Smart HR and team leaders are always looking for the best workforce management software to make their job easier. From employee satisfaction tools to task by task project management, there are many aspects of performance management that such leaders need to cover. Given the wide availability of workforce management software, what’s the best tool for the job?
Because every internal organization is a little different, there is no one answer. Instead, we’ve prepared an overview of the best workforce management software on the market today, helping you to choose the most effective option for your needs.
How to rate workforce management systems
Workforce management is a complex area, and so too are the various solutions available. In this guide, we’ve assessed each workforce management software option in a few critical areas:
- Key features: What are its biggest strengths and what potentially makes it the best workforce management software for you?
- Additional features: What other services and features are worthy of note?
- Overall operational efficiency: With the above in mind, how effective is this management software as a strategic workforce planning tool? Who is it best suited for and who might not find it ideal?
Movo
First, let’s start with Movo – our own innovative answer to effective workforce management. Where other tools seem to fall into one of two categories, Movo strives to provide both the tools to track employee attendance, but also to track individual tasks, employee engagement and the more essential metrics for day to day operations.
With over 70,000 monthly users, Movo can help increase productivity by 20% across the company, while People Operational teams will be 500% more efficient.
Key features:
- Employee scheduling: Employees can request time off and Movo’s AI-enabled automated scheduling can adapt the entire roster for maximum workforce management with minimal effort.
- Task management: Movo offers real time task management and tracking, helping leaders to assess not only individual productivity, but also wider work or project progress.
- Time tracking: Unlike other solutions, Movo’s time management software includes anti-time-fraud support, ensuring employees are accurately clocking in and out.
- Employee onboarding: With tools to automate the onboarding process, employees can become productive as quickly as possible, whilst leaders are able to track their progress and ensure they have been successfully onboarded and trained.
- Employee engagement: With a built-in social network, Movo offers more than just workforce management software: it provides a place for employees to communicate and bond across their teams and the wider company.
- Reporting: From time tracking management and scheduling to productivity and compliance, Movo offers real time reporting on vital key metrics.
Additional features:
- Learning Management System: Movo also includes tools to help employees cross-train, take advantage of additional opportunities and otherwise thrive within your organization.
- HR automation: From automated credential verification to internal upskilling, Movo’s additional features help individuals progress within the company, leading to greater employee satisfaction.
Overall operational efficiency:
Movo is designed to be a robust and in-depth solution for workforce management. For individual employees, it offers an easy to use mobile solution to track their time, gain vital opportunities within the company and otherwise stay productive. For leaders, human resources and admins, it offers real time insights and the tools to optimize employee productivity.
Monday.com
Designed first and foremost to track work progress on both macro and micro levels, Monday.com is perhaps best known for the clear UX and presentable task management reports and dashboards. For individual users, it’s very intuitive. Leaders can assign tasks, implement workflows and view the larger picture, while individuals can focus on their own tasks, communicating with others and updating as necessary.
Key features:
- Great UX: from color-coded priorities and status updates to clear tables, Monday.com strives to be a very user-friendly performance management tool.
- Team collaboration: Teams can work together, commenting and updating individual tasks directly in Monday.com itself.
- Reporting: Thanks to status updates and customized workflows, there are many report options available, including Gantt charts and deeper performance breakdowns.
- Budgeting: Monday.com also allows leaders to assign budget constraints and targets. Teams can report money spent, updating the real-time reports, as well as the overall progress of each project.
Additional features:
- Cloud based: Monday.com is a cloud based solution, making it easy to implement in any business.
- Free plan: A free tier is available, but it only covers 2 employees. However, it’s enough to test out the platform to see if it’s the right software for you.
Overall operational efficiency:
As a workforce management system, Monday.com is a very popular tool for project management and team messaging. It’s simple to use, intuitive and offers robust reporting options for most updates and insight needs. Overall, it’s a solid employee experience.
