BambooHR is one of the most popular HR software platforms in the world, with over 20,000 customers across 50 industries.
As international HR specialists, we come across many different HR platforms, and we like to share our experiences with the platforms that we use, positive and negative.
This review of BambooHR covers the pros, cons and key features of the HR platform.
Please note: We have not affiliated in any way with BambooHR, nor do we receive any payment directly or indirectly for this review. We simply wish to share our experience with the platform so we can help others in their decision-making.
BambooHR: The Overview
BambooHR is a leading HR platform for small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs). It is a cloud-based Human Resources Information System (HRIS), with the goal of empowering managers and executives to more easily manage their HR function through a range of information management and reporting capabilities.
BambooHR’s client list includes SoundCloud, Foursquare, Freshbooks, Stance, Reddit, and Magnolia Homes, among others.
BambooHR Features and Services
There are five elements of the BambooHR system:
- People data and analytics. BambooHR produces a range of reports relating to people’s capability to empower HR analytics and decision-making.
- Recruitment and hiring. Manage the hiring process through advertising, tracking applications, and making offers. BambooHR also provides a specific mobile hiring and recruitment app.
- Compensation and payroll. BambooHR enables the tracking of key compensation and payroll details, the tracking of employee hours, and absence and benefits management.
- Onboarding. New employees can receive everything they need to begin work, by logging in directly to the platform.
- Culture. BambooHR produces reports specifically relating to employee performance and satisfaction, as well as integration with training programs.
BambooHR Pricing
BambooHR has a subscription-based pricing model, with two core packages, ‘Essentials’ and ‘Advantage’.
BambooHR does not provide specific prices on its website and instead offers individualized quotes.
The leading company review site, G2, states that the Essentials package is $4.95 per employee, per month, and the Advantage package is $8.25 per employee, per month.
Introduction to BambooHR
BambooHR offers all the essential features of an HRIS: Employee personal info, compensation, leave and absence management, and benefits management.
It also provides:
- A time-tracking feature for hourly work
- A training and assets register
- A recruitment platform for managing the talent acquisition funnel (with associated app)
- In-depth reporting functionality with an audit trail, reports on time off and employee satisfaction, headcount, hiring, payroll, and performance.
Below: An example of an Employee Wellbeing report through BambooHR
Employee Wellbeing report from BambooHR
Pros and Cons of BambooHR
1. The Good
- User-friendly interface
- The dashboard, menus, and reports are a pleasure to behold. BambooHR is designed with the ordinary user in mind, has an intuitive interface, and requires no special expertise to use.
- Easily customized access privileges make it a cinch for employees to access and update their own personal details.
- Extensive reporting and analytics functionality
- BambooHR supports virtually any report or HR analytics an SMB could need: Attendance and absence reports, Turnover and Retention, Recruitment Funnel, Performance Management, Employee Welfare, and more.
- The reports are ready-made with graphs and charts to explain the data to key stakeholders.
- Unlike some other HR platforms, standard BambooHR reports are available at a simple click of the button — no complicated field selection required.
- A secure platform, customized by region
- BambooHR is region-sensitive, and ensures that all personal data is secured in accordance with the personal data laws that apply, whether the GDPR in Europe, or the CCPA in California.
- All personal information is encrypted in transit, and sensitive data are encrypted at rest.
- Comprehensive
- BambooHR is a ‘one-stop-shop’ covering the whole of the HR process, including recruitment, information management, benefits management, HR analytics, and time-tracking. It even has an add-on payroll feature for processing all aspects of payroll.
- Usually, multiple apps and platforms are required in order to have access to the same range of features.
2. The Bad
- Lack of pricing transparency
- The pricing of the two core packages is not provided on the company website. This makes it difficult for prospective purchasers to compare the price against other products.
- Cloud-only
- BambooHR is a cloud solution and does not support self-hosted data.
- BambooHR customer data is hosted in the United States, Canada, or Ireland, depending on where customers are based.
- This inevitably means giving up some degree of control of the data and creates potential vulnerabilities for the data.
- Lack of customization in the ‘Essentials’ package
- Users are limited to a standard set of reports in the ‘Essentials’ package. Futhermore, dashboards cannot be customized according to the company branding.
