Human resources in healthcare is changing.
As people leaders contend with a challenging talent marketplace, problems with disengagement and burnout, and the need to appeal to the next generation of workers, it’s becoming more and more essential to modernize and streamline your operations.
And while there are lots of different HR software options on the market to help you in various areas, not all of these platforms fit the unique needs of your industry.
With that in mind, we’ve looked at several different systems to curate this list of healthcare HR software vendors that have tailored their offerings to the sector.
Best all-in-one healthcare workforce management software options
Many of the best healthcare HR software solutions are multifunctional, providing features that help you manage payroll, engagement, communications, and everything in between.
These workforce management systems come with the advantage of allowing you to centralize a lot of your HR functions within a single platform, as well as potential cost savings from contracting with a single provider rather than multiple vendors.
Here are our picks for the best platforms that do (almost) everything you could ask for.
1. UKG
One of the most widely used workforce management software solutions among healthcare providers, UKG’s array of features can be used to streamline everything from scheduling, to time tracking, to workforce analytics, and much more.
The platform even has add-on applications for communications, learning management, and earned wage access.
Why we love it: One of our favourite product offerings for healthcare providers from UKG is the EZCall feature, an algorithm-driven scheduling tool designed specifically to serve physicians and other specialized clinical staff.
UKG is now a Guusto partner! Learn more about how our two solutions work together.
2. Paycor
Paycor is an HCM platform that also provides specialized solutions for recruiting, onboarding, scheduling and a host of other areas, with a heavy focus on frontline industries like healthcare.
They offer tailored implementation guided by consultants that are experienced in the industry, meaning you’ll be in good hands with someone who understands the unique needs of the sector.
Why we love it: Paycor’s in-house expertise has helped them develop niche product offerings you won’t get from many other healthcare HR software providers. For example, the platform has specialized solutions for managing unpaid staff like contracted nurses paid by agencies, which are common in many healthcare facilities.
3. Dayforce
Another Guusto partner, Dayforce is one of the most popular healthcare HR software choices. The platform’s robust feature set covers the full spectrum of the employee experience, providing solutions for recruitment, retention, engagement, and development, as well as practical tools for administration, payroll, and scheduling.
Why we love it: Through its own suite of tools, as well as its selection of partner integrations, Dayforce allows you to build a truly centralized end-to-end HR tech stack.
Staff scheduling software for healthcare
Healthcare professionals at every level of the industry often work irregular (and long) hours. It’s not easy, and can often be the catalyst for disengagement and employee dissatisfaction.
To counter this, more and more people leaders in the space are incorporating scheduling solutions into their healthcare HR software stack. These apps allow employees to better access and manage their schedules, and will also often double as a timeclock to log shifts and track hours.
Not only are they great for employees, but they also lessen the burden on your managers and administrative staff, who no longer need to worry about dealing with shift change requests, overtime approvals, and other day-to-day scheduling issues manually.
Here’s some of our top picks for healthcare employee scheduling software.
4. Deputy
Widely used among a lot of frontline companies, Deputy provides capabilities for shift swapping, leave management, and even task management. It also functions as a digital timeclock to help speed up payroll.
One feature that makes it great for healthcare teams is the facial recognition and voice commands on the app, which make clocking in and out easier and more hygienic.
Why we love it: Deputy is more than just healthcare staff scheduling software. It’s also a tool that you can use to monitor your staff’s workload and guard against burnout.
Its labor compliance tools can help you ensure that your staff are taking breaks and rests when they need them (and when they are required by law). Additionally, the Shift Pulse+ feature tracks employee sentiment and gives your team the chance to offer feedback, helping you to catch disengagement or workload issues early.
5. Skedulo
A more specialized healthcare employee scheduling software option designed for distributed teams, Skedulo is ideal for companies where a large number of employees are working out in the field, like home health care providers.
Not only does it enable shift scheduling and management, but it also allows your team to create new appointments and manage dispatch during the day, matching patients with providers nearby and even providing route direction.
Why we love it: Not all healthcare providers operate out of a fixed location, and it’s refreshing to see an app that considers the needs of more distributed teams.
6. When I Work
When I Work provides shift scheduling, time tracking, and employee messaging capabilities for healthcare teams.
