This beginner-friendly Zoho People tutorial introduces HR teams to Zoho People 5.0 and shows how it streamlines HR processes, automates tasks, and improves the employee experience.

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Who This Is For:

• HR professionals evaluating Zoho People

• New Zoho People users

• Businesses wanting to automate HR operations and strengthen employee engagement

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Key Takeaways:

• Zoho People 5.0 delivers a modern, cloud-based HR system with a seamless employee experience.

• New features like Spaces, updated Settings/Operations, and the Compensation module simplify HR workflows.

• Automation and AI tools reduce manual tasks and support real-time, data-driven decisions.

The platform is most effective when paired with expert implementation and clear HR processes.

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Introduction to Zoho People 5.0 and HR Process Automation

Managing HR in today’s organizations can be complex, from tracking attendance and leave to overseeing performance reviews and employee data, HR teams juggle many processes. Zoho People is Zoho’s cloud-based HR management software designed to streamline these tasks by providing an all-in-one platform for the entire employee lifecycle, from onboarding to offboarding. The latest release, Zoho People 5.0, is the most sleek and organized version of the software yet, built with a modern interface and superior security to “redefine the employee experience”. In other words, Zoho People 5.0 addresses many common HR challenges, such as scattered data across multiple tools, a lack of a central employee portal, and cumbersome settings, by unifying everything in one secure, user-friendly system.

This Zoho People tutorial will guide you through the platform’s key features and updates. Whether you’re an HR professional evaluating Zoho People for your business or a beginner just getting started, you’ll learn how Zoho People 5.0 can automate HR processes, improve your HR team’s efficiency, and enhance the employee experience. From configuring attendance and shift schedules to managing performance and employee engagement initiatives, we’ll explore how each module works and share best practices. By the end, you should have a clear understanding of how to leverage Zoho People to streamline your HR operations in 2025 and beyond.

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A Unified, Cloud-Based HR Platform for All Your HR Processes

At its core, Zoho People is a comprehensive, cloud-based HR management platform that brings all your HR processes and data into one place. This means you no longer need separate systems or spreadsheets for time tracking, leave management, performance reviews, or employee records. Zoho People has dedicated modules for each of these, fully integrated under one umbrella. The software covers every stage of the employee lifecycle, offering tools for onboarding, attendance and time tracking, performance appraisal cycles, learning management, and even offboarding. Because it’s part of the broader Zoho ecosystem (and available within Zoho One), Zoho People can seamlessly connect with other Zoho apps like Zoho Recruit (for hiring), Zoho Sign (for digital signatures on HR documents), Zoho Payroll, and more to provide a comprehensive HR solution for your business.

Importantly, Zoho People 5.0 introduced an overhauled interface that makes navigating this wide range of features much easier for both employees and HR administrators. It’s designed to be user-friendly and intuitive, so even beginners can quickly find what they need. The home dashboard now includes a new “My Space” home tab that surfaces daily updates and personalized info at a glance. By logging into Zoho People, employees can access everything from their payslips and personal details to company announcements and training materials in one secure portal. In short, Zoho People serves as the single source of truth for HR, a one-stop hub for your workforce that standardizes and automates HR processes across the organization.

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Employee Self-Service and Collaboration with Spaces

One of the standout features of Zoho People 5.0 is the introduction of Spaces, a dedicated self-service and collaboration portal for employees and managers. Spaces acts as the central hub or “intranet” within Zoho People, where everyone can stay informed and engaged. When an employee logs in, the My Space section provides a personalized dashboard with contextual updates to help them start their day, such as their schedule for the day, pending leave approvals, upcoming holidays, timesheet reminders, and any important HR notifications. Instead of digging through emails or multiple systems, employees have quick access to everything that matters: their own profile and career history, attendance records, leave balance, upcoming trainings, and more.

Zoho People 5.0’s Spaces portal provides every employee with a personalized dashboard for daily schedules, tasks, and company updates, while giving managers a single place to view their team’s information.

