50+ Ways to Customize BambooHR for Healthcare

For HR in healthcare, building the right tech stack is like coordinating a high-stakes surgery. Every tool needs to be precise, reliable, and ready to work in perfect harmony. Between managing 24/7 staffing, maintaining compliance in a highly regulated environment, and supporting a diverse workforce across multiple roles, your HRIS needs to do more than check the basic boxes.

Ready for a truly complete HR toolkit? Get extensive options for customization and support all your team's needs with BambooHR®. Read on to learn more about how healthcare pros just like you use BambooHR to build their perfect HR solution.

“We've been using BambooHR for almost five years now, basically every process is much easier. Everything is in one place, we can keep track of time-off requests, employee details, performance, satisfaction, etc. It is a good experience for our employees as well.”

Tunde Nagy | People & Talent Manager | iPlato Healthcare

Key takeaways

  • Manage compliance with custom fields for all licenses and professional credentials.
  • Streamline fast-paced hiring with custom statuses and integrated background checks.
  • Tailor access levels and approval paths by division for compliance and control.
  • Simplify 24/7 staffing and complex pay with multiple project rates and policies.

Data & reporting

BambooHR makes it easy to gather all the data you need and manage it exactly how you want. With extensive data field options and custom reporting, BambooHR empowers you to create a centralized, comprehensive HR database for everything your healthcare team needs.

Standard fields and tables

With BambooHR, adding custom data fields and tables is simple. Start with the Standard Fields Library, which lists dozens of pre-made fields and tables you can add or remove in your account.

The Standard Fields Library houses a wide range of information relevant to HR, including options for medical licenses, certifications, credentials, and more—so you don’t waste time building out fields to meet your basic data needs.

Custom fields

Healthcare involves a lot of detailed recordkeeping. Thankfully, BambooHR makes it easy to add any custom field you might need by going through the Employee Profile or Settings.

From tracking medical certifications to documenting shift preferences, custom fields can collect any data point you need.

Options for field types include:

Custom calculations

In addition to regular custom fields, you can also personalize your account with custom calculations. This turns time-consuming tasks—like tracking certification renewal dates or adding up bonuses—into a simple automated process.

BambooHR can create the following calculation fields:

Custom field translation

BambooHR is designed to be an inclusive platform for all. To make sure everyone in your organization has easy access, you can translate any of the custom fields you create into your employees’ preferred languages.

BambooHR currently supports:

“Custom fields, paired with reporting, are a game changer for reducing requests from employees.”

Michael Zimmerman | VP of Operations | National Quality Systems, Inc

Custom tables

Like fields, you can customize tables to display the key data you need. When creating a custom data table, you have two types to choose from.

Here are some examples of custom tables used by our healthcare customers:

Custom table
Data collected
Medical license table
  • Type of license
  • License state
  • License number
  • License comments
  • License renewal received
  • Expiration date
Respirator/N-95 fit test
  • Type
  • Date
  • Completed by
  • Brand
NIH client information
  • Information security training date
  • Contractor non-disclosure agreement date
  • Fingerprint completion date
  • Type of clearance
  • Clearance granted date
  • Clearance expiration date

Add a custom tab

While BambooHR comes with a large selection of tabs you can add directly to your account, you can also request custom tabs if you have a more individualized need. For example, if your team manages a lot of scrubs, badges, or PPE, you can create a custom equipment tab to keep track of issued items and related records all in one place.

Email alerts

Custom email alerts make it easy to keep employees on track with important deadlines. In a healthcare setting, that might mean automatic reminders for things like license renewals, mandatory training, or upcoming certification expirations. This helps you stay compliant and avoid last-minute scrambles.

With a custom email alert, you’re able to name the event, set the time and date, write the subject line and message, and choose the recipients. You can create custom email alerts based on a few different field types.

Customize and manage file folders

Maintaining an organized system for documents is essential to managing all the paperwork that goes into HR for healthcare. Whether you’re looking for employee training records or travel nursing contracts, BambooHR keeps things simple with easy-to-manage folders you can quickly create, rename, and rearrange based on your current filing needs.

