whats-best.ai
Search Sign in

HR Management

Personio

EU-Made Report an error

Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: not determined

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by Personio SE & Co. KG · www.personio.de

Report an error on this page Is this your product? →

Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The Works Council Advocate

Weighted verdict

Sits on the Betriebsrat and has to approve this rollout under BetrVG §87. Reads every feature for whether it can monitor behaviour, and asks what is logged, who can read it and what can be switched off. A tool that cannot answer those questions does not get installed, however good it is.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The Works Council Advocate

Digital personnel file & data model

How this is scored

The system of record: employee master data, the digital personnel file, org structure, custom fields, and whether history is kept rather than overwritten.

0 — A contact list with job titles; no document storage, no org structure, no history — changes overwrite what was there.

3 — Employee records with document upload, but a flat structure: no org chart, few or no custom fields, and no dated history of contract or salary changes.

5 — Digital personnel file with structured document types, an org chart, custom fields, and change history on the core employment fields.

8 — Complete record: versioned contract and compensation history with effective dates, document templates with e-signature, org structure supporting multiple entities and cost centres, and granular field-level permissions.

10 — The file is the single source of truth an auditor could work from: full effective-dated history on every field, retention rules per document type, delegated administration per entity, and export that reproduces the record intact.

Report an error

The Works Council Advocate

The API model names Document Management, Persons, Employments, Org Units, Legal Entities, Cost Centres and Salary Bands, so a structured personnel data model clearly exists across multiple entities. But I found no public information on dated change history, contract versioning, e-signature or field-level permissions, and I cannot co-decide on a file whose treatment of history is undocumented. 2

Report an error

Payroll handoff

How this is scored

Whether the month closes cleanly into payroll — DATEV, Lohn und Gehalt, an in-house system or an external tax adviser — and how much of that is automated rather than re-typed.

0 — No payroll path stated at all; whatever leaves the system leaves as a spreadsheet somebody retypes.

3 — Generic CSV export said to be usable for payroll, with no named payroll system, no defined format and no handling of mid-month changes.

5 — A named payroll integration or a documented export format for at least one major system (e.g. DATEV LODAS/Lohn und Gehalt), covering the recurring monthly fields.

8 — Certified or vendor-maintained integration with a named payroll provider, covering variable pay, absences and mid-month joiners and leavers, with a documented pre-payroll check.

10 — Payroll is a first-class part of the product: maintained bidirectional integrations with several named systems, an auditable approval and lock step before transmission, retro-accounting for backdated changes, and the tax adviser given their own access.

Report an error

The Works Council Advocate

The only payroll evidence in the captured material is an API surface listing Payroll Integrations under Compensations. I found no public information on any named payroll system, export format, handling of mid-month joiners and leavers, or a pre-payroll check, so the month-end handoff remains entirely open from what I can inspect. 2

Report an error

Absence & working-time

How this is scored

Vacation, sickness and working-time recording — including whether the product meets the German recording duty (BAG 2022, ArbZG) rather than merely offering a timer.

0 — No absence or time handling; both live in a spreadsheet elsewhere.

3 — Vacation requests with an approval step, but entitlement is manual, carry-over is not handled and there is no working-time recording.

5 — Automatic entitlement and carry-over, sickness recording, an absence calendar, and basic working-time capture with a report per employee.

8 — Configurable per country and contract: pro-rata entitlement, public-holiday calendars per location, break and rest-period rules, overtime accounts, and an export the employer can hand to a labour inspection.

10 — Working-time recording built as a legal obligation rather than a feature: tamper-evident records, documented compliance with the ArbZG recording duty, works-council-configurable monitoring limits, and shift or on-call models handled without add-ons.

Report an error

The Works Council Advocate

Absence periods, absence types, attendance periods and employee-created requests are documented with created, updated and deleted events, so this is more than a vacation list and working-time capture exists. But I found no public information on automatic entitlement, carry-over, sickness recording or any statement on the German recording duty — and, the questions I must ask, nothing on tamper-evident records or works-council-configurable monitoring limits. 1 2

Report an error

Recruiting & onboarding

How this is scored

The join path — vacancy to signed contract to a person who has an account, equipment and a plan on day one.

0 — Neither applicant tracking nor onboarding exists; hiring happens in a shared inbox.

3 — A basic applicant list with statuses, or an onboarding checklist — one of the two, without the handover between them.

5 — Applicant tracking with a careers page, structured stages and rejection handling, plus a checklist-driven onboarding that carries the hired candidate over into an employee record without re-entry.

