It’s normal to pick up new tools as your business grows, but over time this can lead to overwhelm and frustration, rather than making things easier. Your HR data is in multiple places, your systems don’t sync, and nobody’s sure where to find the information they need.
Your HR tech is fragmented and broken, and it’s impacting the way you work. If your tech stack feels like it’s costing you more than it’s worth, it’s time to look for a way to consolidate all your must-have features in one place.
You won’t notice it straight away, but stacking up different tools and apps causes plenty of problems — and these come with a very real cost, both financial and otherwise.
Let’s start with something tangible — the real financial cost of dealing with a fragmented HR stack.
Imagine you’re a team of 25 people, and you need software to cover core areas like time-off management, company docs, performance reviews, and employee engagement. We’ve pulled the data on some popular software tools in these categories so you can visualise the monthly total.
Here’s what each tool costs per month for a team of 25 people:
If you use all the tools above, your total monthly cost would come to £523.50 per month.
Running your business doesn’t have to be that expensive. You can consolidate all the functions above into Charlie for just £100 per month.
It’s not just the financial cost that matters. The impact on your time and mental energy is just as relevant, if not more so.
A workplace where everything is distributed across different tools becomes a burden:
The end result? Every task takes longer than it needs to, with huge inefficiencies. Switching between different tools all the time can be exhausting, leading to mental overwhelm for your team members. There’s even less time to spend on the high-value, impactful tasks.
The need is clear — for your small business to run smoothly, you need to consolidate your tech stack.
“Using Charlie has saved me so much time and energy. No one wins when I am spending hours on admin tasks every week… Now, I have more time to focus on my most important work.”
James Gill at GoSquared
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It’s easy to get into this situation, but it’s also just as easy to bring all your HR needs together in one place. With Charlie, you can find similar features to these popular HR tech tools in one platform with one simple monthly subscription.
One of the first tools small businesses invest in is a way to track time off and annual leave. Many businesses sign up for a dedicated tool like Timetastic or WhosOff to do this.
A single-purpose tool works well at first, but it lacks capability as you grow. Charlie makes managing time off easy, along with plenty of other features too.
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Why Charlie is the better option:
Charlie can handle all the time-off management that tools like Timetastic can, but with even more customisation and flexibility. Plus, Charlie isn’t just for time-off management — you gain all the other features too.
A shared calendar is an ideal way to know who’s in the office, who isn’t, and what’s happening across the team and the wider company.
Tools like Google Calendar give you a clear and simple way to do this, but with Charlie you can add some extra functionality — like planning or managing leave requests.
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Why Charlie is the better option:
You get more value with Charlie’s staff holiday planner, thanks to the ability to manage time off within the calendar itself. If you’re a lifelong fan of Google Calendar, Outlook, or iCal though don’t panic — you can actually integrate Charlie with any of these tools to get the best of both worlds.
HR isn’t just about managing time off and employee data, it’s also about providing information and enabling team members to access it when they need it. For this, you need a company hub — a place to store policies, documents, files, forms, and useful information.
Many teams invest in a tool like Notion, Sharepoint, or Confluence, but you can do similar with Charlie — and for no extra cost.
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Why Charlie is the better option:
Notion is a popular tool for creating a company hub, but you can recreate a similar experience within Charlie thanks to its ability to handle files and documents. Plus, it’s in the same location as all your other HR information, making it easier for everyone to find and use.
If you want to support and develop your team members, performance reviews are an essential part of your business.
While you can invest in standalone tools like 15Five, Leapsome, or CultureAmp, these come at a significant cost and are often designed for larger corporations than small business-friendly Charlie.
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Why Charlie is the better option:
For most small businesses, a standalone tool for performance reviews is beyond what you need. Take care of your performance review needs within Charlie and benefit from easy access to all your data, built-in goals and tasks, and a healthy financial saving too.
It’s smart to monitor employee happiness and collect feedback, and employee engagement surveys allow you to do just that.
While you might start out with a tool like Typeform, you’ll soon realise that it doesn’t offer the same HR-specific functionality that a dedicated platform like Charlie does.
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Why Charlie is the better option:
Tools like Google Forms and Typeform are great for casual feedback forms or surveys, but when it comes to employee engagement surveys they lack the nuance and People expertise that a platform like Charlie offers.
Charlie specialises in offering small businesses the HR functions they need all in one place, but we recognise that there’s more to running a business than HR.
We want you to have easy access to best-in-class tools, which is why we have direct integrations with software including:
With our integrations, you can enjoy the Charlie experience and stick with your preferred tools for payroll, benchmarking, and more.
"My focus is all about scaling our business in the most efficient way and the more time I can free up from admin to do this, the better. CharlieHR makes time and employee management so easy. I love how it integrates with our Slack & weekly automated emails so everyone knows in advance who is where. Be it on holiday, working from home, sick or their birthday, so we never miss an important event.”
Ian Cartwright, COO of Mahabis
We’re all too familiar with the issues caused by fragmented and overcomplicated HR tech stacks. Luckily, most of these tools let you cancel just as easily as you signed up, so you can make the switch to Charlie when you’re ready.
Curious? Book a demo and our expert sales team will walk you through the platform, showing you all the features you’re interested in and exploring how they can work together to simplify your HR tech stack. After that, there’s a no-commitment free trial, followed by a simple signup form when you’re ready to go.
Jenny is a Senior Product Manager at CharlieHR. She has years of experience with product planning and development, and user research too – she put together this guide by collecting data and information on competitors so we could improve our product and tailor it to small business owners.
Explore some of the most commonly asked questions and answers about consolidating your HR tools with Charlie.
Fragmented HR stacks introduce delays, inefficiencies, and confusion. Team members don’t know where to find information, whether it’s still relevant, or how to contact someone for help. Data is stored in silos, leading to mistakes.
Managing multiple HR systems can be time-consuming and overwhelming, especially if there is overlap between the systems. With data in multiple places and different processes and workflows, it takes more time, energy, and financial cost to manage your HR operations — and can introduce the potential for risks, miscalculations, and human error.
A fragmented HR stack can expose you to more compliance risks than an all-in-one system. Tools have their own compliance capabilities, and some are more suitable for UK-based businesses than others. Managing access permissions across different tools can introduce compliance challenges, and it’s much harder to identify risks and maintain compliance across more than one system.
Charlie is a safe and secure HR system. At Charlie, we take security seriously, and are both Cyber Essentials certified and ISO 27001:2013 certified. Learn more about our approach to security.
Signing up for Charlie takes minutes, and you can get started as soon as you’re ready. When it comes to working alongside your existing systems, this depends on the individual tools, but we offer a range of integrations for popular HR-related software.
Charlie’s pricing is simple, with all our core features included in one monthly subscription. The pricing tiers increase along with the size of your team, offering you value for money as you grow your team. Charlie starts at just £21 per month for a team of 1-4 people.
