2026 Culture Comparison:
Ranking the Top HCM Vendors
83% of HR leaders indicated a vendor’s company culture was critical to satisfaction with their HRIS solution.
September 17, 2026
By Chris Harvey
In 2025, we began tracking corporate cultures of the well-known HCM vendors. For 2026, the culture picture continued to deteriorate. While this is not unique to the HR tech market, it is notable that 83% of HR leaders indicated their HCM vendor’s company culture is a critical factor in overall satisfaction and realization of a positive customer experience. Yet, in most evaluations, culture still isn’t formally considered.
Why Vendor Culture Matters
Healthy, vibrant company cultures support employees who are invested in both business growth and customer success. Put simply: when vendor employees thrive, customers benefit.
In practice, that means:
- Stronger HCM Implementations —Employees who take pride in their work focus on making your deployment on-time, on-budget, and exceeding your expectations.
- Better Customer Support — Engaged teams ensure challenges are resolved quickly and to your satisfaction.
- More Innovation — Employees who aspire to long-term business success focus on delivering features and functionality with true business impact, rather than following a static roadmap.
- Consistency — Culture drives consistent execution, helping vendors better meet your needs and expectations.
Current HRIS Vendor Culture Trends
Over the past four years, we’ve seen many HCM vendors shift toward greater financial discipline and profit focus, often at the expense of customer experience and retention. This dynamic is especially notable in HR technology — more so than in other industries — since these solutions are designed for use by HR leaders, professionals who deeply value culture within their own organizations."
A recurring theme we hear from HR leaders is that their vendors appear to be moving away from an 'employee-first' culture.
How to Assess Vendor Culture
There’s no perfect metric, but several public sources provide meaningful signals:
- 2026 Glassdoor overall rating (weighted most heavily)
- 2022 Glassdoor rating (shows culture trajectory over time)
- 2026 Glassdoor “Would Recommend” scores
- 2026 Indeed employee ratings (based on thousands of employee experiences)
- 2026 Great Place to Work List (No HCM Solution Providers are Included) – For reference 2017 Fortune Great Places to Work List included Ultimate Software (#7), Workday (#18), SAP America (#59).
Note: Ultimate Software merged with Kronos to form UKG in 2020.
When vendors offer similar functionality, support, and pricing, culture often becomes the deciding factor for long-term success.
What if you don’t have time to sift through vendor culture data? No problem. We’ve done it for you.
Our Culture Benchmarking Approach
We analyzed 15 leading HCM vendors using publicly available employee-experience data. Here’s how we categorized them:
- Culture Leader: Glassdoor ~3.8–4.4 and “Would Recommend” ≥70%
- Baseline Culture: Glassdoor ~3.4–3.7 and “Would Recommend” scores in the 50–70% range.
- Lagging Culture: Glassdoor ≤3.3 and “Would Recommend” ≤50%
Note: We have presented 2026, 2025, 2022 Glassdoor ratings and 2026, 2025 “Would Recommend” percentages and 2026 Indeed ratings to demonstrate both the trajectory of vendor scores over time and consistency across both Glassdoor and Indeed to reduce bias from entirely depending on one source of data.
Culture Leaders
Baseline Culture
Lagging Culture
Final Thoughts
This past year saw a continued decline in HCM vendor culture scores and “would recommend” percentages across the board. Only one vendor defied that trend: HiBob, whose overall Glassdoor score rose 0.2 points, from 4.2 to 4.4, alongside an increase in its “would recommend” percentage to 87%. HiBob’s culture performance is a clear outlier.
Does this mean HiBob is the right HCM for every organization? Not necessarily — but if vendor culture factors into your own satisfaction with a solution, HiBob is worth adding to your shortlist."
The other key takeaway is how many vendors now fall into the Lagging Culture category. In 2025, only Paylocity and Gusto (among vendors still covered in this analysis) sat in that tier. This year, the category has grown to five vendors: Paylocity, Gusto, Paycom, Darwinbox, and UKG.
With the labor market shifting back toward employer leverage, culture appears to be getting deprioritized. Excluding HiBob, every vendor with comparable 2022 data saw employee ratings decline between 2022 and 2026 — Dayforce was the lone exception, holding steady at 3.8. (ChartHop has no 2022 data available, so its longer-term trajectory can't be assessed.) The steepest drop belonged to Paylocity, down 0.9 points.
There's a real, potentially lucrative opportunity here for HiBob to build on its Culture Leader position, and for other HCM vendors to reinvest in their people and capture the benefits outlined above.
Will other HCM vendors recognize the value of an employee-focused culture, and use this as a way to differentiate themselves in a crowded HCM market? There's always a strong temptation to focus exclusively on short-term financial metrics. But C-level leaders at HCM firms are beginning to confront a harder reality: customers have choices, and they will move away from vendors that fail to meet expectations. The vendors that nurture positive, dynamic cultures will be the ones that rise to the top — excelling not just at attracting and retaining talent, but at winning and keeping clients.
Caveat: This vendor culture analysis was conducted in August 2026. Glassdoor and other ratings change continuously. We encourage you to do your own due diligence on any finalist vendors to confirm these figures remain current before making a decision.
Why Are Customers Leaving
HRIS Turnover Analysis
Why Are Customers Leaving ADP, Paycom, and Paylocity?
At HR Technology Advice, we have received hundreds of inquiries from HR professionals researching their next HRIS. Among the most frequently mentioned vendors customers are switching from include ADP Workforce Now, Paycom, and Paylocity.
This analysis distills insights from those HRIS switchers to help HR buyers understand 5 key dissatisfaction drivers and identify areas for deeper due diligence.
Download Your FREE HRIS Turnover Analysis.