For managers, Spaces offers a bird’s-eye view of their team. With just a few clicks, managers can review their team members’ profiles, attendance logs, leave status, and performance summaries from a single interface. This centralized visibility makes it much easier to monitor team activities and make informed decisions. Meanwhile, the Organization Space keeps everyone updated on company-wide announcements, policy changes, and new hires in real time. By giving employees and managers a unified hub for communication and information, Spaces helps eliminate the problem of “silos” or scattered HR data. It improves collaboration (even for remote teams) and ensures that every employee is on the same page regarding HR processes and company news. Overall, Spaces is a game-changer for employee engagement, fostering a more connected workplace and making it easy for people to find the HR info or support they need to do their jobs.

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Streamlined HR Administration with Separate Settings and Operations Tabs

For HR administrators, Zoho People 5.0 brings a welcome change by clearly separating one-time configuration tasks from daily operational tasks. In previous versions, HR admins had to navigate a sea of settings and options in one place, which could be overwhelming. Now, Zoho People 5.0 introduces distinct tabs for Settings and Operations. All your setup and configuration tasks (like defining leave policies, creating forms, customizing fields, and setting user permissions) are consolidated under the Settings tab. These are typically one-time or infrequent tasks, and by grouping them separately, Zoho People prevents them from cluttering your view when you’re handling day-to-day HR work.

Meanwhile, the Operations tab contains the features and processes you use regularly in HR operations, such as managing attendance, approving leave requests, running payroll updates, and responding to helpdesk tickets. By making this distinction, Zoho People helps HR teams locate their daily tasks faster without wading through rarely used configuration menus. It also enhances security: sensitive configuration sections (which might involve personal data or critical settings) can now have more stringent access controls. In fact, Zoho People 5.0 implemented stricter data access permissions so that only authorized personnel (even outside the HR team, if you choose) can access certain Settings areas. This reduces the risk of unauthorized changes and protects confidential employee information.

In practice, this means an HR generalist or manager can quickly go into Operations to check today’s attendance exceptions or update an employee’s department. At the same time, only a system administrator might have access to Settings to, say, change the company holiday list. The result is a cleaner workflow for HR staff: routine processes are easier to find and execute, and the overall HR system is more secure and organized. This improvement underscores Zoho People 5.0’s focus on delivering a “seamless user experience” for admins as well as employees.

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Attendance, Time Tracking, and Shift Management Made Easy

Tracking when and where employees work is a core HR task that Zoho People streamlines with robust attendance and time-tracking features. In Zoho People 5.0, the attendance module got even smarter with real-time insights. HR and managers can now monitor employees’ real-time status, who is clocked in, who is clocked out, and whether they are working from the office or remotely, all visible on each employee’s profile. This real-time status tracking means that at any moment, you can see if someone is “In” (present), “Out” (off duty), “Office-In” (checked in at the office), “Remote-In” (working remotely), or not yet checked in for the day. Such visibility is invaluable for managing remote or hybrid workforces, as it keeps managers informed of their team’s status at a glance.

Zoho People also helps identify patterns, such as late check-ins or early check-outs. The system now flags and records early or late attendance in the Attendance Summary, providing managers with data to spot attendance issues and coach employees as needed. Additionally, configuring shift schedules is straightforward with the Shifts feature. You can define multiple shift patterns (e.g., morning, evening, night shifts) and even automate rotating schedules using the Shift Pattern tool. For example, if you have a support team that alternates shifts weekly, Zoho People can automatically assign and rotate those shifts according to the pattern you set, ensuring you always have the right coverage. This shift-scheduling automation not only saves time but also improves fairness and consistency in how shifts are managed.

Another powerful capability is location tracking for attendance. If you have field employees or remote staff, Zoho People can use GPS data (via the mobile app) to log where employees are when they check in and out. The Location Tracking feature enables better coordination of distributed teams and can help ensure the safety and accountability of field workers. Managers can view an employee’s route or location during work hours, which helps evaluate productivity and quickly locate staff in case of emergencies. Of course, this feature is configurable to respect privacy and to track only within work-hour policies.

Zoho People’s Attendance module offers advanced tracking, including GPS-based location tracking for remote or field employees. Managers can view where team members clock in/out and even analyze work locations, which helps ensure coverage, safety, and accurate time compensation for off-site staff.

