Rippling HR Software Review

Why Rippling Is Best for Employee Onboarding

With Rippling, the onboarding process is manageable and user-friendly, even for small business owners who don’t have a dedicated HR employee to manage the process. The CEO of Rippling even reportedly onboarded every initial hire himself using the platform. It offers extensive features for each step of the onboarding process, including the offer letter, E-Verify, payroll setup, benefits selections and onboarding paperwork. 

Employers can onboard new employees in minutes, making it the quickest onboarding process in our analysis of HR software. The employee-facing side of the onboarding process is equally simple. Employees can even fill out their new-hire paperwork from their smartphone.

We also like how simple and user-friendly the onboarding process is for employees. Rippling’s device management functions are helpful for onboarding remote hires, making this software a great choice for today’s remote work climate. 

We were impressed by the new features that streamline recruitment, head-count planning and performance management. Managers can track job applicants and use the calendar-syncing feature to schedule interviews for candidates with key team members. 

Rippling has collaborative features that allow team members to communicate and offer feedback directly in the platform, which is especially useful for performance reviews. Rippling’s head-count-planning feature offers a convenient bird’s-eye view of open and filled positions across the company, and it even syncs the data to cost forecasting for new hires. 

Rippling’s head-count-planning feature shows filled and open positions, along with positions in various stages of being filled. The platform includes a helpful cost forecasting feature. Source: Rippling

Usability

We found Rippling to be one of the easier HR software platforms to navigate. Once the setup is complete, administrators can use the menu on the left side of the dashboard to jump to tasks, including onboarding new employees, creating custom reports and syncing new third-party applications. The home dashboard view keeps administrators on track with a to-do list that’s tied to high-level deadlines, approval requests and significant milestones.

The Rippling dashboard makes it simple to navigate the software. Source: Rippling

Rippling provides easy access to its applications for payroll services, onboarding and preconfigured company devices to ship to your facilities or remote hires. Rippling apps are followed by a list of third-party software applications, letting admins manage user access across the organization from a single sign-on page.

The App Shop layout makes it easy to find and sync essential business tools, including Slack, Zoom, Asana, Zendesk, Dropbox, Adobe and HubSpot. You can manage all of these tools from the administrator’s dashboard.

We like how easy it is to create valuable reports and visualizations that can lead to better business decisions across the entire organization. When creating new reports, administrators are prompted to choose one of six report types, each of which has a seemingly endless list of customization fields.

While it might seem like having so many options would be overwhelming, Rippling breaks down the information into manageable views. The layout presents you with useful fields to explore your data. Each time you make a selection, the dynamic reporting tool populates the selected variables in the top-right corner. If you don’t see the variable you’re looking for on the left navigation menu, you can use the search function to find it. Once you’ve identified the raw data for analysis, you can zero in on details or rearrange your data sets to your liking. 

While Rippling isn’t our top choice for reporting and analytics (that honor goes to Paycor), we think these features are more robust than those of many other HR software services.

Rippling Features

Onboarding and Offboarding

Every HR software platform focuses strongly on speeding up the onboarding process, but nobody does it as well as Rippling. With this highly automated software, administrators can accomplish tasks such as sending offer letters, completing new-hire paperwork, managing payroll and enrolling employees in benefits in a couple of minutes. 

Rippling’s seamless document management features make onboarding even easier. All key onboarding documents — such as offer letters, W-2 forms and direct deposit paperwork — can be sent out to new hires quickly. The process is also user-friendly on the new hire’s side. 

Once signed, the documents are loaded into the employee’s electronic file within the Rippling platform. Employers can set rules to ensure that each hire receives all of the right documents. For example, businesses may have different versions of their employee handbook for employees in different states or countries. One of our favorite Rippling features was the automation of this process so that the proper handbook is sent out automatically based on the hire’s location.

Rippling’s templates make it easy to send offer letters. Candidates can use Rippling to digitally sign and accept their offer. Source: Rippling

Rippling also offers a solid employee offboarding process, which we found particularly important to ensure a smooth transition when an employee departs the company. Employers can easily terminate employees in the system and add notes about their reason for leaving or eligibility for rehire. They can also transfer responsibilities to another employee for a clean handoff process. Rippling allows administrators to reset a terminated employee’s passwords to a designated master password so that the ex-employee cannot access company accounts.

Performance Management

Under Rippling’s performance management feature, managers can access a centralized dashboard to see which employees have completed reviews, which reviews are in progress and which ones still need to be started. The platform allows for a wide variety of review options, including self-reviews, upward reviews, downward reviews and peer reviews. 

The system automatically emails employees to remind them to complete their reviews, and managers can send group emails to their teams for additional reminders. Once employees complete their portions of the reviews, managers can assess the employees’ reviews and add feedback. Then, managers can email the review results to the employee as an information “packet” before scheduling an in-person performance review.

The platform provides additional permission-accessed features, including a visual nine-box layout with a drag-and-drop feature for managers to categorize employees into buckets, like “potential gem,” “core player,” “star,” “inconsistent player” or “risk.” We like that the performance review data that results in compensation changes, like a merit bonus, can be synced to payroll as a batch. A feature that will allow employees to detail their progress on individual and group goals will be available soon. 

