The last few years have seen an economic slowdown worldwide, tightening HR purse strings. In 2023, HR budgets are likely to stay flat, with a slight increase of just 0.4%. But this doesn’t mean you need to stop building your HR Tech stack!

Here are 12 free-forever HR Tech software tools to explore this year, with zero costs and a little effort:

1. Free Applicant Tracking System (ATS): Freshteam

This free HR software from Freshworks assists recruiters in sourcing, screening, interviewing, and hiring candidates. They may also create offer letters utilizing email templates and remind recruiting panel members to share inputs.

Using Freshteam, users may sync candidate conversations. The outcome is a consolidated snapshot of interactions accessible by top recruiting managers. Additionally, HR administrators may personalize Freshteam by adding unique questions to applicant forms.

It is free for a maximum of fifty workers.

2. Free Human Capital Management (HCM) Tool: Baraza HCM

Baraza HCM is an open-source platform for managing human resources and talent. It provides traditional HR services as well as talent management fundamentals. The system facilitates simple shortlisting and recruiting processes.

In addition, Baraza HCM may gather and preserve the biodata of applicants and employees. This system offers workers the option to apply for advances and loans, among other features. Baraza HCM also includes an HR application view, HR approval frameworks, as well as monthly employee remuneration reports.

3. Free recruitment software: Zoho Recruit

Numerous organizations around the globe depend on Zoho Recruit. Core capabilities include application monitoring, team communication, and even CRM — assisting HR departments and professionals in managing their recruiting operations.

Its free edition provides basic features like an interview scheduling tool, candidate management functions, and email management features. This is pretty useful and pragmatic.  Plus, premium features include modules to publish job vacancies, track applicant statuses, process resumes, and maintain a database. Fortunately, Zoho provides a free trial that allows you to test all the premium features of Zoho Recruit at zero cost.

4. Free HR administration software: OrangeHRM Starter

OrangeHRM offers subscription solutions, although it is primarily an open-source and free application ideal for organizations of any size. Several companies , such as RedHat, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Duke University, employ the solution.

Various modules of this free HR software cover functions like personnel data management, time and attendance tracking, performance evaluation, employee self-service, analytics, etc.

In addition, the solution is scalable and adaptable, allowing you to utilize it in any manner you want and expand its functionalities as your organization grows.

5. Free time tracking and scheduling tool: Homebase

This program will provide a comprehensive suite of user-friendly time management capabilities for businesses of any size. Homebase offers no user limitations (provided you work from a single location), letting you to have an infinite number of workers/users. This is exceptional in the world of free software, and much more so in HR Tech.

The free edition features time clocks that enable recording of breaks and managing of overtime. These sheets may be immediately connected with payroll. Additionally, HR departments may compare planned and real work hours, which is useful for use cases involving hourly workers.

Additionally, employees may self-serve shift swapping, available shifts, and vacation requests.

6. Free configurable HR suite: Sentrifugo

This is a comprehensive suite of HR Tech software available for free for individuals who are prepared to think outside of the box and invest in some configuration effort. Sentrifugo is an open-source, community-led solution — aimed at addressing the paucity of free HR Technology options.

Sentrifugo has the same fundamental capabilities as the other products on this list, plus some additional premium capabilities. This program, like others, features staff monitoring and leave management. However, Sentrifuo excels in characteristics beyond these fundamentals.

It provides managers and their teams with enhanced performance evaluation and analytics capabilities, for instance. OKRs may be established, monitored, and planned for future training. Expense management and monitoring assists HR departments in maintaining financial discipline.

Sentrifugo outperforms all other equipment when it comes to onboarding processes. Scheduling or interview management are features that are often under paywalls in other apps — but are available with Sentrifugo.

7. Free intranet, collaboration, and org chart management: Bitrix24

Bitrix24 provides HR online technologies for efficient online collaboration and intelligent HR administration. These HR technologies include a social Intranet, online personnel directories, a self-service platform, an organizational chart, shift scheduling, and business process automation, among others. Using this software, coworkers may also talk, exchange ideas, share files, assign jobs, and collaborate.

The software’s robust employee self-service portal enables your employees to seek services and view HR documents without troubling HR teams. Bitrix24 is also offered as a self-hosted solution for implementation on-premise — for an extra charge, which can be helpful for banks, healthcare organizations, and other companies who want to retain control of their data.

8. Free people data solution: ChartHop Basic

ChartHop is a solution for human resources that consolidates employee data from various sources and third-party apps. Using this technology, managers may create compensation plans, collect employee inputs, and analyze employee data in order to make data-driven decisions.

ChartHop Basic is free for up to 150 employees and has the following features:

• A dynamic organizational chart that displays the entire team’s structure.
• Creates employee profiles that emphasize their job responsibilities, interests, work history, anniversaries, work milestones, etc.
• Supports human resource information systems (HRIS), Slack, or Carta integration.
• Allows you to securely log in to the ChartHop account via single-sign-on authentication.

9. Free employee management tools for the hospitality sector: 7shifts

Given that the hospitality sector was among the worst hit during the pandemic, several institutions will be under severe budgetary constraints this year. A free HR Tech solution like 7shifts, which is purpose-built for the industry, can help.

7shifts is a workforce management tool that enables restaurateurs and human resources managers to create and update staff schedules via a drag-and-drop creator and customized templates.

However, the product also includes other HR software capabilities that assist human resources managers in shift-based industries in managing their employees. These include staff recruitment, records management, job scheduling, compensation, and employee engagement.

10. Free learning solution: Google Classroom

Google Classroom is a free integrated learning tool built by Google for academic institutions with the intention of simplifying assignment creation, distribution, and grading. Its major objective is to facilitate file sharing between professors and students.

This also implies that HR professionals and specialists in learning and development (L&D) may construct a classroom where workers can enroll and engage in various training programs or lectures. To keep workers interested, you may offer them diverse projects or hands-on training with the support of Google’s tools and services.

Since it was developed by Google, it is fully compatible with Google Meet, Google Docs, and other Google products resulting in a unified experience.

11. Free employee engagement software: Officevibe

Officevibe is a free solution for employee engagement that may be used for an infinite number of workers. Using the technology, supervisors may send out anonymized weekly surveys that are instantly sent to respondents. It employs pulse surveys in various forms, like numerical scales, text fields, and bespoke polls, to assess employee engagement.

Managers are able to reply to employee feedback, maintain anonymous communication, or even arrange a one-on-one meeting for further discussions.

12. Free business toolkit (ERP, HRM, and CRM): Odoo

Odoo is an open-source suite of business software. Odoo HR is a configurable application meant to assist human resources with recruiting, workforce management, expenditure management, appraisal frameworks, as well as other human resource requirements.

You may create a fully integrated HR system using the different functions offered by its recruiting, personnel administration, time-off, and evaluation modules. The program is also designed to be user-friendly. Further, it supports unlimited integrations due to its open-source framework and has a massive library of community-built apps.

These 12 free HR Tech tools can help you achieve more with less in 2023. To stay further prepared for future needs, make sure to read our guide to HR tech solutions for hybrid work.