Zoho People further ties attendance to other HR processes. For instance, the system supports attendance-based leave accrual policies. This means you can set up your leave policy so that employees earn leave based on the number of days or hours they actually work. If an employee has excellent attendance over a period, the system can automatically credit additional vacation days as a reward. This kind of policy encourages consistent attendance and is a transparent way to reduce absenteeism. By automating it in Zoho People, HR ensures fairness and avoids manual calculations.

Overall, Zoho People’s time management tools greatly automate and simplify what can be a tedious part of HR. Employees can log their time (through web or mobile, including biometric integrations), and the software takes care of calculating totals, flagging exceptions, and applying your company’s rules. With real-time dashboards and reports, your HR team can easily ensure everyone is where they need to be and that working hours are properly tracked – laying the foundation for accurate payroll and productive operations.

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Performance Management and Employee Engagement Tools

Beyond the day-to-day HR operations, Zoho People provides robust features to manage employee performance and keep your workforce engaged. The Performance Management module in Zoho People allows HR and managers to set goals (KRAs and KPIs), conduct performance reviews/appraisals, and gather 360-degree feedback, all within the system. One notable enhancement is support for continuous performance reviews – rather than relying only on annual reviews, Zoho People can facilitate ongoing, iterative feedback cycles. In fact, you can even create a continuous review-based appraisal cycle that uses those frequent review scores as part of a formal evaluation. This aligns with modern HR trends of providing employees with more timely feedback to drive growth and improvement.

To support performance discussions, Zoho People 5.0 introduced features like a collaborative KRA (Key Result Area) Library, where employees and managers can contribute to a shared repository of goals and competencies. This makes it easier to set consistent expectations across the organization. The system also integrates performance outcomes with other HR areas; for example, the new Compensation module (discussed in the next section) can pull in performance data so that salary hikes or bonuses reflect an employee’s appraisal results. Additionally, once an appraisal cycle is completed, HR can even automate sending out appraisal letters with e-signatures to employees, thanks to integration with Zoho Sign – saving time in distributing and collecting signed documents.

On the employee engagement side, Zoho People includes tools like surveys and feedback forms that help gauge employee sentiment. In 5.0, Zoho introduced pulse surveys – short, frequent surveys that measure the “pulse” of the organization on various topics. These are great for quickly collecting feedback on employee morale, remote work experience, or reactions to a new policy. The survey feature has been enhanced with better metrics and reporting: you can organize survey questions by categories and even color-code response choices for easier analysis. The Employee Engagement service in Zoho People also got its own dedicated section where HR can manage these surveys and see participation rates at a glance. By routinely gathering feedback and publishing engagement reports, HR teams can proactively address concerns and demonstrate to employees that their voices are heard.

Another valuable module is the Learning Management System (LMS) integrated in Zoho People. HR can create and assign training courses, track completions, and even integrate external content. Zoho People makes it easy to integrate online learning content into the LMS, providing interactive, reusable training materials for employees. This supports employee development and compliance training needs without requiring a separate e-learning platform. Notifications and reminders can be automated for course due dates, ensuring continuous learning is part of your company culture.

By leveraging Zoho People’s performance and engagement features, organizations can build a high-performing and satisfied workforce. Managers have the tools to set clear expectations and provide regular feedback, while employees feel more engaged through transparent goals and opportunities to share input. And because all these processes live inside the same Zoho People system, you can correlate data, for example, linking engagement survey results with performance outcomes or training records, to get a data-driven view of what drives employee success.

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Driving Fair Compensation with the New Compensation Module

A major addition in Zoho People 5.0 is the Compensation module, which helps HR teams manage salaries, bonuses, and raises in a structured, transparent way. In earlier versions, pay-related information might have been handled partially outside the system or via custom fields, but now Zoho People offers a full-fledged Compensation service. This module lets you define unique salary structures for different roles or departments, maintain records of bonuses and allowances, and easily administer pay changes. With Zoho People, an HR administrator can, for instance, set up a template for “Sales Team Compensation” that includes base pay, commission percentage, travel allowance, etc., and another template for “Engineering Compensation” with different components – ensuring each employee’s compensation package is properly documented.

One of the key benefits is ensuring fair and competitive pay across the organization. Zoho People provides the tools to standardize how pay is determined and adjusted, so that employees in similar roles are rewarded consistently. HR can schedule or record salary revisions, and because the module ties into the performance system, it’s easy to link pay hikes directly to performance review outcomes. For example, after an annual review cycle, you could have Zoho People push a list of eligible employees for salary increases based on their performance rating, and then execute those increases in the Compensation module so that payroll and letters are updated accordingly. In fact, Zoho People allows you to generate salary revision letters automatically, even merging in custom fields like division or business unit to personalize those letters, and these letters can be distributed for e-signature to get quick acceptance from employees.

Another neat feature is support for formula-based salary components. If your organization uses formulas to calculate certain components (for instance, a bonus that is 10% of base salary, or a special allowance that is $100 for every year of tenure), Zoho People can handle that. You can input mathematical formulas in defining a component, and the system will compute the amounts for each employee based on their data. This ensures accuracy and saves time compared to manual calculations.

By centralizing compensation management, Zoho People gives HR a holistic view of workforce costs and helps maintain equity. The module can generate reports on salary distributions, pay gaps, or compensation history for each employee. It also seamlessly integrates with your HR workflows. For example, when an employee gets promoted (handled via the HR Process feature), you can trigger a compensation change as part of that same process to update their pay grade. Overall, the Compensation module empowers organizations to drive employee performance through fair compensation practices, as Zoho aptly puts it. It’s a valuable tool for aligning your compensation strategy with performance and business goals, all while keeping the process transparent to build trust with employees.

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Automation and AI: Data-Driven HR Decisions with Zoho People

Modern HR isn’t just about digitizing forms – it’s about working smarter through automation and data insights. Zoho People shines in this area by offering numerous ways to automate routine work and even leverage AI for better decision-making. For automation, Zoho People includes a powerful workflow engine and supports custom functions (scripts) that can be triggered on events. In fact, Zoho People now lets you trigger a custom function via an API call externally, which means if you have a developer or IT team, they can programmatically initiate actions in Zoho People from other systems. This is extremely useful for scenarios such as automatically creating an employee record in Zoho People when a new hire’s data is imported from an external recruitment system, or syncing data changes to other apps. Essentially, Zoho People can act as a central hub in your HR tech stack, with integrations that ensure data flows smoothly and tasks are automated across platforms.

Many tedious HR tasks can be automated in Zoho People. For example, employee ID generation is now automatic – you can set up rules for how IDs should be formatted (with prefixes, numbers, etc.), and when new employees are added, the system generates their unique ID for you. Another example is the HR Process workflows for employee transfers: if someone is moving to a new department or location, Zoho People can walk through a predefined process (approvals, document updates, notifications) to ensure the transition is handled consistently every time. This reduces the administrative burden on HR and minimizes errors, as the system prompts for all required steps.

On the analytics and intelligence front, Zoho People 5.0 has brought in Zoho’s AI assistant, Zia, to help HR teams glean insights from their data. In integration with Zoho’s Advanced Analytics, Ask Zia allows users to ask questions in plain English and get answers from their HR data. For instance, you could ask, “How many employees in Sales were absent more than 5 days last quarter?” and Zia can generate a report or chart answering that, without you having to manually run queries. This is part of the broader trend of HR becoming more data-driven, and Zoho People is one of the first HR platforms to embed such AI capabilities. In fact, Zoho has developed micro AI models specifically for HR use cases, and even allows organizations (with some technical support) to train custom AI models on their own HR data. This opens up opportunities, such as predictive analytics. Imagine forecasting which employees might be at risk of leaving (flight risk analysis) or which candidates might be top performers, using AI models trained on historical data.

By embracing AI-powered tools and automation, Zoho People enables HR teams to shift from manual administrative work to more strategic activities. Instead of spending hours compiling spreadsheets, HR managers can get real-time dashboards and even conversational answers about the workforce. Automations ensure consistency, for example, sending notifications to remind managers about pending reviews every day, or auto-updating Zoho Calendar with employees’ leave dates, so everyone is informed without extra emails. These little automations and intelligent integrations add up to a significant improvement in productivity. Your HR team can deliver results faster and focus on decision-making, while employees benefit from quicker responses and a truly modern HR experience driven by data.