Custom reports

In BambooHR, you have access to over 40 standard reports. But if you need to get even more specific, generating a custom report is quick and simple. You can choose all the fields you want to include, as well as select specially-calculated fields that pull partial information or combine data from multiple fields (such as employee age or length of service). Design your custom report to present the precise data you need by filtering, sorting, and grouping the results.

“We did not have an HR system, and everything was 100% paper-based or on spreadsheets. We now efficiently handle recruitment, performance, time off, compliance, and more, leading to better decision-making and increased productivity across the organization.”

Tina Ritondaro | Director of HR | Pulse Vascular

Approvals

Overseeing approval processes is an important day-to-day responsibility for HR teams. With custom approval forms and advanced workflows, you can ensure that every approval process is seamlessly managed through BambooHR.

Custom approval forms

You can set up custom approval processes to go along with any of your custom fields or tables. For example, if you have a custom “Bonus” field, you may wish to create a custom approval process for requesting and approving bonuses.

Here are some examples of ways you can customize your approval forms:

Advanced approvals

Between healthcare providers, administrative staff, and support teams, not everyone in your workforce has the same responsibilities, and they don’t all follow the same workflows and approval processes.

To accommodate the diverse needs of all your team members, you can tailor approval paths based on several factors, including:

With each approval path, you can define who makes requests and who has the power to approve them, allowing for workflows that reflect everyone’s particular department or office location’s processes.

Access levels

An HRIS holds a lot of sensitive data, which makes controlling access for users a compliance issue. If you have groups with specific access needs, BambooHR has you covered. Access levels ensure all employees can navigate BambooHR efficiently, accessing everything they need—and nothing they shouldn’t.

You can make custom access levels highly specific, narrowing access down to discrete functions within BambooHR. For instance, a custom access level might enable select users to add or terminate employees, but not allow them to perform any other employee profile actions.

Employees

Control how much access a user has to employee profiles. You can create a custom access level with permission to perform some or all of the following actions:

Hiring

Decide what someone can do within the Applicant Tracking System. These settings are particularly useful when creating a custom access level for hiring managers. Options for hiring actions include:

“Hiring is so easy to keep track of now! Being able to add notes and see the notes others have added saves us from wasting time trying to set up interviews with people who are not good for our company. Onboarding helps me make sure that we get all of the required items, and the managers can also see what is needed which helps with communication across the board.”

Trisha Woodard | HR Manager | Senis Management

Time tracking

Create a custom access level with the ability to perform time-tracking actions. Options for time-tracking permissions include:

Reports

Give select users extra flexibility with creating custom reports. Employees with this access level setting will be able to generate new custom reports based on any of the fields and employee information they are allowed to view.

Company files

Empower employees with administrative responsibilities by giving them direct access to managing files. Decide whether or not a custom access level can do the following:

Settings

To create an access level that gives users greater administrative control without making them full admins, you can adjust access levels for account settings.

Custom access options for settings include:

Viewing permissions

Each custom access level can have its own viewing permissions. Control what user groups can see on their own profiles, other employee profiles, and the BambooHR homepage.

“I love being able to get creative with custom access levels that let your managers and others perform essential tasks without giving them too much access.”

Tina Ritondaro | Director of HR | Pulse Vascular

Display

Customizing displays within BambooHR is easy. Whether you’re adjusting the color and design for the whole company or arranging widgets on your individual account, you can make BambooHR truly your own.

Logo and color

Make your BambooHR account feel like home by uploading your company logo and choosing from over 40 color scheme options. Your logo will appear next to the administrative tabs within your BambooHR account and on your external-facing careers website.

Color coding and icons in time off categories

Keep your Who’s Out calendar and Time Off Schedule report organized exactly how you like them by choosing color codes and icons for each time off category. Customizing the color codes and icons for time off ensures your internal brand stays consistent and gives your people a coherent shorthand for time off planning.

Insights dashboard

Individuals with administrative access can customize their Insights Dashboard to include the information and reports they care about most, such as benefit enrollments, time off requests, or employee age distribution.

Hiring, onboarding & offboarding

Hiring in healthcare is fast-paced and demanding. With high turnover, 24/7 staffing needs, and a wide range of clinical and non-clinical roles to fill, you need a system that can keep up. BambooHR allows you to effortlessly manage all your hiring, onboarding, and offboarding needs.

