Welcome back to the HR Connection. My name is Sabrina Baker, and today I'm going to be sharing all things HR tech inside of a small space. I want to talk about things that you should be thinking about, things that you should be looking for if you're going to do a demo, um, maybe give a little bit of a hot take, a little bit of a different take than I would if I were talking to an enterprise level, organization, a big HR team with a big budget. It's probably a little bit different. This is one of those things that I think size does change the way that you think about this. The fact that we are probably dealing with a limited budget here means that we need to be very strategic in how we invest our dollars. So the point of this episode is to share all of our thoughts, all of our tips and tricks on what we do when clients are investing in tech, how we go about demoing those, even what systems we think are worth looking at, um, and then giving you some ideas you can use today to make sure that you are truly using your tech to streamline and help you save the most valuable resource you have if you are working in a small environment, if you are managing HR in a small environment, and that most valuable resource is your time. So let's start talking about a few realities of HR tech. The first one is that we often want tech to solve all of our problems, and while it can certainly do a lot these days, it cannot solve all of our problems. It can streamline, it can save you time, it can definitely make things easier, but it is not going to fix broken processes. It is not going to, um, work the way that you want it to if you don't set it up correctly. There has to be some human oversight. There has to be some human element all to talk about AI. I'm not going to get into that in this episode, but obviously even though there is so much value that AI can add, there still needs to be this human element, this human oversight into technology. So while we often will go into a demo and we will be looking for something that's going to solve all of our problems, technology cannot do that. Um, if you have broken processes, broken workflows, things that are just not working for you, that have nothing to do with the technology, it's not going to change what's broken about it. It's not going to change when you add technology. Then it's not a technology issue to solve. You got to fix the process, fix the workflow, and then integrate that into some technology. Figure out how you can use technology for it. So just a little reality check there that it's not going to solve all of our problems. The other reality check I have for you, and if you are an HR tech vendor, you are going to want to close your ears because you're not going to want to hear this, but there is no perfect software. I don't care if it's payroll, HRIS, um, even the ones we like the most and we recommend to our clients the most have their quirks. They have their things that they do really, really, really well, and then they have these other things that maybe they don't do so well. Uh, it was explained to me this way many, many years ago that all tech vendors, HR tech vendors, usually build their platform around one core service. So whether that be payroll, whether that be performance management, leave of absence tracking, and then to be that all in one, everybody wants to be an all in one. They then add on all of these other components. So if they started with payroll, and that's what they do well, and that's their core, then they added on benefits management or leave management or performance management. And maybe they don't do those as well. Maybe those are just simple add-ons because they want to be that all in one, uh, shop. And so if you are looking for HR tech that is going to be absolutely perfect and there's not going to be something about it that you don't like, you're going to be looking a very, very long time. There are pros and cons to every system, and it's important that you know that going in so that you're not searching for something that just doesn't exist. There are very cost-effective budget-friendly payroll systems that even the smallest of organizations can use. To help streamline their payroll process and make it much easier. So if you are in an HR tech less organization, um, I want to encourage you to be thinking about how you can start looking at some HR technology, demoing HR technology, um, to get out of kind of the stone ages of managing things through spreadsheets and Google Docs and into a more technology streamlined, friendly environment. I think for small employers, this also signals to potential candidates the type of environment it is. When you are a 50-person shop, a 60-person shop, and you are having people email you your resume, there's no ATS system, the onboarding process is very manual. They are filling out paper forms and scanning them back in. It just signals to them that the company might be a little bit behind. There's a little bit of a a question mark in 2025 around why we would still be filling out paper forms for really most anything. And so investing in HR tech, even the, again, the most budget-friendly system can do a lot in certain areas, um, investing in HR tech signals to potential employees that, one, you care about streamlining, you care about making things as easy as possible for them to navigate, but also that you are a tech-forward, friendly company and that other areas of your business are going to reflect that as well. Okay, so here's our hot take on HR tech in a small employer. This would be very different maybe if I ran a large environment. I know people are going to disagree with this, but I think in a one to five hundred, that all in one systems are the best. What I mean by that is your bamboos, your paychecks, your pay velocities, your ripplings, um, systems that have multiple modules, or the ability to integrate with many other systems are going to be best and the most budget-friendly in a small environment. There's many reasons why I think that. Let me