It’s more of a no-frills solution than other healthcare employee scheduling software options on the market, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The simplicity can make it more intuitive and easier to use for your team, particularly if they’re not especially tech-savvy.
Perhaps more importantly, it’s very reasonably priced, which might make it a much better option for smaller providers who need an affordable solution without a lot of bells and whistles.
Why we love it: In an industry where budgets can be tight, it’s great to find a low-cost option that still fulfills your needs.
Healthcare HR software for communications
Deskless communications apps are becoming an increasingly common part of healthcare HR software solutions. With so many employees working on their feet all day, enabling them to keep in touch with each other seamlessly can be a massive win for efficiency.
Here’s a few of the options on the market.
7. Blink
Blink is a centralized employee communications app that can allow your team to message each other, receive organization-wide updates, and access policies or other information. It also includes some basic recognition and engagement tools.
Why we love it: One of Blink’s best advantages for healthcare is its data security. The app is 100% HIPAA compliant, meaning you can be assured that any sensitive patient information shared or stored on the app is secure.
8. Beekeeper
A popular option across several frontline industries, Beekeeper boasts a host of tools, including top-down and peer-to-peer communication, shift scheduling and swapping, and onboarding and training features.
Why we love it: Beekeeper’s instant inline translation feature means employees can send and receive communications in their preferred language, which is perfect for the increasingly diverse healthcare workforce.
9. Augmedix
A more unorthodox healthcare HR software solution, Augmedix is a different kind of communication tool than the others in this list. Rather than focus on messaging, the app’s AI technology takes real-time notes for clinical staff, allowing them to be more present during patient conversations.
Why we love it: While not a traditional part of your tech stack, this is an innovative product that could really empower healthcare staff, and help you build a more engaging, efficient, and patient-centric environment.
10. Engage by Cell
Engage by Cell is both a communications app and a learning management system for healthcare. In addition to enabling 1:1 communications, you can use the app to build automated text message sequences for onboarding and skill building. You can also build mobile resource centers for your team, and even use it as a task manager.
Why we love it: Engage by Cell packs a lot of things into a small package, and it offers flexible pricing options where you can tailor your feature set according to your needs.
11. Firstup
Firstup is a comprehensive communications app that facilitates conversations between employees, while also allowing you to deliver personalized content to individual team members based on their roles. It also integrates with widely used healthcare workforce management tools like UKG and Oracle.
Why we love it: The platform’s emphasis on user-centric content can be especially empowering for healthcare teams. Customers like Cooper University Health Care have praised the system for enabling staff to surface errors, in turn allowing management to address them and leading to a more engaged workforce.
12. WorkBuzz
While most of the apps in this section focus on messaging, WorkBuzz is devoted to enabling employee listening and feedback. The platform allows you to deliver a variety of real-time surveys using a mobile interface designed with frontline workers in mind.
Why we love it: A lot of survey tools on the market have extremely clunky mobile experiences, and it’s refreshing to see one that knows its audience and delivers something that works for them.
Top healthcare learning management systems
From onboarding to upskilling, learning on the job is crucial for healthcare professionals. But in busy environments, it can be hard for employees to take time to attend in-person training sessions, or sit at a desk and watch online lectures.
Here’s a few healthcare learning management system vendors who are delivering training designed for the frontline of the industry.
13. Axonify
Axonify is one of the most popular frontline learning platforms, serving several healthcare organizations as well as other industries like retail and hospitality. At its core, it's an AI-driven microlearning platform that your employees can use to answer on-the-job questions, and also enables you to develop hyper-personalized learning paths for individual team members.
Why we love it: While Axonify made its name as a healthcare learning management system, the company has expanded its product offerings to include various other features for communications, operations, and workforce management, meaning it can serve a number of functions for your company.
14. Schoox
A rising star in healthcare LMS software, Schoox has been developing some exciting solutions for frontline industries. The platform incorporates blended learning, microlearning, and on-the job support to deliver an efficient and intuitive experience for healthcare professionals.
Why we love it: As Schoox says, everyone learns differently, and the variety of content formats the platform offers makes it easy to tailor your L&D to your team’s strengths.
