7 practical HR tools for small businesses

Running a small business can be extremely rewarding from the people’s perspective. You’re directly involved in selecting your employees, engaging them and helping them improve their performance. Most times, you don’t even need a specialized HR manager because you’re a small team and things get easily done.

But what if you could save a couple of hours a week, optimize these HR processes and stay connected with your team?

Regardless of type, companies who use HR technologies outperform financially those who don’t by 16% higher revenue per employee and 35% higher profit per employee, according to Sierra-Cedar research.

We put together a list of 7 HR tools that can help you save that time and improve your essential talent processes.

1.      LinkedIn

This has unquestionably become the no.1 online recruitment channel. You can leverage the free version to track down the right candidate for your business and connect with them.

If your budget is above average, you can also try LinkedIn Recruiter, part of the LinkedIn Premium tools. With specialized filters and datasheets, you can find and contact any possible candidate and organize your pipeline with shared projects, profiles and applicant notes.

2.      Fuze

Use Fuze to set-up video interviews with candidates anywhere in the world. At the same costs as a phone interview, a video interview provides you with a better window into someone’s style, personality and behavior, that can’t be captured without seeing them.

Moreover, you can use Fuze’s Virtual Whiteboard feature that allows meeting participants to mark up and annotate shared content in real time. It’s a great way to test candidates’ technical skills or problem solving abilities. Available with a Free Plan.

3.      ezTimeSheet

ezTimeSheet helps you track and calculate employee attendance, leave, vacation and payment. The program calculates time and gross pay automatically, saving you valuable time and energy. It’s also fairly affordable, the 5-employee version starting from only $39, one time purchase.

4.      Slack

For team communications, you can use Slack. Manage both formal and informal communications via Slack rooms.

You can also integrate it with 3rd party tools like GitHub or BitBucket commits, via third party APIs. Slack is free to use for as long as you want and with an unlimited number of people.

5.      Asana

Asana is great for managing tasks and projects. Plan projects, create and assign tasks, follow deadlines and organize your activity in calendars.

The tool is free for teams of up to 15 members, with unlimited projects and tasks.

6.      iDoneThis

We’ve recently come across this tool and found it extremely helpful in building transparency across our team. The way it works is that every day you post what you’ve done, so everyone knows what’s happening. The next morning, you’ll get a roundup of what your whole team got done, that you can comment on or send feedback about.

There are three pricing plans available, the Business one being $5/member per month.

7.      Hppy

To help you get the pulse of your team, Hppy tracks and monitors employee engagement and gives you a detailed overview of your team’s happiness levels.

Discover engagement drivers in your team, manage feedback through an anonymous system and build a sustainable retention strategy based on periodical reports.

What other HR tools would you recommend to a small business?

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