Loomio
Thu 23 Jan 2025 7:05PM

Recruitment tool and HR software

BG Britta (Unicorn Grocery) Public Seen by 141

At Unicorn, we tried one of those off the peg HR Information Systems. They are expensive and not very useful when you work within a flat structure. Has anyone found anything good? We would like to use it to manage leave, do some reviews, keep files and documents, record absence.

We are also looking for a recruitment tool, to make our process easier and of course in line with best practice. If there is one system for all that someone can recommend, please let me know.

Also, if there are any tech co-ops who might be able to built us something, then we would be even more interested.

Thank you!

AA

adrian ashton Fri 24 Jan 2025 10:47AM

have you also sounded out the Rad HR community with this query?
it's the sort of thing that the forum there would likely be a good 'hive mind' to tap into:
https://radhr.org/

BC

bob cannell Fri 24 Jan 2025 2:03PM

Good heavens, is this still a problem? I was struggling trying to find one 20 years ago. And couldnt for the same reasons. Wonder what they do at suma these days with 300+ people?

BG

Britta (Unicorn Grocery) Fri 24 Jan 2025 3:32PM

@bob cannell Unbelievable, isn't it?? We have spoken to Suma but they can get away with an expensive system as it is probably worth for the size they are now. Not great for for us unfortunately.

BW

Beanies Wholefoods Thu 30 Jan 2025 9:17AM

Hi Britta,

No, we don't have anything in particular! Please let us know if you hit on anything useful - at the moment we take job applications through google sheets, AL is also on a spreadsheet and monitored alongside payroll, and everything else is managed across our
various different systems. It's working OK at the moment but I suppose if we scale it won't!

All the best,

Ella

BC

bob cannell Thu 30 Jan 2025 12:05PM

Things must have changed but....the systems I looked at were inappropriate or not value for money because they :-

Were all based around a single narrow job description which made reviews and performance monitoring easier. We needed a system that tracked skills competencies across a range of jobs for each person.

Were all focussed on promotion, hierarchy and salary grading. None of which fitted and were money for nothing.

Recruitment, selection, training and assessment were done using inhouse databases/spreadsheets. Because the proprietary systems did all this in a different way. Suma in those days used many different ways to manage these. Ways developed to look for what Suma wanted. The spreadsheets etc did not easily generate eg offer or refusal letters. Too much time was taken up doing all that stuff.

The off the shelf systems, like many mainstream systems in other parts of HRM eg H&S management either did not work with high initiative, self managing, multi skilled workers or tried to turn them into corporate drones requiring expensive and unnecessary supervision.

I would be very interested to learn how modern IT can be used to resolve these shortcomings of the old style rigid software packages.