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Tips for Implementing Zoho People Successfully

Getting started with a new HR system might feel daunting, but with Zoho People, it’s quite straightforward – and a bit of planning ensures you reap the full benefits. First, take advantage of Zoho’s free trial to explore the features with sample data, if you haven’t already. Zoho People 5.0 also offers a Sandbox environment, which is incredibly useful during implementation. The Sandbox serves as a testing ground where you can configure settings, create new forms or automations, and test integrations without affecting live data. Use this to experiment with your HR processes, simulate an onboarding flow or a performance cycle in the Sandbox to make sure everything works as intended before rolling it out to your employees. This safe experimentation can catch issues early and give you confidence when you go live, knowing that all features have been vetted in isolation.

Next, involve your HR team and other stakeholders in mapping out your requirements. Zoho People is highly flexible; you can customize forms, fields, roles, and even terminology (5.0 introduced a Localization feature to rename system labels for your cultural context. To avoid confusion later, decide on standards upfront: Which categories of time off will you use? Who needs access to what information? What approval workflows make sense for your organization? Setting these configurations in Zoho People is easy in the Settings tab, but having clarity on the policy first will help you use the software effectively. It’s a good idea to document your HR Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and then mirror them in Zoho People through its modules and workflows.

Training is another key to success. While Zoho People’s interface is intuitive, ensure that your employees and managers know how to use the self-service features. Simple orientations or internal guides can help – show employees how to check in/out via the mobile app, apply for leave online, or update their personal details. When users fully engage with the system, you get more accurate data, and everyone benefits (like faster approvals and up-to-date records). Zoho provides online help resources and webinars, and if you have a larger team, you might conduct live training sessions. Encourage managers to leverage the analytics and reports, and for supervisors to know how to pull an attendance report for their team or review goal progress in the Performance module.

Finally, don’t hesitate to seek expert guidance. Implementing any comprehensive system can be smoother with experienced support. Brockbank Consulting, for example, is a certified Zoho implementation partner that has helped companies across industries tailor Zoho People and other Zoho apps to their needs. With more than 140 successful Zoho implementations completed and over 1,400 users trained by our team, we have the know-how to configure Zoho People in a way that aligns perfectly with your business processes. From migrating your existing HR data into Zoho People to setting up custom workflows and analytics dashboards, a partner can ensure no detail is missed. Consulting experts can also save you time by applying best practices learned from many other implementations so you avoid common pitfalls and get the system right the first time.

By following these steps: planning your HR processes, testing in Sandbox, training users, and getting help when needed, you’ll set up Zoho People 5.0 for success. The payoff is a streamlined HR operation that can scale as your business grows, and a workforce that is empowered by modern, efficient HR tools rather than held back by paperwork or outdated systems.

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Transform Your HR Operations with Zoho People 5.0

In summary, Zoho People 5.0 delivers a powerful combination of comprehensive features and ease of use, making it a top choice for organizations looking to streamline HR processes. From the new Spaces portal that centralizes the employee experience, to advanced modules for performance management, engagement, and compensation, Zoho People covers all aspects of HR management in one integrated platform. It enables HR teams to be more data-driven, leveraging automation and AI insights to improve decision-making and efficiency. More importantly, it creates a more transparent and satisfying experience for employees through self-service access to information and faster HR service delivery, which, in turn, boosts overall engagement and productivity.

Adopting Zoho People is an opportunity to refine and elevate your HR strategy. By automating routine tasks and consolidating data, your HR team can focus on strategic initiatives like talent development and culture building. And with continuous updates from Zoho (the system is constantly evolving with new enhancements in real time), you’ll always have cutting-edge tools at your disposal. The year 2025 finds Zoho People at the forefront of HR technology, from supporting hybrid work arrangements to embedding AI in HR workflows.

If you’re ready to modernize your HR operations and want to ensure a smooth implementation, consider partnering with experts. Brockbank Consulting is here to help you harness the full potential of Zoho People for your unique needs. With our deep Zoho expertise and trusted advisor approach, we can configure Zoho People to match your organization’s processes and train your team for long-term success. Book a free consultation with Brockbank Consulting today to discuss how we can tailor Zoho People to transform your HR department into a driver of efficiency and employee satisfaction. Together, let’s build a smarter, more agile HR system that propels your business forward.