8 — Multi-posting to named job boards, interview scheduling and scorecards, GDPR-conscious applicant retention and deletion, e-signed contracts, and onboarding that triggers tasks in IT and payroll.

10 — The whole join is one governed flow: approval-gated requisitions with budget, structured and bias-conscious evaluation, automated applicant deletion at the stated deadline, and provisioning driven from the record so day one needs no HR intervention.

Report an error

The Works Council Advocate

Read endpoints for jobs, candidates and applications show an applicant data layer exists, with pagination and filters, though the pages show no applicant statuses. I found no public information on structured stages, rejection handling, applicant retention or deletion, e-signed contracts, or any onboarding handover into an employee record, so the join flow is unevidenced beyond the applicant list itself. 2 3

Report an error

Employee data protection & co-determination

How this is scored

How the product handles the most sensitive personal data a company holds — retention, deletion, role separation, subject rights — and whether it can pass a works council (BetrVG §87) rather than merely a procurement checklist.

0 — No stated retention or deletion handling, no role model beyond admin-or-not, and no DPA offered on the site.

3 — A DPA exists on request and roles are coarse; retention and deletion are described as something the customer arranges themselves.

5 — A signable DPA is published, roles are configurable per module, applicant and employee retention periods are stated, and deletion can be executed rather than only promised.

8 — Field-level access control with an audit log of who read what, configurable retention per data category with automatic deletion, documented subject-rights support, and monitoring or analytics features that can be switched off for co-determination.

10 — Built for the works council to say yes: published processing documentation and subprocessor list, per-entity data separation, tamper-evident audit trail, evaluation and behavioural-analysis features off by default with their scope documented, and a data-protection impact assessment the customer can build on.

Report an error

The Works Council Advocate

This is the criterion my vote turns on, and I found no public information on any of it: no data-processing agreement, no stated retention or deletion, no role separation for employee data, no audit log of who read what, and no indication whether monitoring or analytics features can be switched off. The single signal is scoped API access — a recruiting read-only scope — which is technical permissioning, not co-determination. 2 3

Report an error

European sovereignty

How this is scored

Where the data lives, who the contracting entity is, who the subprocessors are, and whether the answer is documented rather than assumed. Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline; scored here as the buyer would weigh it.

0 — US-headquartered vendor, US contracting entity, hosting region unstated or US, subprocessors not named.

3 — EU hosting is offered as an option but the contracting entity is non-EU, or the subprocessor list is incomplete or absent.

5 — EU hosting stated as standard and an EU contracting entity, but the subprocessor chain includes non-EU providers without an explained safeguard.

8 — EU or DACH hosting with a named data-centre provider, an EU contracting entity, the full subprocessor list published, and any non-EU processing named with its legal basis.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: vendor, contracting entity, hosting and every subprocessor in the EU, certification of the data centres published, and an on-premises or private-cloud option for buyers who need it.

Report an error

The Works Council Advocate

The vendor and contracting entity are German — Personio SE & Co. KG, Munich — and the API is served from a.de domain, which sits above the US-vendor floor. But I found no public information on hosting region, the data-centre provider, or the subprocessor list, so I cannot verify from public material where employee data is processed or by whom. 2

Report an error

Pricing transparency not rated — the vendor publishes no price

How this is scored

Whether an HR lead can compute the real annual invoice for their headcount — including the modules they actually need — from public pages alone.

0 — No public prices at all; every tier is a sales conversation.

3 — An entry price per employee exists, but the modules most buyers need are unpriced, or a minimum headcount, setup fee or mandatory onboarding package is not stated publicly.

5 — Per-employee prices are public for the main tiers with the billing period stated, but at least one commonly needed module (payroll, time, recruiting) hides in an unpriced bundle.

8 — Every tier and module priced publicly with per-employee maths, billing period, minimum term and VAT treatment stated; only genuinely custom enterprise work lacks a number.

10 — Complete price computability: a calculator or table that produces the annual invoice for a given headcount and module selection, including setup, minimums and renewal terms.

Report an error

The Works Council Advocate

No price appears in any captured page — no per-employee figure, no tier, no billing period, no setup fee or minimum headcount. From public material an HR lead cannot compute any part of the annual invoice. 1 2 3

Report an error

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

Do you know more about Personio? Tell us Report an error on this page

Sources (3)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Absence & working-time — found from sitemap developer.personio.de Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Recruiting & onboarding — found from sitemap developer.personio.de Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Recruiting & onboarding — found from sitemap developer.personio.de Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →