Used For

• +**Your new hires wait 3 weeks for laptop approvals because forms live in email chains** → Automated workflows route requests to right people, approvals happen in minutes
• +**You're manually calculating vacation days and someone always miscounts** → Employees request time off, system tracks balances, managers approve via phone
• +**Performance reviews happen once a year in a panic with missing data** → Ongoing goal tracking with regular check-ins, data actually gets collected
• +Workflow builder with 100+ templates - set up onboarding sequences without coding
• +Mobile approvals for managers - no more "I'll approve it when I'm back at my desk"

Best For

• >Your HR person drowns in leave requests and onboarding emails every week
• >Hit 50+ employees and spreadsheets are breaking everything
• >European company that needs GDPR compliance without hiring a compliance officer

Not For

• -Teams under 10 people — you're paying for features you'll never use and complexity you don't need
• -US-only companies — built for European compliance, weaker on American payroll and labor laws
• -Companies wanting plug-and-play — this needs dedicated setup time or you'll get frustrated and quit

Pairs With

• *Slack (where managers get pinged about approvals and employees complain about mandatory self-service)
• *External payroll providers (to actually process the payroll data that Personio preps and exports)
• *DocuSign (for employment contracts and policy acknowledgments that need legal signatures)
• *Google Workspace (for the actual email accounts and file storage that new hires need)
• *Greenhouse (for advanced recruiting features that Personio handles but not as deeply)

The Catch

• !No public pricing means you'll get the "let's hop on a call" sales dance for what should be a simple subscription
• !Only preps payroll data, doesn't actually run it — you'll still need your payroll provider for the final step
• !The 60 hours/month savings claim requires someone to actually build those workflows, not just flip it on

Bottom Line

Cuts 80% of HR admin work but only if you're willing to spend two weeks setting it up properly.