That being said, it’s very much designed for only this purpose. If you’re looking for additional support in absence management or employee scheduling, this is not the HR management tool for you.
Paycom
Advertised as HR and payroll software, Paycom has a lot more to offer than at first glance. While it lacks the most intuitive interface, the system is designed from the ground up to handle some of the more data-heavy tasks of staff management. In this area, it certainly has a lot of benefits.
Key features:
- Payroll management: Paycom has a number of features to allow individual employees to manage their own PTO requests, expenses and workplace benefits.
- Time tracking: Whether through a computer or the partnering app, Paycom enables employees to track their own time, digitally clocking in and off.
- Reporting: Paycom offers a wealth of dashboards and real time data reporting, with custom views for most information needs, from time tracking management to employee assessments.
- Labor allocation: Employee work can be set not only by time, but also by location. This can be very useful for companies with multiple locations, or simply those where employees regularly conduct field service away from the office.
Additional features:
- Recruitment tracking: Paycom also offers applicant tracking tools, supporting wider Human Resources goals within the same platform.
Overall operational efficiency:
Paycom is ideally suited for large businesses, where HR teams are separated from typical business leaders. As a workforce management solution, Paycom is geared towards administrative duties. It’s excellent at tracking time, labor forecasting and analyzing the wider picture.
On the other hand it’s not so good at day to day operations. Since it doesn’t focus on tracking projects or offer in-depth project management, employees themselves will have to rely on other solutions. In short, it’s less focused on trying to increase productivity than it is in ensuring compliance. Paycom knows its customers well and is fully catered to such Human Resources departments.
BambooHR
A well known workforce management solution, BambooHR has carved a reputation as a robust and reliable, yet easy-to-use, solution for most administrative needs. It’s somewhat of a mix between Paycom and Monday.com, providing tools for employee onboarding, attendance tracking and workforce management needs, but with an emphasis on user friendliness.
Key features:
- Great UX: BambooHR’s clear design choices are immediately noticeable. Everything is clean, crisp and easy to use, for both individual employees and HR management.
- Payroll management: BambooHR offers a great deal of payroll automation, but it should be noted that this is specifically for US-based employees.
- Time tracking: Whether through the desktop or supporting app, employees can clock in, clock out, request PTO and otherwise manage their own time as independently as possible.
- Onboarding & offboarding: Alongside typical administrative task management, BambooHR helps to integrate new members and get them trained and productive as quickly as possible. Similarly, the offboarding process helps to collect valuable insights from employees as they leave the company.
- Reporting: Like other software platforms on this list, BambooHR offers a number of clear, intuitive dashboards designed to give HR teams valuable insights at a quick glance.
Additional features:
- Employee wellbeing: Alongside general employee productivity, BambooHR also has tools to measure employee satisfaction and general wellbeing through surveys and NPS scores.
Overall operational efficiency:
In many ways, BambooHR is very similar to Paycom. Both prioritize payroll integration and provide a single platform for leave management, benefits and scheduling across an organization. Like Paycom, this also means that it is less desirable for individual teams, as it simply lacks the features to focus on granular task or project management levels.
Between the two, we would have to say that BambooHR’s clear UX makes it ideal for large and small businesses alike. While Paycom is aimed at larger enterprises, BambooHR feels like it has enough additional features to support human resources as the business grows.
Deputy
When it comes to workforce management software, Deputy is another name that often comes up. As far as scheduling software goes, it’s hard to find fault with Deputy’s array of features. It’s another management software service that favors simple usability with detailed reporting over the micromanagement of individual tasks and projects.
Key features:
- Employee scheduling: At its core, Deputy is a very robust reporting and scheduling tool. It enables easy scheduling, the ability to copy schedules from one week to the next and a variety of export and integration options.
- Time tracking: Deputy is a very effective time tracking solution. Thanks to the mobile app for clocking in, worktime can be readily monitored.
