Zoho people is an Online Human Resource Software (HRIS) that automates your HR process. That is the most precise description of ZOHO People. Zoho people is very visible and active from past year. Let’s take a quick look at their recent visible moments from exactly last year.

• ZOHO people had their presence marked in Palais Des Congress / HR Tech World Congress in Paris in October 2016. The footfall was not that great but the presentation was definitely marked on all the social media platforms. The vibrant colors of the logo and a very charming name definitely intrigues people, no doubt.
• In March 2017, ZOHO people showed a very vibrant and happy booth at HR Imagery 2017. It was not a very busy day on booth though.
• In April 2017, ZOHO People marked a beautiful presence at SHRMTech 17. The footfall was better this time.
• In August 2017, a vibrant booth presence with the presence of top HR people and celebrities too during People Matters Tech HR event at Gurgaon.
• In August, again, handmade goodies and giveaways, made this booth a hit during AHRINC and witnessed a good footfall.

With every passing event, the product has become more visible and have triggered the curiosity element. So, we took this opportunity, to research and learn more about the software and its features. We also spoke to few professionals around who are already using some other HR software and took their comparative feedback. This review is based on ZOHO people’s social media presence, activity updates, and thorough study of features by us and feedback by few professionals in both HR and Non-HR domain.

CONCEPT:

ZOHO is a very basic HR Software. Vinay Sharma (Head- Online Marketing at IDP Australia) reviewed the product and compared it with what he is using currently for a team of around 200 people. He says:

“ZOHO has solved a problem at a very basic level. Basically, all those administrative jobs like Leave management, attendance management, time tracking, employee data maintenance, form customizations, etc, has been simply automated, we have seen and used better”.

There are few features which are really exciting and we will talk about those soon, but on an overview, compared to the whole bunch of Soft wares already available, it’s basic.

SUPER FEATURES:

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• Geo positioned attendance management: Attendance Management is a very basic feature, but ZOHO people attendance management module is actually robust and is integrated with ZOHO Geo Positioning Feature. So it also tells your location while you are checking in or checking out while on the go for a client meeting.
• ZOHO API is a beautiful module where we can actually integrate the Attendance system with any Attendance terminal, whether its ID scan or Biometrics. That sounds practical.
• Flexible Mobile Check in and check out is also a cool super feature.

• Multi-Level approval is also one of the good features, but only for bigger organizations. Where you don’t really have to write individual emails for approvals and wait. In one go you can get multiple approvals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NOT SO GREAT Features:

• Leave management: It’s a very basic feature and offers nothing new or different on the plate. Custom leaves, online application, generating leave reports individually for every employee are now very common even in workplaces with no structured HR management system.
• Time tracker: we believe that this particular feature actually comes with forced in-depth details which are not even required. It helps you track billable and non-billable hours on the job of an employee, and also to track exactly how much time he has spent on a particular job. There are always set targets and some are met, some don’t.  why do we need this much in-depth information and why would one like to record it and that too for each employee individually. Too Much intricacies and complexities.
• Dashboard and form have very less usable space. One can’t add a lot of info about company policies may be or other details on the dashboard directly, one has to load a file link.
• The form customization is a great feature but needs a little bit of twitching here and there, in order to make it more useful. The templates must come with a preview feature.

 

LACKS:

L & D feature: For any HR Software, learning and development or Training feature become an integral part in today’s time. If it’s not helping you learn more and grow, it’s not meant for employees and thus not for HR Management. It should be software for HR, not HR for software. There are many other HR Management software, which comes specifically with this L&D module, offering the employees to learn, get trained, get certified and also track their performance and their development.

INTERNAL NETWORK: Though recently ZOHO has announced that it can be integrated with SLACK, MS Office and one can form groups and can share views or updates. But what we are talking about is an internal social network with personal profiles and a chat platform, something like inter/intradepartmental chat room.

User Interface: It is not an Intuitive software. The user interface has to be very intuitive and user-friendly. After using just one or two features, one has to use the help of demo feature or customer care to navigate around. This is a feedback received from most of the users. One has to get trained and learn the way around. One has to constantly be in touch with Demo people and ZohoCares to pave the way forward and it really can’t be done on own, it’s not unintuitive.

David F, CEO and co-founder at Metigy and is a verified user of ZOHO says, “There is a steep learning curve and it is not that intuitive, so it takes some time to navigate your way around”

PAYROLL and benefits: Again, I have read about the integration with GreyTHR, but a wholesome HR management software must come with a smooth Payroll and benefits module well integrated with insurance, medical and bank details, and it should also be on employee self-service tool. Where an employee can edit and update the bank details and personal details to get away with the unnecessary fuss of emails and follow-ups, That’s what an intuitive HRIS would do.

As per UNICORN HR, there are five basic features which every HRIS must have:

• Payroll,
• Benefits administration,
• Trainings,
• Recruiting,
• Metrics.

Out of these, metrics is one point which has been well captured by ZOHO people, while others like Payroll, recruiting and training has been ignored.

WORD:

ZOHO People still has a long way to go. It has amazing potential. The software has to be more practical in approach, more result oriented, more intuitive and wholesome. Identifying whether it has been designed keeping the automation of multiple HR processes and function in mind, or to actually make HR management easier and efficient.

#Recruitmentgyan will give 2.5 out of 5 stars.