- Note, however, that by exporting the report data to CSV format users could produce customized reports themselves.
3. The Beautiful
- A genuine free trial
- BambooHR comes with a comprehensive free trial, without tricks or traps.
- You have the time to ascertain whether the platform is right for you, without any pressure or expectations.
- Phenomenal customer support
- No obligation, free demos are provided during the free trial period.
- A comprehensive online support database answers most queries regarding the platform. For anything else, there is live in-person support via several different channels.
- Extensive app integration and open API
Compared to other platforms, BambooHR is extensively integrated with dozens of other apps and platforms. Partner integrations include applicant tracking systems, payroll, background checks, and identity management systems.
- This makes it easy to slot BambooHR seamlessly into your existing tech stack. It also supports business preference — if you would prefer to work with your existing payroll platform, and it is on the list of integrated platforms, you can do so.
BambooHR Demo
In this video, BambooHR breaks down the components of the ‘Advantage’ package.
BambooHR Feature Dive
It is worth digging in more deeply to demonstrate how the key features of BambooHR work in detail.
1. The User Dashboard
When you log into BambooHR, the user dashboard awaits. Key features include:
- A leave management widget, giving you a quick overview of who is on leave, who has leave planned, and the leave available to the logged-in user
- Announcements, which covers HR activity that has recently occurred, or needs to be actioned by the user
- A ‘My Benefits’ section summarizing the user’s benefits.
- A top menu, navigating the user to more detailed individual information, an employee database, the hiring/recruitment function, reports, and a document depository.
2. Setting Up New Employees
All key employee information can be entered via the ‘add employee’ function. A form is filled in by the manager, or, access can be given to the new employee themselves to ensure accuracy.
Once entered, the information is available to anyone who has the requisite access privileges.
3. Hiring New Employees
Perhaps, BambooHR’s most exciting feature, through this function, advertising positions, receiving applications, interviewing, and offer letters are made easy.
At any time hiring managers can check the progress of different positions, and the status of any individual application. In-built reporting functionality can provide further analytics — for example, identifying where applicants were sourced (LinkedIn, Indeed, etc).
Candidates can be assessed and added to ‘talent pools’ for later consideration.
Below: The ‘Job Openings’ page in the Hiring dashboard
4. Reporting and HR Analytics
A key task for all HR professionals is providing usable analytics and reports for the leadership team and Board. Through the standard reporting function contained in the ‘Essentials’ package, users have access to:
Employee demographic breakdown reports. For example, a breakdown by gender or disability
A range of reports relating to the hiring funnel, including the source of candidates, and their breakdown according to various demographic factors
Payroll data reports, including ones relating to payroll change and salary history
Performance and culture reports, covering employee performance, well-being, and satisfaction
Reports on time off balances and accumulated leave
Time tracking reports.
Employee Turnover Report from BambooHR
5. Unique Points of Value
Bamboo HR offers an additional employee time-tracking app to automatically record activity for hourly employees. Timesheets are easily approved, and reports are available summarizing the results across multiple employees.
Another unusual feature of BambooHR is the strong ‘self-reporting’ functionality of the system. BambooHR isn’t built just for HR professionals, but for the ordinary employee. Managers can easily customize access privileges and give employees easy access to the data they need. This way, employees can handle their own time-off requests, review paystubs, and update their own personal information.
Who Should Use BambooHR?
A one-stop-HR-shop, BambooHR admits that its platform was designed for small businesses: It boasts that almost 90% of its customers are SMBs.
However, it is worth observing that the added functionality of the ‘Advantage’ package, with custom reports and custom branding, as well as the dozens of partner integrations, means that BambooHR is also an excellent platform for many larger enterprises.
Conclusion
BambooHR is an all-in-one HR tech solution, perfectly suited for ambitious SMBs. A simple interface, superb reporting functionality, and extensive customer service mean that BambooHR will fulfill the HR needs of most SMBs.
BambooHR Review - Features, Pricing, Pros & Cons [2022]
BambooHR is one of the most popular HR platforms on the market today. Check out our unbiased review of this HR software.
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