- Labor compliance: Deputy also makes a strong point of offering tools for fair workweeks and other compliance laws, helping workforce management ensure that all schedules are fully compliant with local regulations.
- Friendly UX: Another tool that strives to be as user friendly as possible, Deputy’s clear interface favors drag and drop calendars, clear menus and other headache-saving design choices that make it excellent for less technical people.
Additional features:
- Employee engagement: Deputy also offers a communication platform for employees to talk and message each other.
Overall operational efficiency:
Deputy is very much all in as a workforce management system. It’s clean and easy to use, but lacks the depth of wider features that other options on this list might have. Many of its most noteworthy features, such as reports and payroll integration, are only available on the premium plan.
If you’re looking for scheduling management software, Deputy is an excellent choice, but it is not the best option for day to day optimization. Team leaders that need to manage different projects or tasks will find Deputy to be less in-depth for their needs.
Zoho People
Focusing on core HR needs, Zoho People is a workforce management software solution designed for the more administrative side of things. It balances easy, UX-friendly tools for employees with a wealth of customization options on the HR side.
Key features
- Time tracking: As a form of workforce management software, Zoho People excels at time tracking. It enables work to be tracked overall, as well as via tasks and projects, or billable and non-billable hours, with updated time sheets to match.
- Shift scheduling: Likewise, the shift options available are satisfactory, enabling customization breaks and cyclical schedules.
- Analytics: Zoho People’s offers a range of reports out of the box, for both global and team-level analytics, as well as the ability to create custom reports for additional needs.
- Performance management: The ability to assign goals and assess particular skills helps to both increase productivity and better manage employees at an individual level.
- Attendance tracking: Zoho People’s mobile companion app uses facial recognition to help employees clock in and out everyday, giving you real-time data on attendance.
Additional features
- Employee engagement: Zoho People enables both annual and employee NPS surveys, helping HR teams to gather feedback from across the company.
- AI assistant: Zia, Zoho’s AI companion, acts as a chatbot for your workforce, enabling employee communication while saving valuable time from HR departments.
- Cloud based: Cloud-native, Zoho People is easy to implement.
- Recruitment & Onboarding: With additional tools for managing recruitment processes and employee’s first days, there is additional support for HR departments.
Overall operational efficiency
This is a good option for teams that have specific workforce management needs. The customization on offer makes it ideal for large companies with varying needs, such as diverse regions, time zones and shifts, while niche industries will also enjoy the ability to cater to exacting requirements.
We didn’t cover some of Zoho’s advanced features, however, such as payroll integration, as they’re somewhat limited. However, its applicant tracking, attendance tracking and shift scheduling software should still ensure many teams will be happy with Zoho People.
UKG Pro
Another name in the HR side of workforce management software, UKR Pro offers a wide suite of administrative tools for tracking and monitoring vital statistics. It’s well designed, both from a UX perspective and from the needs of business, offering tools for both employees and managers alike.
Key features
- Time tracking: UKG Pro enables employees to digitally clock in and out, while the provided dashboard offers accessible and valuable insights into both statistics and estimated costs of absences.
- Shift scheduling: By using AI, UKG Pro helps managers to plan shifts around availability, whilst also remaining as flexible as possible.
- Team collaboration: UKG Pro is another workforce management solution that offers a built-in platform and tools for employee communication.
Additional features
- Great Place to Work hub: UKG Pro offers advanced features for companies that value Great Place to Work certifications, as well as checking diversity and equality statistics within the company.
Overall operational efficiency
Ultimately, UKG Pro prioritizes the tracking and monitoring aspects of workforce management, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Its HR tools are in-depth and cover both the company-wide and team-level aspects of strategic workforce planning. Whether you’re a large or small business, this could prove a suitable option for many.
When I Work
Pitched as a workforce management solution in between budget and quality, When I Work focuses on the most critical of management software needs.
Key features
- Shift scheduling: Alongside the typical shift management, employees can request additional shifts and fill in available gaps in the schedule directly through the platform.