list out what they are. The first one is that tech should make your life easier, not harder. If you have um, a tech system that is making life harder, you're having to jump through hoops, you're having to um, you know, take extra steps, then either it wasn't set up properly or it's not the right tech for you. When you have an all in one system, that's a one time setup, you go through the process and you set it all up, and then everything just flows. Everything flows from one module to the next. So if it's your applicant tracking system, it flows into your onboarding, flows into your new hire, flows into your payroll. It just all flows. And so I do believe that when you are searching for small, for small employer HR tech, that looking at those all in ones, looking at the systems that are going to have multiple modules, that you can implement into the one system is going to make your life so much easier. The other piece of this is that four modules in one place that maybe all don't work as perfectly as you want them to, but they work and they talk to each other, is so much better than four pieces of software that don't integrate at all. So while in a larger environment, when you have the budgets and you have the internal IT team that can make the systems talk to each other, you can have different software for different things. You can have a payroll system that's separate from your performance management system, that's separate from your onboarding system. You can do that because you have the resources and the support to help you make that work and make your life easier, not harder. In a small environment, you likely don't have that. And so having that all in one system where you can have just one place, we call it a true north for all of our clients. It is the true north for all employee information and it has their ATS, their onboarding, their payroll, their performance management, their surveys, um, you know, all of those things that can be LMS, many of them have learning management systems inside of them now, all of those things that can just be in one spot is going to make your life so much easier. And then streamline your processes to be able to give you back that time that you so desperately need. Let me give you a few other benefits of all in one tools. Of course, as I just said, you have that unified data, so you have that true north. It is your true north place for all of your employee data. You also have easier logins. There is one login for all of your employees to be able to have and use. Many of our clients, their employees may not be super tech savvy. Many of them are in environments where they are not sitting in front of a computer every day. We have clients who they're out on ships, they're in, uh, you know, they're just out all of the time. They're not sitting in front of a computer. And so to have to log into four different systems or even remember what system they have to log into for this certain thing is just not user friendly. And so having one login, one single source, a truth for your employees is going to make their lives easier. Leaves one vendor for you to have to deal with. You don't want to have to have 10 different vendors that you have to reach out to every single time. There's something going on with the software. If you have an all in one system, you're going to have one vendor, one point of contact that you can reach out to and get the help that you need again all of this is about saving time, streamlining, make sure that we are making this as easy for you and your employees as possible. And when you have that all in one system, then you are going to be able to do that. None of them are perfect. Let me just say it again. None of them are perfect. They all have their challenges. They all have their quirks, but we in working across so many over the course of our time as a business, we have found that for the most part, the quirks are things that we are able to deal with. When clients come to us and say, you know what, I'm really not happy and I want to shift off, then we'll shift them to another client. Or to another system. But if you were to line up 50 HR professionals and say, what do you think about ADP? They're all going to have a different opinion. Some of them are going to love them, some of them are going to hate them. What do you think about bamboo HR? Same thing. You're going to get this really mixed review. And so it's important that you look for an all in one and that you go through a really good demo process to ask good questions to figure out which one of them is going to be best for you and what are the trade-offs. What are the things that they are not going to have or they're maybe not so great at that you're going to be able to deal with, uh, or that is an absolute deal breaker for you. So let's talk through when you are sourcing HR tech, when you are going out and you're saying, I want to demo some HR tech. What are some things you absolutely want to do before and during that demo to make sure you're getting the information you need to make a really good decision? Okay, so a couple of things you want to do before the demo, before you even start to research HR tech companies and which one could be a potential fit for you is to think about what processes are broken. What are the workflows or the processes inside your organization that feel broken to you? And when you look at why they're broken, it could be fixed by technology. So you could look at a time tracking, you could look at onboarding, you could look at hiring, what are those processes that feel very clunky, they feel very convoluted, they feel very heavy. Maybe they feel very manual. Um, you are using spreadsheets, you are just having resumes emailed to an inbox that then gets really, really full and hard to search through. What are those processes and could technology fix them? Is there an opportunity to use technology to fix those processes? So that's kind of the first thing you're going to want to sit down and do is look at your entire