15. Blue Ocean Brain
Blue Ocean Brain is an ideal learning management system for healthcare organizations looking to specifically develop soft skills within their teams. The platform can be used for your own custom content, but the company also provides readymade courses in areas like leadership skills, critical thinking, and diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Why we love it: It’s proven to be effective in the industry. Check out this case study with Atlantic Health, who used the system to run DEIB training across the company.
16. Xapimed
Xapimed is software specifically designed for competency management in clinical healthcare environments. You can build a competency framework that covers the key skills your staff need, including anything from more general admin or emergency care skills to the ability to perform specialized procedures, and create workflows to ensure your staff are trained sufficiently.
The platform integrates with several HRIS and LMS systems, making it easy to centralize your competency management.
Why we love it: In a sea of more general solutions, Xapimed is a tailored learning management system for healthcare teams, meaning you can be confident the solution fills a need for your organization.
Recruiting and onboarding HR software for healthcare
Despite economic concerns in other industries, healthcare is still facing a talent shortage. Finding capable, willing candidates and retaining them has been a challenge for the sector in the past decade, and software solutions that can make it easier for HR teams to source, recruit and onboard candidates has become more and more essential for success. Here’s a couple of our top picks in this category.
17. Grayscale
If you follow Guusto on social media, you’re probably well aware of our opinions on ‘ghosting’ candidates. In a competitive job market, the fact that some HR teams are still slow to respond to applicants (or don’t respond at all) feels criminal.
Grayscale in a conversational AI app built to keep candidates engaged through every stage of the process with automated messaging workflows. It can be used for onboarding, too, and even for messaging to employees beyond that.
Why we love it: Staying connected to candidates and employees, while saving you time? What’s not to love?
18. Deel
An end-to-end solution designed to simplify HR management for global teams, Deel is particularly effective for healthcare organizations operating internationally. The platform offers solutions for recruiting globally, relocating existing staff, and even managing payroll and compliance.
Why we love it: As many healthcare organizations look further afield to find the right talent, a globally-focused solution is a must-have.
Financial wellness apps for healthcare workers
In a world of high inflation and an ever-increasing cost of living, financial wellness apps are becoming an increasingly common part of the compensation and benefits packages of healthcare organizations.
These platforms typically offer earned wage access, allowing employees to receive early advances on their paychecks to deal with bills or other expenses in a timely manner. Here’s a few of the best on the market.
19. Payactiv
Payactiv offers earned wage access, as well as financial education and savings planning tools so that your team can keep their budgets under control. The tool also has strong integrations with UKG, Paycor, and other healthcare HR software systems.
Why we love it: In addition to these features, the app’s discount marketplace helps users save money on prescription medications and other everyday essentials, which is invaluable for healthcare employees when finances are tight.
20. Branch
Branch is one of the most comprehensive earned wage access apps on the market, offering early access to up to 50% of wages, and even same-day payouts for both contractors and permanent employees. The platform also has facilities for per diems, stipends bonuses and other add-ons, plus a robust set of financial wellness tools.
Why we love it: Branch’s Greenhouse feature serves as a marketplace where employees can find additional finance solutions, like high yield savings accounts and personal loans, which is a nice extra support for employees looking to get a better handle on their finances.
The only employee recognition software platform for healthcare
While this blog has showcased the wide range of options available for different kinds of healthcare software solutions, the one area where the industry is somewhat underserved is… you guessed it, employee recognition. There is one exception, of course.
21. Guusto
While there are plenty of great recognition platforms out there, they are mostly designed to suit office and remote employees, not frontline industries like healthcare.
Closed loop systems which require company email addresses can automatically exclude employees who don’t have one, while a lack of options for mobile and offline recognition on some platforms make it tricky to implement a program that works for both office and deskless workers.
Guusto is different. We’re laser-focused on the frontline, with features specifically designed to serve employees on the ward, in the field, and in the office. We also offer flexible pricing where you only pay for users who are sending recognition, which can make it much easier to find the budget to get your program off the ground.
Getting Started with Employee Recognition for Healthcare
If you’re interested in making an employee recognition platform one of your healthcare hr software investments next year, download Employe Recognition for Healthcare: The Complete Guide.
This free resource tells you everything you need to know to:
- Plan your program
- Find the right provider
- Turn recognition into a tool that supercharges your culture!
Fill out the form below to get your copy: