A human resources information system (HRIS) is a type of HR software designed to help streamline and automate various HR processes. From managing payroll to overseeing the recruiting and onboarding process, a good HRIS can provide a broad range of functionality.

What makes a good HRIS great, though, is the right HRIS integrations. By integrating your HRIS with other apps and HR systems, you can unlock powerful capabilities and create time-saving synergy between your solutions. To help you get started, we'll explore everything you need to know about HRIS integrations — including the top five HRIS integrations on the market today.

What are HRIS integrations?

An HRIS integration is any app or software that is capable of integrating with your HRIS. What this means is that the two systems will be able to share data back and forth via an application programming interface (API), automatically updating in real-time across all of your integrated systems anytime new data is added to one of the systems.

For example, integrating your payroll solution with your HRIS means that any update to your payroll will automatically appear in your HRIS records. Integrating an employee experience management platform such as Pyn with your HRIS means that you provide each team member with timely, personalized messages.

These are a couple of examples of how HRIS integrations work. By connecting all of your HR tools and talent management platforms, HRIS integrations eliminate the need for time-consuming data entry while empowering many business-boosting capabilities.

HRIS tools to consider integrations for

There are several types of HR tools that you can integrate with your HRIS. This includes tools such as:

Applicant tracking systems

Applicant tracking systems provide a range of features designed to help streamline a company's recruiting process. By integrating your applicant tracking system with your HRIS, you can ensure that the employee records of new employees you hire are automatically added to your HRIS.

Learning management system

A learning management system (LMS) provides a framework for managing onboarding and other employee training processes. By integrating your LMS with your HRIS, you can track the impact of training in correlation with metrics such as turnover rate, engagement, and productivity while eliminating the need for manual data entry.

Payroll software

One in four employees states that they have received a paycheck with errors at some point in their career. Along with eliminating the hassle of manual data entry into your payroll system, integrating your payroll system with your HRIS also reduces the chances of human error.

Workforce management apps

Integrating your workforce management apps with your HRIS ensures that those apps are always populated with up-to-date employee data. In the case of Pyn, for example, this allows for personalized employee messaging based on your data from your HRIS system.

Benefits of using HRIS integrations

HRIS integrations can offer plenty of powerful benefits. Some of the top benefits that you can look forward to when you integrate your HR tools with your HRIS include:

Increased efficiency and productivity

On the whole, employee productivity has been on the rise lately. One great way to make your employees even more productive is to provide them with an integrated technology stack that eliminates the need for time-consuming tasks such as manual data entry.

Enhanced employee experience

HRIS integrations can improve the employee experience in several ways, from enabling automated, personalized messaging to eliminating room for frustrating errors. Given that companies with an engaged, satisfied workforce are 23% more profitable, this is a substantial benefit.

Better data accuracy with automation

Manual data entry isn't just time-consuming; it's also prone to errors. By automatically updating all of your HR tools with up-to-date HRIS data, HRIS integrations can dramatically reduce the potential for human error.

Improved communication and team collaboration

HRIS integrations allow for streamlined and personalized employee communication. This leads to improved communication and team collaboration — all of the secondary benefits of great communication and teamwork.

How to approach using HRIS integrations

There's no denying the benefits of HRIS integrations, but how do you choose and implement the best integrations for your organization? If you want to maximize the advantages that HRIS integrations provide, here are the steps that you should follow:

Evaluate current HRIS processes and identify the need

Choosing the best HRIS integrations for your business starts with identifying your organization's needs. Evaluate your current HRIS processes to see where there is a need for improvement, then choose your HRIS integrations accordingly.

Research and planning

It's important to carefully research any HRIS integration you consider before you make the leap. If you can schedule a free trial or demo to try out the integration hands-on, that's even better. Once you've done your research and chosen an HRIS integration that you would like to implement, it's time to start planning the implementation and training process.

Implementation and training

Most HRIS integrations are quite simple to implement, especially if they are backed by high-quality customer support and onboarding resources. Along with actually implanting the integration, you'll also need to train your employees on how to use it. This is also much easier when working with integrations like Pyn that offer comprehensive training resources.

Monitoring and maintenance

The final step in using HRIS integrations is to monitor their performance (and the performance of the teams using them), working out any kinks along the way.