organization, all of the HR workflows and say, which one of these are broken? They feel clunky, they feel really convoluted, or they're really, really manual, that we could potentially gain some traction and some streamlining through technology. The next thing that you're going to want to do is think about your employees and where are they most frustrated? Are you seeing a lot of payroll errors because we're manually tracking timesheets or bonuses or commissions? Are you seeing time off issues? Maybe employees aren't getting their time off approved or it's a it's a very convoluted process where employees are really frustrated about how that happens. What is it that you keep hearing? What is bubbling up from employees that is frustrating for them? Um, and could technology fix that? And then the the third thing that you want to do, and this is really important, and we talk about this a lot, is make sure that it scales. So think about not only what you need now, but if you are in a growth organization, what are you going to need 12 months from now? What is it that is going to fit you later on? When I think about HR tech, and if you came to me right now and you said, Sabrina, what HR tech would you recommend to me? My first question to you is going to be, how many employees do you have today? And my second one is going to be, how many are you going to have in a year? What is your, what is your scalability look like? What is your growth look like? Because if you have five today, but you're going to have a hundred in a year, my answer is different than if you have five today and you're still going to have five in a year. My answer is very different for those two questions. So you want to think about scalability in this and make sure that when you are demoing HR tech, when you are thinking about where you're going to invest your dollars, that you are investing them in something that is going to scale with you. It is really frustrating for both HR teams, leaders, employees to switch out HR tech quickly on a regular basis. We have certainly had clients who have invested and they've had HR tech for six months, nine months, and then they realized that was not the tech for them, and then they go and switch again, especially when you're talking about payroll and you have all these tax implications. You just don't want to be doing this every year. You don't want to be switching into new systems. The implementation process is a big deal. And so you want to make sure that you are thinking about that scalability and demoing only those companies that can scale with whatever your growth is going to be. As you're thinking about this, I recommend that you have a must-have versus a nice-to-have list versus a deal-breaker list. So if, let's just take a crude example, most systems do this, but a must-have for you for payroll might be multi-state payroll.  Do you have payroll amongst multi-states? And so a deal-breaker would be that the company couldn't do that. The payroll system couldn't do that. But what is like a must-have, I must have an ATS, I must have onboarding, I must have multi-state payroll, I must have an integration with my own um 401(k) provider. So that's a big question that we get a lot is, here's our 401(k) provider. Is there an integration? Either a 180 or a 360 integration with our 401(k) provider? And so what are your must-haves? Like this is a deal-breaker for me. I cannot go forward with the software if they don't have this. And then what are your nice-to-haves? What are those things that, you know, we could probably get by without, but man, it would be really nice if that was added on. Things like maybe a learning management system could be a nice-to-have, engagement surveys if you have a different system or a different way of doing surveys. Those might not be deal-breakers, but man, they'd be nice to have if you could just have it all in one place. So think about, as you're thinking about what is broken, what is not working, what is frustrating to employees, what are you scaling to? That should help you create a list of here are the things we have got to have. These are the software, the modules, the components we have to have. And then here are the ones that would be really nice so that after you demo two, three, four companies, then you can kind of just create a rubric that says this company has all of it, checks all the boxes, this one checks three, this one checks none, and it's going to help you make a more sound decision. Okay, so you have your must-haves, you have your nice-to-haves, you know what your deal-breakers are, you know what your budget is, that's really important. Um, and let me just say one thing about budgets because I haven't talked about that, but even if you feel like you don't have a budget, I bet you do. Um, it is something that you'll have to go and maybe talk to your leaders about. If you don't have your own HR budget, you may have to go talk to your leaders about this, but there is a lot of reasonably priced HR software out there. Very reasonably priced. I'm talking a couple hundred bucks a month for certain um software, certain payroll. And so if you can go to your leaders and give them the business case for HR tech and how it is, it does signal to candidates it is a good sign to them when they can just very easily go through the applicant tracking process and very easily go through the onboarding and everything just flows. How it's going to streamline the work, then hopefully you're going to be able to get even a limited budget to be able to invest in something. We'll go through business cases and how to create them in a later episode. Um, but I would really encourage you, if you or your leaders are saying we have no budget, we have no dollars, I bet you do. I bet you have some because it's probably more budget friendly than you are thinking it is going to be. So let me give you five questions. I have five questions on my screen here. I want to share with you that when you have decided you were going to meet, you're going to