Why you can trust TechRadar
We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.
Lots of big-name HR apps have had to adapt as the world has leaned more towards remote and hybrid work – but HiBob has been built from day one to support that kind of flexible employment.
With scalability and agility baked into the platform, HiBob claims to help organizations of all sizes be more productive and boost employee engagement and retention.
HiBob: Plans and pricing
As with many other HR solutions, HiBob doesn’t publish pricing publicly – so if you want to find out HiBob costs, you’ll need to request a quote and build your own package.
While that means you’ll get a personalized price that’s closely aligned with what you need in your business, it can make initial research and evaluation difficult.
And while the modular approach is undoubtedly useful, it can also mean that your costs grow as your business expands, especially if you need to add more functionality.
HiBob: Features
HiBob’s features promise to simplify complexity, boost agility, and lead with data so HR teams can make confident decisions, all with a design ethos that’s focused on modern ways of working. At the top level, the company’s HR solution is divided into three areas – operations, culture, and strategy – with every module falling under one of these designations.
Unsurprisingly, HiBob is packed with custom automation and workflow options that enable HR teams to save time by accelerating repetitive tasks. Workflows, tasks, and timelines can be easily adjusted to reflect changes within your organization, and those workflows can be further personalized for different departments or teams. You can build customized task lists, too, and permission groups for the various teams in your organization.
HiBob’s homepage looks more like a social media feed than a data-rich dashboard, which immediately helps it stand out against other HR solutions. It’s a brilliant way to keep up with what’s going on in the business, and it does a great job of balancing culture-first updates about your staff with notifications about pressing HR issues that need your attention. HiBob’s core HR offering includes a visual organization chart with plenty of customization options.
The app supports electronic signatures, centralized document storage, and analytics dashboards with visual representations of key company data, lots of filtering, and options to create reports. Those dashboards are excellent: there are 12 pre-configured options to choose from, including a dedicated DEI dashboard, and they all offer deep customization – you can drag, drop, and resize modules, change colors and appearance, and more. They all have extensive data export options, too.
HiBob’s payroll hub includes visual tracking, notifications, and automatic updates to help make the process easier, and HiBob’s payroll modules include dedicated tools for US, UK, and global functionality with compliance, flexible pay types, and tax regulations included. Employee self-service includes access to payslips, too.
If you don’t opt to include one of HiBob’s payroll modules in your HR package, third-party integrations are supported, too. HiBob supports software from ADP, Dayforce, Paylocity, Trinet, Xero, and more.
There are more financial features in HiBob beyond the payroll module, too, thanks to in-depth compensation management. You can create, standardize, and adjust pay bands, make decisions based on updated salary, tenure, and performance data, and use charts and sliders to allocate base pay, bonuses, and equity plans. Salary reviews are bolstered by recommendations, alerts, and guidelines.
Employees can request PTO and managers can respond to them in the HiBob app or in Slack and Microsoft Teams, and you can create custom vacation policies and view team schedules with calendars.
Clocking in and out is as easy as employees clicking a button, and managers can adjust working time from the app or via third-party integrations.
To help your employees perform at their best, HiBob offers customizable performance reviews with AI-powered insights and 360-degree feedback. Managers can use calibration worksheets to evaluate teams, create individual, team, and organizational goals, and enhance 1-1 meetings with templating, follow-up reminders, and more.
Employee data from across the system is collated in a KPI dashboard that covers headcount, retention, growth, and more, and managers can build custom reports. Employee surveys include opportunities for anonymous feedback and there’s a full succession planning suite included in HiBob.
Hiring is covered in HiBob, too. Customizable hiring pipelines, AI-powered CV summaries and candidate self-scheduling make the start of the recruitment journey easier. The app provides AI-generated job descriptions and can post to over 2,300 global job boards, and you can build your own branded career page.
Interviewing is easier thanks to native Outlook and Google Calendar integration and automated reminders. Candidates can access their own portal, and managers can analyze hiring data in a dashboard that’s packed with analysis options.
When you’ve hired, you can build your own onboarding process, create tasks for your colleagues to ensure a smooth arrival for the new employee, and provide the new hire with materials about the company culture to help them get started.
As with most modern HR solutions, HiBob offers API support so companies can develop their own integrations alongside hundreds of third-party integrations that are ready to deploy with less technical knowledge.