From posting job openings posts to coordinating first-day onboarding, it’s all streamlined in one simple system.

Custom candidate statuses

Not every organization has an identical hiring process, and your HRIS should accommodate that. With BambooHR, you can create custom candidate statuses to maintain an organized hiring system that accurately reflects your workflow.

You can add specific interview steps to the status dropdown list, such as:

These custom steps will appear in the status dropdown list, allowing hiring managers to have an accurate record of where candidates are in the process.

Custom candidate sources

Keep track of your recruiting strategies and referral incentive programs by adding a custom field for candidate sources. For each candidate, you’ll have a record of exactly how they came to apply for the position, whether it was through a job board, job fair, employee referral, or other recruiting source.

Custom application questions

Job application questions don’t have to be generic. In BambooHR® Applicant Tracking, you can write custom questions for job applications. Choose from several question-and-answer formats, including:

BambooHR saves your custom questions, so when it’s time to post a new job opening, you can immediately add your go-to custom questions without any extra effort.

Applicant tracking system integrations

If you already have an applicant tracking system you’d like to keep using, BambooHR has your back. Get the best of both worlds by syncing BambooHR with your favorite ATS—you’ll use all the systems you love without having to juggle data between them.

Here are some of the popular ATS options available through BambooHR® Marketplace:

“Having onboarding streamlined and all signature documents included has been so helpful in freeing up my time. At a previous organization, we had a different HRIS and it was so complex for HR and dampened the experience for the new hire. Bamboo's onboarding lets us complete everything smoothly and easily.”

Katie Stuempfle | HR Generalist | InteliChart

Background check integrations

Background checks are critical in healthcare, especially for high-responsibility roles. Don’t let complicated background check processes slow down your hiring process. With several leading background check programs available in the BambooHR Marketplace, your potential hires can navigate the process with efficiency and confidence.

Popular choices for background checks include:

New-hire welcome packets

Save time during onboarding by creating your own template for new hires. When creating a new-hire packet template in BambooHR, you can add in any important first-day information and a set of “get to know you” questions.

To further personalize the onboarding experience, you can use the answers in the new hire packets to automatically send out an introduction email to employees, so they can welcome their new team member.

Time tracking

In BambooHR, you can manage pay rates and time sheets exactly how you need. With easy pay rate customizations and ample time tracking integrations, BambooHR serves as your personalized time-tracking hub.

Multiple project pay rates

If your employees work at several different pay rates—such as a nurse who also works occasional shifts as a charge nurse, or a technician who splits time between different departments with varying budgets—you need an HRIS that can handle multiple rates.

With BambooHR, managing pay rates is a breeze, allowing you to add all the project pay rates you need to employee records and time tracking.

Physical time clock integrations

Do you prefer to manage time with a physical system for clocking in and out? With BambooHR, you can! BambooHR works with several popular time clock services so your employees can clock in and out—all the data flows into the BambooHR platform, no extra steps needed.

Integrated time clock services include:

Time off policies

In BambooHR, you can create as many accrual time-off policies as you need. Under Time Off Settings, create customized time off policies, add new categories of time off, define tenure milestones, and assign employees to particular policies.

As your time off policies evolve, you can review the policy edit history, giving insight into how policies have changed and how it may have affected employees.

time-tracking-2

Total compensation

From nurses and physicians to lab techs and administrative staff, compensation in healthcare must reflect a wide range of roles and requirements. BambooHR provides the flexibility and integrations needed to tailor total compensation packages to any position. That’s why BambooHR offers a broad range of customizations and app integrations for managing benefits and compensation packages.

Job levels and pay bands

Keeping pay scales transparent, consistent, and clear is essential to retaining employees and supporting a healthy company culture. Customized job level and pay band settings help make that happen.

In the compensation settings in BambooHR, create job levels (e.g., RN I, RN II, RN III) to reflect each department’s structure. Then, add pay bands for each level, including the minimum, mid-point, and maximum salaries.

Alternatively, you can simply set a salary range. If you choose, you can also make job levels and pay bands visible within employee profiles, so each employee can understand how their salary fits into the company’s pay structure.

Benefits administration integrations

Keep your benefits administration running smoothly by using your preferred platform. Dive in with BambooHRⓇ Benefits Administration, or easily integrate the system with whatever benefits admin service you like.

