Notion, Evernote, Confluence or Sloneek? What’s the Best for Your HR?

Apr 10, 2024 6 min reading

Anytime, there can be the moment when you realise that “the agenda needs a uniform standard right now”. Maybe you’re tired of looking for the next onboarding step at spreadsheets. Or maybe you’re sending the candidates’ CVs to your colleagues for the second time. Maybe you’re caught by surprise that employees are constantly asking for trivial information that they can look up themselves. Can they really do it?

The desire to give all kinds of information about the company a structured form, where everyone can find everything from the company’s introduction, current strategy, all-hands records to organigram and contacts to colleagues; leads many people to build own HRIS system on popular tools such as Notion, Evernote or Confluence.

What’s Notion? Once, a clever person had an idea that there could be a platform where you could type like in Word but the result would be something like Wikipedia or a simple website. It should be interactive and with lots of features. With a few clicks, you can turn a table or a list of bullets into tasks that you can assign to users and give them deadlines or various tags. You can easily create a list of contacts to share with others. And, as with Wikipedia, there’s endless room to expand the information according to your needs.

Notion is especially popular with HR freelancers. And it’s logical. The simple, intuitive platform can be used for both personal notes and also building more complex systems for individual clients. So, will it keep up if you decide to build a complex HR tool for your company in it?

Why is Notion or Evernote a good idea?

Firstly, really important information. It seems to be quite challenging to process complex company information in an attractive way. The platforms, like Notion, are great for building onboarding manuals, simple presentations of essential documents or presenting basic and advanced company information.

It’ll be easy to work with it for both the authors of these texts and readers who prefer simple interface and well-structured chapters, as they’re used to from Wikipedia. A newcomer will go through a folder full of PDFs much more slowly than an interactive “miniweb” where they can click through the information in context.

It’s similar to the internal knowledge base for HR department. So, if you take this direction, you definitely won’t go wrong. However, what does it look like when we need more?

Basic comparison

	Notion/Evernote/Confluence	Sloneek
Running in the cloud	✅	✅
Possible to set up a free profile	✅	🚫
Advanced paid functions	✅	✅
Professional setting up required	🚫	🚫
Used world-wide	✅	✅
Designed specifically for HR	🚫	✅

Does “doing it my way” make sense?

HR professionals are willing to build their own HRIS for three reasons. Most often, it’s an impulsive “gap filling” between existing systems and processes. The second reason is to avoid paid solutions. The third one is the fact that, on the market, there isn’t the solution the company needs.

Platforms such as Notion can tempt to the first and third point. As mentioned above, it can work initially. Then, you become disenchanted really soon.

	Notion/Evernote/Confluence	Sloneek
Instead of HR agenda, HR system is debugged in an app that isn’t designed for it	😓	😊
After working for weeks, it’s necessary to start again	😓	😊
I come up against problems I can’t solve	😓	😊
Only I know how it works and I’m responsible for many things	😓	😊
If it doesn’t work, it’s up to me	😓	😊
It’s not part of my work content but management see it as a voluntary job	😓	😊

Basic requirements comparison

Let’s be as objective as possible. Let’s have a look at a comparison of the two systems in the areas that a good HRIS platform will require.

Easy to use

HRIS must be simple and intuitive. It’s important to explain the basic functions and logic of the system only in a few dozen minutes.

	Notion/Evernote/Confluence	Sloneek
Basics explained during one meeting	✅	✅
If employee can’t handle it, support will help them	🚫	✅
Intuitive at first sight	✅	✅
Possible to use without any training	❓	✅

Data security

HRIS usually stores the most sensitive information about the employees. That’s why GDPR representatives consider it to be one of the key areas necessary to protect from incidents. It has to be able to manage access levels and protect data from careless handling. How do Notion, Evernote or Confluence cope with GDPR?

	Notion/Evernote/Confluence	Sloneek
GDPR compliant in base	🚫	✅
Login security	🚫	✅
Managing data access rights	🚫	✅
Difficulty in copying data	🚫	✅
Easy audit	🚫	✅

It’s crucial for any platform to be able to handle information automatically, to display it only to specific user and to limit editing as well. How can Notion and Sloneek help with it?

	Notion/Evernote/Confluence	Sloneek
Everyone can access the files based on their access rights	✅	✅
Information can be easily sorted by access rights	🟠	✅
Employees can see and change the data that belong to them	🟠	✅
Information can be used within the whole platform	🚫	✅

Data duplication

What requirements should HRIS platform meet? Firstly, data storage in one place. We should take it for granted. However, be honest. In how many files do you keep your employees’ information? A new solution mustn’t make it worse. Do Notion, Evernote or Confluence meet the requirements?

	Notion/Evernote/Confluence	Sloneek
Data strictly in one place-no multiple versions	🚫	✅
Data always available anywhere	✅	✅
Data cannot be simply rewritten or copied	🚫	✅

Price

Price is a key parameter for choosing a solution. How does the cost of Sloneek differ from an individual system developed in Notion or Evernote?

	Notion/Evernote/Confluence	Sloneek
Regular payments in case of company use	✅	✅
Payment for real users in a given month	✅	✅
Paying for development over time at the expense of other thins.	✅	🚫
I know in advance how much it will cost to develop the system in a year.	🚫	✅

Comparison based on HRIS platform essential requirements

If you build HRIS platform, it mustn’t fail in basic tasks: not only to store data about the employees and their daily agenda but also to help with recruitment, feedback or competence development. Can Notion, Evernote or Confluence deal with these specific requirements?

	Notion/Evernote/Confluence	Sloneek
Complete employee data management linked across the system	🚫	✅
Calculation of accumulated leave	✅ Information about drawing must be added manually	✅ Information is automatically rewritten based on approved requests
Request for leave	🟡 With a little effort, possible to enter the request as a task,but it’s not ergonomic	✅ It allows to check in a leave request and work with it across the system. It’s visible to everyone to whom it’s relevant.
Up-to-date data relevant to salaries	🟡 Information must be updated manually by the system administrator	✅ Information can be updated directly by the user
Electronic signature of documents	🚫	✅
Questionnaire survey	🟡 Allowed by some platforms	✅ Possible to implement directly in the system
Contracts and certificates	🚫	✅ Possible to save directly in the system
Timetracking	🟡 Using plugins	✅ Possible to use directly in the system
Connection to other applications via API	✅	✅ Possible to use guaranteed directly in the system
Recruitment	🟡 Partially solvable but with complex overlap with other data	✅ Possible to use specific detailed functions in the system
Onboarding and offboarding	🟡 Partially solvable	✅ Possible to use specific detailed functions in the system with employee involvement

Advanced functions

How do platforms, like Notion, cope with specialised tasks? Will they support HR department in advanced processes such as competency model management or data analysis?

	Notion/Evernote/Confluence	Sloneek
Automatically driven competency models	🟡 Manually operated	✅ Automated
Automation	🟡 Partially	✅
Delegation of simple tasks to team leaders or employees	✅	✅
Basic data visualisation	🚫	✅
Running analysis and graphs in one place	🚫	✅
AI involvement	✅	✅

Verdict

Notion, Evernote or Confluence are really useful for companies. However, building a complex HRIS platform out of them is quite complicated. Simply because they’re aimed at content, collaboration and management, and scheduling of basic tasks. You cannot expect advanced support for working with data or creating databases.

So, once the HR department exceeds this limit, it’s unlikely to move further in building specialised functions. Full-fledged HR system should be therefore left to the platforms that were created for it.

	Notion/Evernote/Confluence	Sloneek
Long-term solution reliability	⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Ability to grow with the company	⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Ability to add new functions	⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Universality for the entire company	⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Compatibility with other tools	⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Handover limit	⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Solution security	⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Time-consuming to manage	⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Total cost including time cost	⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