As well as the payroll tools we mentioned earlier, HiBob integrates with software from Culture Amp, Deel, Google, Jira, Oracle, PWC, Slack, and more. Microsoft integration comes from Azure Active Directory, Entra ID, Microsoft 365 calendar integration, and Teams, but you’ll find more elsewhere if you’re really committed to working with Microsoft tools.
Unsurprisingly, HiBob has already begun to deploy AI tools throughout its software, and the options available here are already more extensive than many you’ll find elsewhere. The AI assistant pops up throughout HiBob to assist with common tasks, like writing.
HiBob provides more transparency than most rivals when it comes to AI usage. Dive into the settings menu and you can see the guiding principles based around permissions, data privacy, and security, alongside settings to tweak AI functionality – including options to only allow AI usage in certain areas of the tool, and a toggle to turn it off entirely.
Data never leaves HiBob when you’re using AI, which improves security, and a cross-platform tool called Bob Companion is currently in beta testing. It’ll read documents and give responses based on company policies, analyze your data to answer your questions, and assist with more complex tasks.
HiBob: Ease of use
HiBob is one of the best-looking HR solutions you’ll find on the market. The central dashboard is set out like a social media feed, with the latest updates, notifications, events, and even birthdays – and you can use a handy panel on the right-hand side to access your integrations, which is a smart piece of design we’ve not seen anywhere else.
The organization chart is attractive and well-designed, too: you can click an employee’s name to bring up a panel with key information, click down to see their direct reports, and use easy filtering options.
Employee profiles are another highlight: people’s pages contain a vast amount of information in an effective layout, there are color-coded attrition indicators, a menu of handy quick-actions, and a huge amount of depth.
HiBob’s colorful, detail-packed, customizable dashboards are a highlight, with key information made easily available, smart and imaginative charting formats, and loads of filtering.
The only downside is that it’ll take you a little time to build dashboards and use this feature effectively – and that initial implementation can take a little while, too, especially if you want to make the most out of HiBob and use plenty of customization.
To access different modules, users can click the navigation button in the top-left of the app – you’ll find links to switch to the Talent, Workforce Planning, Hiring, Learning, Payroll, and Compensation tools, depending on what’s included in your package.
No matter the module you use, you’ll find the same clever UI throughout, with a keen balance struck between data and design. HiBob’s Workforce Planning tool displays useful analytics about your employees, including onboarding updates, and the Payroll hub makes complex information easy to understand.
A sandbox mode is available for testing new functionality. There’s always a help button available in the bottom-left corner, and you don’t have to mess around with different versions of the tool – HiBob only ever uses one version of the software.
You can tell that HiBob is a modern HR system that’s designed for modern ways of working thanks to its clever design, handy features, and rock-solid mix of depth and functionality – it’s certainly not a legacy system that’s struggled to keep up with the times.
HiBob: Support
As well as the in-app support widget that uses AI to triage issues, HiBob offers email-based support to users alongside a Help Center that’s packed with articles, guides, and videos that are useful to administrators, managers, and employees.
If you file a support ticket, you’ll be supported by a team that offers global coverage across multiple time zones, and you can flag issues with varying priority levels depending on their status to your business.
During implementation, HiBob customers can work with a dedicated manager and a success manager to support product functionality once the solution has been deployed.
HiBob: Competition
There’s no shortage of competition for HiBob in the mid-market HR space, but this tool does a fantastic job of standing out thanks to its design, engagement tools, and focus on employee culture.
That said, if you want something that’s more straightforward, perhaps for a smaller business, then BambooHR is a common alternative, and Rippling generally provides more automation and even more features to support IT teams.
If you’d like to step up to an enterprise-grade product, then SAP SuccessFactors and Workday deliver more power alongside a proportionate step up in complexity.
HiBob: Final verdict
HiBob is an HR standout if you want your software solution to feel modern, engaging, and effective – especially when it comes to employee culture and performance.
Its interface is excellent, the social feed home page is one of the best around, and the entire platform is extremely configurable and scalable. Its reporting is excellent, too, and it’s excellent for hybrid, remote, and geographically disparate workforces.
It can take a little time to implement and learn HiBob properly, though, and costs may rise as your business grows and you add more modules.
Those are relatively minor issues, though, and HiBob remains one of the best HR solutions on the market. If you want to prioritize employee wellbeing and engagement, HiBob should be at the top of your shopping list.
Read the full article here
