The best HR tools for better employee experiences and benefits
Level up your company culture and grow faster
At Coderbyte, we focus on making incredible candidate interview experiences. For hiring software developers in particular, I’ve written about how to reinvent interviewing in a remote-first world and how to make code assessments more seamless.
While it’s still incredibly difficult to hire great talent, the number one issue that companies face right now is retaining the talent they already have. We’re witnessing what social scientists are calling The Great Resignation.
As the pandemic clouds lift, the percentage of Americans leaving employers for new opportunities is at its highest level in more than two decades.”
– The Wall St Journal
The Great Resignation isn’t inevitable at every company though. More than 2,000 employers — mostly cutting-edge technology companies — use Coderbyte and many of them are experiencing the opposite effect: high employee productivity, engagement, retention, and hiring rates. After all, one company’s loss is inevitably another company’s gain. The vast majority of employees aren’t quitting and then retiring to a remote beach town. They’re getting jobs elsewhere. It’s a matter of perspective and which side of the equation your company is on.
So how do you make sure that you’re part of The Great Retention instead of The Great Resignation? I heard the same thing over and over from top employers: prioritize your employees by proactively creating better experiences and benefits. This has been our approach as we’ve scaled Coderbyte and it truly works.
Below are some of the best HR solutions and techniques that we use along with some mentioned by our customers.
Employee pre-boarding & onboarding
Making a good first impression is key. It’s difficult enough to source great talent to interview, so once you’ve made a decision to hire someone it’s important to create an incredible pre-boarding and onboarding experience for them.
Welcome — Kickass offer letters
There’s nothing more frustrating than losing a great candidate to a competing offer. Welcome lets you generate data-driven, informative, and exciting offer letters that will increase your close rates.
Donut — Slackbot for clever icebreakers and chatter
New hires can be intimidated at a high-growth startup with a strong network of “OGs”. Donut is a clever Slack app that can introduce new hires to folks throughout the company. It’s particularly useful for remote workers.
Electric — Hardware provisioning so your new hire doesn’t miss a beat
New hires want to hit the ground running but it’s shocking how frequently a company computer or required software isn’t available on day one for them to actually start working. Electric handles all of that and more with automated hardware and software provisioning.
Employee engagement
Voluntary turnover is so disruptive and expensive. It’s also a vicious cycle — every employee that leaves increases the workload and stress for employees that stay, pushing them closer to leaving too. Employee engagement is the key to retaining talent and getting foresight into problem areas.
Culture Amp — Actionable surveys and benchmarking
Culture Amp is like Typeform built specifically for people teams. Their templated surveys are incredibly clever and powerful, with built-in benchmarking so that you can see how your company compares to similar cohorts. That being said, employee surveys are always a double-edged sword: if you ask for feedback, you better plan to act on it quickly or it can be worse than not asking at all.
Ethena — Anti-harassment and respect in the workplace
I get it, few people get excited about state-mandated compliance training. But the generic videos and quizzes included in every HRIS are total eye-rollers that show that you barely take seriously creating a respectful and professional workplace and environment. Ethena makes modern anti-harassment training that’s actually dynamic, relevant, and impactful.
Gather — Reminders, tasks, and collaboration on autopilot
I talk to so many HR teams that are exhausted because they’re expected to be superheroes every day, solving problems and making it look easy. From onboarding new employees to birthday announcements, Gather helps you automate some of the more basic HR functions so you can get to everything.
Employee wellbeing & appreciation
An emerging and exciting category in people operations is employee wellbeing and appreciation. Talent is a competitive advantage today, so ensuring that your workforce feels appreciated is critical. One of the best ways to show appreciation is to invest in employee wellbeing.
JOON — Wellness benefits that employees actually use
Wellbeing benefits have historically been of the lame and vanity “check-the-box” variety like a $10 reimbursement to a gym that you know no employee will submit receipts for. That just doesn’t cut it anymore. Employee burnout is at an all time high and top talent recognizes when you don’t have good intentions with your wellbeing benefits. JOON is an impressively frictionless and flexible wellbeing benefit that we give at Coderbyte and consistently see 75%+ employee utilization every month.
Stash Wealth — Financial literacy about savings and stock options
Early in my career, I worked at some of the most renowned high-growth tech companies, like MongoDB and Meetup. A significant piece of my compensation was stock options, restricted stock units, 401Ks and the like, but I had no idea what any of those meant. It’s strange that so many startups offer equity as part of compensation yet don’t take the time to explain to employees (especially early-career employees) how any of it works. Stash Wealth offers awesome workshops so that your employees can take control of their financial wellbeing and actually appreciate your holistic compensation packages.
Bonusly — Kudos and recognition gamified
In agile companies, little things that employees do every day add up to big wins over time. Bonusly is a pleasant and fun way to give kudos and show appreciation to colleagues.
Employee productivity
Your company is growing and your employees want to as well. One of the main reasons that employees join fast-paced startups is to learn and accelerate their careers. By ensuring that your company offers an environment for people to grow, you’re also ensuring that they’ll stay.
BetterUp — Leadership coaches and self-reflection
So many of the roles that exist in a technology company today didn’t exist even 20 years ago. For people and especially managers in new functions like customer success, DevOps, and data science, it can be difficult to get the coaching needed to be successful. BetterUp offers self-serve and coaching-based leadership training to help your top talent keep improving.
Pingboard — Smart org charts so everyone knows who’s who
At about the same time when your company switched from first-name-only email addresses to first-dot-last-name email addresses is when it started becoming difficult to remember who was who and who did what. Pingboard helps your employees navigate departments and make connections faster with slick org charts.
Summer Fridays, No Meeting Days, No Camera Days
Summer Fridays are a classic way to let employees recharge with long weekends. Some other clever techniques we’ve utilized since going remote have been dedicating one day a week to no meetings or at least video-less meetings.
I feel like it’s a golden age for HR solutions. Not long ago, HR was considered by many companies to be an unimportant back office function cluttered with terrible software. Now, there are incredibly forward-thinking solutions to facilitate respectful, high-performing, and fun cultures.
Do you think that I missed any great HR solutions? Share your favorites below!
