There’s an old proverb in law: “Law is order, and good law is good order.” It’s a principle that has underpinned Thomas Forstner’s approach to his HR tech stack since he joined Juro to lead their People and Talent function back in 2020.

Juro is a contract automation platform founded with the goal of becoming the default way that organisations agree contracts online — and when Thomas came aboard, he was keen to translate that ethos to the legaltech’s People processes, too.

At the time, Juro was using an all-in-one solution, but its lack of reporting ability, clunky functionality and poor user experience created a lot of unnecessary admin work. Thomas knew it wouldn’t be able to flex to evolving business needs down the line.

The big challenge, then, was finding a specialist HRIS that helped Thomas reduce his admin load, increase operational efficiency, and create a better user experience for everyone.

Dealing with data overload and inefficient reporting

“When I joined Juro, we already had a solution in place — but it never felt fit-for-purpose for our growing team,” says Thomas. “We were using an all-in-one solution that felt more like a repository for employee data."

“We had all of our People data in one place, but so much of it was completely redundant,” he explains. “It didn’t feel like the tool considered the core information we needed from our employees as an organisation. Important things like emergency contacts were lost in an avalanche of data — and employees asked us why we needed to know what their partner’s job was.”

Thomas had more data on his employees than he could ever need — but a lot of it wasn’t the right kind of insight that could help him make better decisions at scale. This challenge was compounded by poor reporting functionality.

“If my time is constantly invested in doing admin, then I can’t focus on the more critical aspects of the People function. That sets me up for failure.”

“I knew what I needed to report on, but our existing HRIS didn’t give me the capability to visualise that particularly well,” he says. “Whenever I tried to export information, I got four different spreadsheets, and I’d have to invest a lot of time in linking that information together to report on our employee data.”

“Reporting is one of my key considerations with any tool. When I’m reporting to senior leaders or our board, I want to be able to show evidence of my value to the business."

“But if my time is constantly invested in doing manual admin, like spending hours setting up a process that could be automated or inputting employee data, then I’m not adding value to the business. I can’t focus on the more critical aspects of the People function, like enabling performance, career progression, or team resilience. That sets me up for failure.”

The search for a specialist core HR layer that put user experience first

Thomas knew that an all-in-one solution wouldn’t be the right fit for Juro at scale — and he had a few key criteria in mind when it came to looking for a new platform. The first was removing friction from the user experience — both for the People team and Juro’s employees.

“Our existing tool felt bloated and inflexible to our future business needs,” he says. “I knew we needed a core layer HRIS that gave us a single source of truth for employee data that could integrate with our other tools."

“When employees log in to a HRIS, they need to be able to do two things: Book holidays, and update their details. When employees can’t find these two basic functions immediately, it adds friction to what should be a very simple process."

“New joiners found our old platform really confusing. Meanwhile in the backend, it took a lot of time to set up repeatable workflows that equipped them with the information they needed to be successful from their first day. We wanted a tool that automated this process and activated our onboarding paperwork workflow the second we made a new hire — and we wanted to do so in a way that was barely noticeable for everyone involved.”

“When you have a tool with lots of different features, it’s unlikely to do any of them well. That’s never going to give you the level of accuracy and specificity you need as a leader scaling business.”

Above all, Thomas wanted a lightweight, specialist tool to act as Juro’s core layer for employee data that offered a high level of interoperability with other market-leading tools — without trying to focus on too many things at once.

“Revenue, marketing, and engineering functions all use best-in-class product stacks to accomplish their goals, but HR has always been seen as a single function — so tools tend to cram a lot of features into one platform. But People and Talent is about four different functions wedged into one, and we need a tech stack that reflects that reality."

“When you have a tool with lots of different features, it’s unlikely to do any of them well. That’s never going to give you the level of accuracy and specificity you need as a leader scaling business."

“Taking a modular approach to my HR tech stack means I can choose a HRIS that’s extremely good at one thing, and integrates with all the other tools that also perform their specialism well. With Humaans, I have a lot of confidence that our input as a business matters, and that they’re always working to roll out new functionality and features.”