
   

Pricing:

• Personal – Free (up to 15 people)
• Starter – $10.99 USD/month
• Advanced – $24.99 USD/month

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is an all-in-one messaging and conferencing platform that makes organizing data and collaborating with colleagues straightforward. One major reason Teams made the list is that it seamlessly syncs with Microsoft’s flagship products, such as Excel, Word, SharePoint, and OneDrive. 

When you open the app, the first thing you’ll see is the navigation bar on the left. From there, you can access individual and group chats, your calendar, and files. Teams make creating different channels really easy by providing a variety of customizable templates. 

Credited: Microsoft

What makes Teams a great tool for HR departments is that you can literally do everything from sharing, viewing, and editing documents from your chat or channels and its conferencing capabilities. From within the app, you can quickly create and record meetings and invite colleagues through your calendar.

Features:

• Combines multiple collaboration features in one platform
• Seamless integration with Office 365
• Reliable security features
• Facilitates collaboration on document editing
• Highly organized

Integrations:

• OfficeRnd Hybrid
• Decisions
• Vacation Tracker
• SignEasy
• Bonusly
• Karma
• Polly
• And more!
   

Pricing:

• Microsoft Teams Essentials – $5.40 CAD per user/month
• Microsoft 365 Business Basic – $8.10 CAD per user/month
• Microsoft 365 Business Standard – $17.00 CAD per user/month

Quickbooks

Intuit’s Quickbooks is predominantly a cloud-based accounting software. However, it comes with some essential HR tools that make it a breeze to stay on top of compliance laws and manage payrolls. 

It’s a secure platform that’s designed to help small businesses record and store company transactions.

When you open the tool, the first thing you see is the customizable dashboard, which gives you an overview of your bank accounts, projected cash flow, and overall financial health. The user-friendly navigation menu gives you quick access to essential tools that help you manage business transactions, payroll, taxes, time tracking, and health benefits. 

Credited: Quickbooks

“Updates” provides you with content in the form of videos and articles that detail new updates, and “help” supplies you with answers to frequently asked questions. There’s also a search function that shows you a list of your recent transactions.

Overall, Quickbooks makes it easy to manage your finances, adhere to compliance, and care for your employees.

Features:

• User-friendly interface
• Easy access to essential tools
• Lots of resources to help you stay up-to-date and solve issues

Integrations:

• Salesforce
• WooCommerce
• Shopify
• Hubspot
• Amazon
• Expensify
• Paypal
• And more!
   

Pricing:

“Buy now and save”

• Simple Start – $6 CAD/month
• Essentials – $13 CAD/month
• Plus – $16 CAD/month
• Advanced – $32 CAD/month

“Free trial for 30 days”

• Simple Start – $24 CAD/month
• Essentials – $54 CAD/month
• Plus – $80 CAD/month
• Advanced – $160 CAD/month
   

Wrapping things up

At the end of the day, a successful company is one that understands and knows how to collaborate effectively. To do this at a professional level means using the right tools to increase your company’s degree of organization and communication.  

Investing in the right HR software boosts collaborative efforts by creating an atmosphere that simplifies project management and planning and empowers employees to access the people and information they need. This makes operations more fluid, which ultimately allows your business to thrive.

Aleksandra Cvetkovic

Aleksandra has been with the team since day one, bringing her passion for all things marketing.