Note that the performance management feature is a paid add-on.

The performance management dashboard offers managers a visual representation of which reviews are underway, which are complete and which still need to be started. Managers can also send email reminders to their employees via the platform. Source: Rippling

Device Management

Many employers now choose to provide company devices rather than taking a BYOD approach. The Rippling platform allows you to manage all of your company-issued laptops and devices from the dashboard. Admins can view equipment inventories, set password policies and configure hard drive encryption. You can purchase and ship equipment through Rippling’s online store, as well as preconfigure software based on each individual’s role in your organization. You can also remotely wipe and reassign a device upon an employee’s termination.

While onboarding new employees in Rippling, employers can order or ship devices such as company computers and cellphones to new hires. Source: Rippling

Third-Party Integrations

Rippling’s open API allows you to share information with the applications your business already uses daily. Your team has access to more than 500 third-party cloud-based tools, which are accessible with a single sign-on from one location. The administrator’s dashboard makes it simple to modify access to the software and apps your employees need to do their jobs.

Rippling integrates with a number of popular software tools. Employers can sign up employees for new accounts with these tools during the Rippling onboarding process. Source: Rippling

Benefits Management

Rippling makes it incredibly easy for administrators to auto-enroll new hires, update payroll deductions, define contribution strategies and complete other tasks from the home dashboard. New employees and existing team members with a qualifying life event can find guided enrollment features, with intuitive navigation and side-by-side comparisons of your company’s health and financial benefits. All of your employees’ benefits automatically sync with payroll deductions for seamless management.

Rippling allows employees to select and review their benefits data. Source: Rippling

Payroll

We liked that payroll can be run in minutes, thanks to Rippling’s automated deduction calculations and tax filings. Rippling can even help automate your payroll compliance by enforcing state or local laws related to minimum wage, overtime, meal and rest breaks, and more.

One feature that sets Rippling apart from many of the competitors we reviewed is its new global payroll capabilities. You can use Rippling’s employer-of-record (EOR) service to pay full-time employees in multiple countries and contractors in 140+ countries.

Rippling provides a quick and easy payroll process by automatically calculating payroll deductions. Source: Rippling

Reporting

Rippling gives you easy access to built-in reports so you can make better business decisions. There are also customizable reporting options for companies that need more in-depth information. You can visualize data from any end point tracked within the platform, including payroll, documents, time off, hardware and insurance.

Rippling allows you to create the reports that provide the most value to your company. Source: Rippling

Compensation Bands and Head-Count Planning

Another new Rippling feature allows companies to upload their current compensation bands by specifying minimum, middle and maximum compensation amounts for each position. The feature is included in Rippling’s Unity plan. 

Each employee’s compensation package can be viewed in one place. We especially like that the compensation bands sync to onboarding and require an extra layer of approval if a new hire is offered compensation above or below the company-set thresholds. Geographic differentials for compensation are built into the platform, and the feature syncs to the head-count-planning feature. 

With the head-count-planning feature, users can easily filter positions by those that are filled, open or in different stages of the interview process. This feature syncs to cost forecasting, drawing on the midpoint number from the compensation band feature for each open role to allow for a better picture of the costs to the company once the open roles are filled. We like that this feature provides a seamless way for HR and finance to communicate, and we appreciate the built-in permissions function to ensure information privacy.

The Rippling compensation band feature helps with hiring and cost forecasting by allowing users to see the minimum, midpoint and maximum salaries for specific positions. Source: Rippling

Recruitment

Rippling’s new recruiting product has a customizable dashboard for creating job requisitions and building custom hiring pipelines. Team members can see job postings and applications and schedule interviews with candidates directly from the platform. Via a partnership with JobTarget, which allows access to more than 25,000 job posting sites, recruiting team members can choose which boards they’d like to use to promote their listing and pay for them a la carte. 

We like that the recruiting feature allows you to identify specific team members to include in interviews for certain types of candidates. For example, the sales leadership team can be selected as an interview group for a new sales position. The feature syncs with each team member’s calendar and includes a feature for team members to specify the time of day they’d prefer and to set a maximum number of interviews in a given time period. Post-interview, team members can give their feedback in the platform, and an artificial intelligence tool creates a custom pro-and-con list for each candidate to guide hiring decisions.

Note that the recruiting feature is a paid add-on.

The Rippling recruiting dashboard allows the recruiting team to view open positions and applications for those positions. They can also access detailed analytics, like applications by source and reasons for candidate rejection.

Rippling PEO

Rippling is a scalable professional employer organization (PEO) that is well suited for growing businesses. It takes only a few minutes to add a new employee to the platform. When growing businesses need to add new locations or hire remotely, Rippling can handle local tax registration and configure different labor laws and minimum wages for employees across various states. It’s also a very scalable solution that businesses will not outgrow. When the time comes to transition from a PEO model to an in-house HR team, the transition between Rippling PEO and Rippling HR software is incredibly quick and seamless.