- Time tracking: With digital clocking in from the mobile app, When I Work covers essential time management needs, from absence monitoring to break management.
- Team messaging: When I Work also allows communication in both individual and team environments, making it a useful tool for team leaders.
Advanced features
- Overtime alerts: When I Work alerts leaders when employees are close to working overtime, and also alerts schedulers when planning upcoming shifts.
Overall operational efficiency
When I Work can be well appreciated amongst HR departments that want to control costs but still want to optimize their workforce management. While the tools are not as diverse as other options, the possibilities available still meet the typical day to day needs.
However, it’s worth noting that many of When I Work’s advanced features, including API software integrations, custom reporting and advanced shift scheduling, are only available on the higher tier plans.
ClickUp
While there are many tools on this list built around administrative reporting, ClickUp is more of the opposite. Yes, it has all the time tracking and monitoring tools you would expect from any workforce management software, but it’s most well known for its task management and project collaboration capabilities.
Key features
- Task management: ClickUp excels as task management software, helping leaders break projects into customizable tasks and track progress accordingly. This includes subtasks and checklists for even greater detail.
- Time tracking: Similarly, time can be tracked across tasks and teams, helping to provide a general overview of time spent vs productivity.
- Reporting: ClickUp’s reporting focuses both on time management, but also on project progress and task completion, offering a range of insights for HR and leaders alike.
Additional features
- Built-in docs. ClickUp enables teams to create docs within the platform and work on them together. While the range of docs is limited, it’s nonetheless a novel feature.
- Free plan: For those curious, a free plan is available, offering a surprisingly diverse range of ClickUp’s features.
Overall operational efficiency
ClickUp is an ideal option for small businesses that need a solution for collaboration. As a centralized platform, it offers employee engagement, attendance monitoring and scheduling capabilities as needed.
On the down side, HR departments may find it lacks the depth they need. If you’re looking for broader payroll processing, onboarding and employee development tools, this might not be the option for you.
ADP Workforce Now
A tool built around strategic workforce planning, ADP Workforce Now is well known for its in-depth tools. It might not be the most user friendly, but it’s customization and attention to detail make it ideal for larger companies.
Key features
- Time tracking: With digital clocking-in and time-off requests, ADP Workforce Now let’s leaders manage most time-related tasks directly on the platform.
- Shift scheduling: A robust scheduling system, the additional ability to swap shifts and adjust to changes is a welcome inclusion.
- Overtime calculations: ADP Workforce Now can also calculate potential overtime expenses, helping teams control costs while meeting deadlines and project goals.
- Reporting: With customizable dashboards for each team, as well as real time data feeds, ADP Workforce Now offers a wide range of workforce management insights.
Additional features
- Benefits administration: As an added bonus, ADP Workforce Now has a lot of tools for employees to engage in internal opportunities, as well as for leaders to monitor the costs.
- Employee engagement: ADP Workforce Now also offers employee surveys, alerts for any potential issues and additional tools to enable employee and employer communication.
Overall operational efficiency
With most features focused around the likes of task management, payroll and benefits, ADP Workforce Now is well suited for HR departments or larger companies where such specialized tools are useful. For small businesses that are potentially looking for workforce management software to cover a wide range of needs, there are potentially more suitable options.
Choosing the Right Workforce Management System
When it comes to workforce management software, it’s truly a very diverse market. What we’ve highlighted here are simply the most recommended and recognized options. Even then, it can be difficult to find the right option.
Our advice is to assess your individual needs and understand which aspects of workforce management are the most important. If you value tools for optimizing management tasks, such as scheduling real time data, this will greatly influence your choice. You may find for example that other needs are taken up by existing systems and are thus less of a priority.
This is also important when assessing the workforce management software cost, as most solutions offer scaled tier pricing. Depending on your budget, you may not wish to justify all the additional features of premium plans.
We hope this deep dive proves fruitful and that you find the best workforce management software for your needs!