demo some software, here are the questions that I think you should think about for sure. Of course, there are others you can ask and should ask, and you should definitely require that they go through a full demo with you. Um, but definitely be looking into these things. So the first one centers around integration. What tools does the system integrate with natively? I talked about 401(k), that's one that we always ask about because our employers are clients almost always have 401(k) already. It could be Vanguard, it could be Voya, it could be a million different systems. And so we will always, always ask about integrations. Um, when you are processing payroll to then have to go fund 401(k) separately, can that just adds more time. If there's an integration, um, even if it's a 180, at least that's half of the process where either the HRIS sends the money to the 401(k) or the 401(k) will notify the HRIS if there are changes, if there's some integration there, that's going to stream your process, your process even more streamline your process even more. So ask about integration. What data flows? Is it a 180? Just meaning a one way, one system talks to the other only, or is it a 360 where all changes speak to each other and that's really hands off for you and that's a beautiful thing. The second is customization. Can I tweak workflows or are they rigid? Meaning that how things flow through the system? How much control do you have over that? Certainly in your larger um in your larger HRIS systems, you're going to have more control. So I think about rippling, I think about uh some of those others. You're you're going to have more control over how you can build your workflows, but even in our smaller um systems or the the ones that we work with, if you can talk them through your workflow in uh before you actually implement and then definitely through implementation, they can usually help you figure out how to make all that flow. I will tell you, we have great relationships with some HR tech vendors um because we often recommend out to the same ones and we have had HR tech vendors build us something, build us something that didn't even exist in their platform because a client really needed it and we are constantly referring to them. And so they saw that as a partnership that they wanted to to honor and build something for us. And so I do find that if you get a really good sales rep, if you get somebody who is uh focused in that small space, so a lot of your HR tech software systems will have salespeople who are in the small employer space, so they get you, they understand what you're dealing with, they understand your limited budget. Um, and if you tell them about the workflows that you need, even if it's not natively in there where you could customize it, they may be able to build build something for you that uh fits to whatever it is that you're looking for. The next one is reporting. What kind of reports are standard uh standard? Can I customize them? How easy is it to do that? You know, again, when we're thinking about saving you time, we want you and when we're thinking about you making good decisions, making good business cases for things, we want you to have data. You got to have data. And so uh reporting out of an HRIS system is super important. You want to know what exists natively. And then how hard is it to pull data? This is one of those areas where uh it will differ. So we work again across many different systems and I can off the top of my head tell you which ones it's so easy to pull data out of, which ones it's so easy to write and customize reports, and which ones it is not. Um, and so this is one that is going to be different. You need to think about how strongly you value data and reporting and maybe even being able to write your own reports. Many of them have standard payroll time off, those kinds of reports. But if you're going to need to write your own specific reports, then you're going to want to ask about that for sure. The next one is support. So this is one uh again, if you lined up a hundred HR professionals and you asked them about a system and you said, tell me about their support. This is one of those areas where people would differ. Um, and I'm just going to say now that one of the systems that we recommend quite often is Paylocity. We have a great um relationship with one of their their salespeople and we refer back and forth. And um, we find Paylocity service to be great. Is it perfect? Of course not. None are. Um, but even before we had the direct relationship to her where now we can kind of escalate things, even before that, when I was working across other tech vendors and Paylocity, I would always find their service to be better. I did find it to be responsive. I did find it to be um, you know, you could escalate things easily. I found them to be quick, usually to to answer me. Now, again, I'm sure somebody listening to this is going to be like, you're kidding me. I don't like Paylocity. They never answer me. Experiences are all different, right? And that's what I mean about we're never going to find, we're never going to all agree on which one has the best system. Um, the best support system. But you do want to ask about support. You want to ask about their their service levels around support. What is their response time look like? What, you know, at your size, unfortunately for a lot of small employers, it's hard to get dedicated support. It's hard to have a contact person. Um, but you certainly want to ask about that, see if there's any way you possibly can. And uh, then if not, ask what kind of that, what does that support look like and what are those SLAs and how do you escalate things? Just making sure that you're really digging into that support piece. The next one is security and compliance. Of course, if we are putting all of our sensitive employee data inside of a system, we want it to be compliant. We want to not have security risks. We have clients who are SOC 2, have to be SOC 2 compliant. Um, or other, you