Rippling PEO Pricing

Rippling charges a fixed-rate administrative fee. The exact rate depends on your agreement with Rippling, so you will need to contact the company for a custom quote. The specific services and the number of employees dictate the price. However, based on the company’s sample pricing, you can expect to pay about $65 per employee per month.

Rippling also offers pay-as-you-go workers’ compensation, which can be helpful for teams that fluctuate in size. If you need a PEO that is tailored to your specific industry, read our review of TriNet.

Employee Benefits Administration

One great aspect of partnering with a PEO is gaining access to enterprise-level benefits for your small business. Rippling can administer employee benefits to your workforce, including medical, dental and vision insurance; retirement savings plans; commuter benefits; and tax-advantaged savings accounts (HSAs and FSAs).

Employee self-service tools enable your workers to access their benefits plans at any time, review current information, and make changes as needed. Self-service tools can be accessed via desktop and mobile devices via a web browser or Rippling’s mobile application.

Risk Management and Legal Compliance

It can be difficult to stay up to date with federal, state and local laws, especially when you are managing remote employees. To help you with risk management and legal compliance, Rippling can perform automatic state and local tax registration, provide mandatory workplace posters, and manage Affordable Care Act and COBRA documentation and compliance. The company also can help to ensure you are following minimum-wage laws, which vary by state.

Employee Training and Development

Rippling helps you manage your team from onboarding to offboarding. You can track job applicants through the recruitment and onboarding process and provide new hires with access to hundreds of training tools and courses after they are hired. Rippling users can access pre-built training courses or create unique courses based on employees’ needs. The platform integrates with a variety of learning management systems. As an add-on, customers can opt for a performance management feature that streamlines the employee review process.

Rippling Pricing

Rippling’s basic service starts at $8 per user per month. The company does not offer the standard monthly service options that other providers in this category often do. That means most businesses will need to explore custom pricing options with a Rippling sales agent.

Basic features include a unified employee database, onboarding and offboarding automation, e-document management, time and attendance tools, workflow and approval automation, customizable reporting, an open API and more than 500 third-party cloud-based application integrations.

To learn more about other software that can be used in conjunction with the Rippling HR platform, read our reviews of Rippling’s PEO service and Rippling’s time and attendance service.

Setup

To start the Rippling implementation process, you work with a sales agent to customize a service package for your business’s needs. Once you have built your service package and signed up for Rippling, your company and employee data will need to be loaded into your account.

According to Rippling, the average time to implement the platform is two and a half weeks, which is somewhat longer than the implementation times of other HR software platforms we reviewed. However, if you want to reap Rippling’s time-saving benefits, you need to lay a solid foundation that will allow your repetitive processes to run smoothly and accurately. 

Rippling’s intuitive forms will guide you through the most common processes via easy-to-answer questions and preconfigured fields for every aspect of your HR tasks. You can set up custom workflows and input your company policies so Rippling can automatically apply them to the correct employees. Rippling also integrates with more than 500 applications, giving users plenty of customization and integration options during setup.

Customer Service

During setup, you work with a dedicated contact who is available by phone and email. Once your system is up and running, you can use email or Rippling’s self-help tools, which are available with your login information. Your employees will need to reach out to your team’s Rippling administrator to troubleshoot any issues.

Rippling users can receive live chat and email support. The company prides itself on providing prompt support over live chat — so much so that it shares up-to-date data on response times on its website. If you want one-on-one support from certified HR pros, you can add the HR Help Desk feature to your plan for an extra monthly fee.

There is also a Help Center with articles to guide users through key features. The Help Center articles are available only to active Rippling subscribers. Periodically, Rippling has events centered on key topics or features. Users can reference a library of recordings from past virtual events.

Drawbacks

The lack of phone support could lead to frustration, especially for smaller teams without a tech-savvy HR administrator on staff. This means your admins should dedicate time to understanding how the system works and anticipate issues or concerns employees are likely to have while accomplishing tasks or understanding their benefits. For some employees, the option to speak with a support representative about a technical HR issue is usually the most attractive solution, which is something we’d like to see improved with Rippling.

Very small businesses may not find the benefits of automation worth the time it takes to build the right workflows. For example, if your company is onboarding and offboarding only a handful of employees each year, it may not be worthwhile to build a custom workflow.

Methodology

We conducted comprehensive research and analyzed dozens of HR systems to identify the top HR software on the market. We watched product videos and attended software demos when possible. When looking for the best HR software for employee onboarding specifically, we prioritized features such as onboarding and implementation, payroll processing, benefits administration, usability, integrations, reporting and customer service.

Overall Value

We recommend Rippling for …

• Businesses that are looking for an automation-focused, all-in-one HR software platform that can integrate with all of their existing business software, benefits and apps.
• Midsize businesses that want to save time and ensure accuracy with their HR-related tasks, from onboarding to offboarding and everything in between.
• Businesses that are looking for the flexibility provided by a highly customizable HR software platform with endless reporting options.

We don’t recommend Rippling for …

• Small businesses that do not have a high frequency of repetitive HR tasks, including hiring, onboarding, equipment allocation, benefits management and offboarding.
• Small and midsize businesses that need a lot of help from customer service when managing or modifying their operations-related tools and software.

Erin Donaghue contributed to this review.