Here are some preferred benefits administration apps in BambooHR Marketplace:

“I highly recommend you show your employees the Total Compensation pages! This has helped so many understand their compensation packages and feel like they are really being taken care of.”

Catherine Taylor | HR Manager | Anabranch Solutions, LLC

Payroll

Healthcare payroll can be complex, with different roles, shifts, and pay structures to manage. From managing multiple project pay rates to easy file feeds, BambooHR ensures your payroll process is simple and accurate.

Multiple pay rates in payroll

As with time tracking, you can customize your payroll to support employees with multiple pay rates. Using project pay rates, you can ensure your people are being accurately compensated based on role type, contract rate, and hours worked.

Custom payroll cycle data reports

Enjoy seamless data-sharing with essential vendors by using custom payroll cycle data reports. Available for 401(k), workers compensation, HSA, and FSA data, these reports pull your payroll data and format it to meet your vendor’s needs.

Custom pay cycle file feeds

BambooHR® Payroll also makes it easy to get your data directly to your vendors. With custom pay cycle file feeds, BambooHR will automatically and securely send your payroll data to 401(k), workers compensation, HSA, and FSA vendors.

Performance management & development

In healthcare, performance management must account for diverse roles, rotating schedules, and high-stress environments. BambooHR makes it easy with flexible, personalized review processes that deliver meaningful feedback and support to every employee’s needs.

Performance review cycles

Ditch the standardized annual review and start personalizing your performance review cycles. Choose the review cadence, which employees should be included, and whether to use feedback or assessments.

Custom feedback and assessment questions

Get the precise performance feedback you want with custom questions for both feedback and assessment forms. You can write your own questions and have the option to remove default questions. On assessments, you can also add questions with custom rating scales.

Note: Removing default questions in BambooHR® Performance Management disables certain standard reports that track employee-manager alignment.

Performance management integrations

Performance management processes can vary based on your industry, organization size, and company culture. With that in mind, BambooHR empowers you to integrate the performance management software that meets your particular needs.

Options include:

Learning & training integrations

Level up your training and employee enrichment by connecting your learning programs to BambooHR, allowing your data to update automatically. Popular preferred apps include:

“Performance Assessments have saved me at least 3 hours of work per week.”

Layton Thomas | Director of Operations | Circle Care Center

Engagement & culture

Engagement strategy is personal to your company culture, and your engagement tools should be, too.

AI-powered employee satisfaction analysis

Through powerful AI analysis, Employee Satisfaction survey responses are instantly analyzed, tracking the unique trends within your workforce. Using AI, all employee comments are automatically sorted into three categories: likes, dislikes, and suggestions. From there, feedback gets broken down into deeper analysis, identifying specific sentiments and topics within your survey results.

Engagement integrations

Use BambooHR to fully capitalize on your favorite engagement tools. Sync your employee data, keep your systems running cohesively, and build your company culture. Preferred engagement apps in the BambooHR Marketplace include:

Recognition & rewards integrations

Make sure your employees feel recognized with a rewards program. Introduce a new rewards system or build engagement in your current program by automatically syncing it with your BambooHR account. Below are a few popular rewards apps in the BambooHR Marketplace.

“I can't say enough positive things about the team at BambooHR: they're knowledgeable, know how to find answers, and really seem invested in my company's success/experience.”

Sean Cullen | HR Manager | Tribeca Pediatrics

Additional integrations

Integration platforms

Can’t find the integration you’re looking for? Don’t sweat it! BambooHR Marketplace features several integration platforms that enable you to connect BambooHR with any app you need.

Here are some preferred integration apps:

Identity management

Healthcare organizations must protect sensitive employee and patient data. Keep employee logins secure and simple with identity management apps. Below are some popular apps that you can integrate with BambooHR.

Communication with Slack

The BambooHR app for Slack makes it even easier for employees, especially non-clinical staff or admin teams, to stay connected, cross-posting information like time off requests, Who’s Out calendar, manager approvals, and Employee Community announcements.

Planning & charting

Enhance your process planning and org charts by integrating your planning apps with BambooHR and automatically updating your people data in real time. Preferred charting apps include:

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