BambooHR is cloud-based HR software that can be used for employee performance management. It is not traditional employee monitoring software; instead, it is a comprehensive HR solution with various features to help small businesses hire and onboard employees, manage employee performance, track employee hours, and run payroll. BambooHR has two paid plans (Essentials and Advantage) with a seven-day free trial and no cancellation fees. BambooHR plans are charged on a per-employee basis with month-to-month agreements. There are add-on capabilities for payroll, time tracking and performance management.
Editor's score: 7.4/10
BambooHR's software is intuitive and easy to use. It works on desktop and mobile devices. For more flexibility, employees can access self-service capabilities with the mobile app. For example, they can access the software with single sign-on, manage their time off, view company calendars, and access employee directories and organization charts. If you have questions or issues with the software, you can easily connect with a support representative by phone, email or web chat.
The Essentials and Advantage plans both include standard HR features to help you manage your team, such as employee records, benefits tracking, workflows and approvals, document storage, reporting, and email alerts. BambooHR also now offers a COVID-19 vaccination tracking feature that lets organizations track and record which employees are vaccinated, boosted, and when they received their vaccine or booster. These results can be pulled into reports to assess your company's overall vaccination status.
Businesses looking for software that can also help with hiring and onboarding will want the Advantage plan, as it has extra components like an applicant tracking system, onboarding and offboarding features, e-signature capabilities, audit trails, training tracking (for compliance), and integrations. It also gives you access to an employee satisfaction report (the Employee Net Promoter Score, or eNPS), which is great for identifying employee engagement and opportunities for improvement.
If you want to access the full scope of BambooHR's performance management capabilities, you will want to add on the Performance Management plan. This lets you create, monitor and collaborate on each employee's individual goals. Your staff can use peer feedback tools to identify strengths and weaknesses and to conduct short, objective self-evaluations to reflect on their performance.
BambooHR also offers employee and company performance reports, so you can get a holistic view of performance and engagement at every level. If you need payroll and time-tracking capabilities, you can add on the TRAXPayroll plan (which includes full-service tax filing, comprehensive reporting, and data security assistance) and the Time Tracking plan (which offers functions for daily time entries, timesheets, overtime calculations and automatic reminders).
Key takeaway: Employee monitoring software can be billed monthly or annually, and it ranges from free to hundreds of dollars per employee per year.
Tip: Monitoring features like keylogging and screenshots can land you in hot water if you accidentally capture an employee's private information (e.g., medical records or bank numbers). To protect your business, establish a policy with your employees that there should be zero expectation of privacy on company devices.