5 HRIS integrations to consider for your human resources tools

Most high-quality human resources management systems can integrate with a long list of other HR management tools. Usually, though, just a handful of powerful integrations is all you need to optimize your HRIS processes. If you want to narrow your section to a few of the most useful HRIS integrations available today, here are five excellent integrations to consider.

1) Pyn

Pyn is an employee experience management platform that enables companies to send automated, personalized employee messages at scale. With Pyn, you can take control of the employee journey, supporting your employees every step of the way with timely, targeted messaging.

Integrating Pyn with your HRIS means that Pyn will be constantly updated with the latest employee data. This ensures that Pyn has the data needed to provide personalized messages at every stage and key moment in an employee's journey.

Key features

• Flexible pricing to match any business's budget and needs
• Enables you to target messages based on department, position, location, and more
• Offers a long list of integrations with top HRIS solutions and other HR tools
• Automates employee communication without sacrificing personalization

2) Breezy HR

Breezy HR is a hiring software and applicant tracking system designed to streamline the process of attracting top talent to your company. From automating tasks such as pre-screening candidates and scheduling interviews to automatically posting your job openings on 50+ top job boards, Breezy provides a wide range of features that make recruiting talented candidates a breeze.

Integrating Breezy with your HRIS makes it easier to turn candidates into new employees. By automatically moving new hires into your HR system, this integration eliminates the need to manually enter data for each employee you hire.

Key features

• Enables you to post your job opening on 50+ job boards in a single click
• Breezy Widget lets you embed a branded list of job openings on your website's career page
• Includes drag-and-drop workflows for automating the recruiting and hiring process
• Integrates will all top HR systems so that new hires are automatically added to your HRIS

3) BambooHR

BambooHR is an all-in-one software solution that offers a variety of features and HR tools. This includes applicant tracking features, payroll and benefits management features, HR reporting and analytics features, performance management features, and many more.

While BambooHR can function as an HRIS, you can also integrate BambooHR with your existing HRIS to take advantage of its other tools and features. Integrating BambooHR with your HRIS allows you to populate BambooHR with accurate, up-to-date employee data while still letting you use your existing HRIS as the primary platform for storing and managing that data.

Key features

• Allows you to track hours worked, manage benefits, and run payroll all from a single platform
• Provides an applicant tracking system for monitoring candidates throughout the recruiting and hiring process
• Provides tools for measuring employee satisfaction and collecting employee feedback
• Capable of serving as an HRIS or integrating with your existing HRIS

4) Namely

Like BambooHR, Namely is another all-in-one HR platform that provides many different features. Along with serving as an HRIS, Namely also offers expert payroll services, employee engagement tools, automated employee onboarding, and compliance tools for mitigating compliance risks.

You can take advantage of Namely's many features while using your existing HRIS with an HRIS-Namely integration. This allows you to automatically populate Namely with your current HRIS data.

Key features

• Offers optional enhanced payroll services to take the responsibilities of payroll administration completely off your hands
• Serves as an HRIS or integrates with your existing HRIS
• Boasts robust HR analytics tools
• Provides intuitive and configurable performance forms for simplifying assessment cycles

5) Culture Amp

Culture Amp is an employee engagement platform designed to help companies foster a workplace culture primed for employee engagement, productivity, and satisfaction. 

With Culture Amp, you get powerful tools for collecting employee feedback, access to detailed analytics and reporting regarding employee sentiment and performance, and a whole lot more. Integrating Culture Amp with your HRIS means that all the employee data will be automatically updated — no manual data entry required.

Key features

• Provides turnover prediction algorithms for pinpointing employees who are a high risk of leaving your company
• Enables employees to easily request and share feedback
• Offers access to detailed action plans from over 6,500 leading companies via the Culture Amp Inspiration Engine
• Capable of integrating with a broad range of other HR tools and HRIS systems

Elevate the employee experience with Pyn

HRIS systems are excellent for storing and managing employee data. But integrating your HRIS with other powerful HR tools is by far the best way to put that data into action.

By integrating with all the top HRIS systems, Pyn can leverage HRIS data to automatically provide timely, personalized messages designed to guide and support employees throughout their journey. If you would like to elevate the employee experience by integrating Pyn with your company's HRIS, schedule a free Pyn demo today!