know, depending on the data they're dealing with, even in their own business, they have a lot of requirements for their software. So you want to ask about security and compliance and just ask what they're doing to make sure that they're constantly auditing that, that they're keeping your data safe. And then what happens in a breach? What happens if something does happen? How do they notify you? What protections do they give you? Um, and you know, what just, what does that look like? Just so you know. And then the last one is growth readiness. So again, can this scale with us? I cannot stress how important that thought process is to think about not only where your business is today, but where is it going and what are you going to need then? Because you don't want to do this every year. Implementations take us six to eight weeks and we're really good at it. We know what we're doing. And so if this is, if you're going to implement software and you've never done it before, then take you a little while. It's, it's, it's a lot of work. And. And it's not something you want to be doing all the time. You just don't have the time and the capacity for that. So make sure that you are asking questions around, here's where, here's what you can offer us at 20 employees, but in a year, we're going to go to 100. What does that look like? I had mentioned that we recommend all-in-one systems, and when you go with an all-in-one system, we recommend purchasing the all system upfront if you have the budget for it. Um, so when you think about even scaling, so let's say that you have 20 employees now and you think, you know what, I really don't think that I want performance management. I think we can do performance management outside. Um, in Google Docs or whatever we're doing it in, and I don't think I want to buy that now. But in a year, you're going to be at 100 employees. Having a system to do performance management makes it a heck of a lot easier. And so if you can go ahead and purchase the performance management module upfront, then it's going to be cheaper for you in the long run. Um, and that's because you get bundle pricing, just like with with other tech, you get bundle pricing. So we do recommend all-in-one software, and we do recommend that if you can afford to, if you have the budget, to buy all of the modules that you think you're going to need as you scale, upfront, go ahead and you don't have to turn them on if you don't want to. You don't even have to use them. But go ahead and purchase them. They're usually just a few dollars um per employee each module. Um, and sometimes it just makes a lot of sense. I will tell you that when we go back and we have to add them later, it is more expensive than if we just added it in the beginning. So that's my other piece of advice there. Okay, so in the show notes, we have a download for you, which is going to be an HR buyer's checklist for small employers. It is going to have a lot of the stuff that I've said today about how do you think about your wants versus your needs, how do you go through a demo, what are some questions we would definitely recommend that you ask around these five areas that I just mentioned, but also other things that we think are important for you to ask. How do you even go through a demo? And then it'll have a little small blurb because this really is a whole other topic, but a little small blurb about what happens in implementation and how do you, how do you start to prepare for an HR tech implementation. So that's going to be in the show notes. I hope that you will download that. We even have in there, um, our top five recommendations for HR tech. You know, again, this is what we work in and we use. You should definitely do your research. You should definitely do your demos. You should definitely talk to other people because these are the systems that we work the most in and that we find to be the most user-friendly. But your situation is unique. And so while they are the ones that we like, you definitely want to do your research and see what what makes sense for you. So a couple of things that I want to reiterate before we close out. You do not need the best software. You don't need trendy software. You need the right fit. Whatever that is going to be for you, that's what you're looking for. We want to reduce friction and free up time. That's the goal. When we are implementing technology, switching out technology, implementing technology, we are trying to reduce friction, reduce manual labor, free up time. We don't need to check any kind of box around things that aren't going to make sense for us. Let's make sure we're reducing friction, freeing up time. It should support your goals. So it absolutely needs to align with whatever it is that you are trying to do now. And in your future, you want to implement at one time and have it for many years. Yes, you're going to do multiple implementations over the course of 30, 40-year business, but it shouldn't be in an annual thing. It should last you a couple of years. So make sure that it is not just this other system to manage, but something that really is going to meet your goals. And then the first one is you can start small. Um, integrate as you can and then revisit and continue to add. Again, the advice is to buy as much of the all-in-one software as you can initially, but if you can't, then you can certainly add on as you need it. But the key is to make sure that you are implementing right, that you are building out your workflows correctly so that it actually is working and the way that you think it should. I hope that was helpful. I, um, you know, again, we could have seven, nine, ten episodes about this. I do plan on having my own HR tech guru join me on a future episode digging into HR tech a little more, especially on that implementation side and the things that we need to do, the things that we go through, uh, when we are setting up for an HR implementation and so I think that would be really helpful, especially if you've never done it before.