Platform

Agentic HR for a team in Türkiye with no HR department.

Three ways small teams in Türkiye use Otto HR (ottohr.com) when they do not have an HR department, or do not want one yet. Otto prepares hiring, leave, and payroll work on one employee record. A person confirms anything that changes a record, and the confirm is logged. It is employer software, not a job board.

The hub

HR-less here means you still own hiring and pay, whether as founder, office manager, or a part-time operator, and there is no dedicated HR team. Remote-first means the employee record, leave calendar, and pay run have to work when nobody shares an office. Fast-grow means the first HR generalist is arriving, or just arrived, and the founder is still in every offer.

Otto HR is built for that operator: one record from job post to bordro, with Turkish statutory payroll on the same platform as hiring and leave. English and Turkish UI ship together; /tr/… mirrors every public page.

Playbook A: HR-less (founder + accountant)

You are about 5–25 people. The founder owns hiring. The accountant owns bordro. Nobody owns "HR." The job is one place for people, leave, and the file the accountant needs.

Otto prepares a candidate shortlist or stage-move draft, a leave reservation against policy and balance, and a pay-run draft from attendance, leave, and salary. You confirm the hire, unpaid leave, and the pay run.

Do not expect Otto to file SGK for you or replace the accountant. The accountant still stamps the run. The loop is /insan-onayli-ik.

Playbook B: Remote-first / multi-city

Your people sit in two or more cities, or mix office and remote. Employment is still Türkiye-shaped. Slack or WhatsApp is already the hallway.

The job is one employee record, one leave calendar, one pay-run input, not a third chat. Otto prepares leave that respects the company calendar, not only the requester's city, and announcements or requests in-product. Chat tools are a window in, not a second HRIS.

You confirm leave that crosses a balance and anything that changes pay. Otto is not a badge or PDKS hardware layer. Attendance is a file or a feed, not a turnstile.

Playbook C: Fast-grow / first HR hire

You have crossed about 20–40 people. The first HR generalist is arriving, or just arrived. The founder is still in every offer.

The job is that the founder stops being the system of record. HR inherits a trail, not a folder of spreadsheets. Otto prepares the pipeline and offer drafts, policy drafts from a source PDF, and the onboarding packet.

You confirm the offer, the published policy, and the first pay run under the new person. Otto is not a full mid-market HCM: see the category frames below. The first HR hire still owns judgment. Otto owns the draft and the log.

What Otto prepares, and what it does not do

Hiring: publish a job, collect applications, rank CVs, draft a stage move and email. Employment: onboarding checklists, leave against policy and balance, attendance imported into a payroll-ready timesheet (puantaj). Payroll: a Turkish pay-run draft from the same record, statutory columns calculated for review.

It does not confirm a pay run, move a candidate to Hired, publish a policy, or change someone's balance without a person. It does not sell PDKS turnstiles. It is not a job board, an apply-for-me bot, a retail group, or an HR consultancy. It does not invent customer ratings, case studies, or a lira price on this page: plan amounts live on /pricing.

Human approval and the audit trail

Two trays, one stamp: Otto prepares a proposal; a named person confirms, edits, or rejects; the confirm is logged. If nobody confirms, nothing posts. The dedicated explainer is /insan-onayli-ik.

Category frames, not scorecards

These answers are for "Otto vs X". They do not pick a winner, invent feature parity, or invent a price. Otto is the Türkiye payroll–İK handoff for teams that want a draft and a confirm, not a suite. If you need the other product's centre of gravity, use that product. If you need the handoff, start at /platform.

BambooHR is an English-first people database and core HR for US and international SMBs, covering ATS, e-sign and onboarding. Otto is Türkiye employment and the bordro handoff: leave statute, an SGK-shaped pay run, the TR holiday calendar. Choose BambooHR if HQ is US or EU and Turkey is a satellite. Choose Otto if the employment relationship is Türkiye-shaped and the pain is the accountant handoff.

Workday is enterprise HCM + finance for multi-entity, multi-country programmes. Otto is not that. It is for small or no-HR-department teams in Türkiye, one employment country, a draft and a confirm, not a finance cloud. Choose Workday if you have a Workday programme and a global design partner. Choose Otto if you are the HR department.

SAP SuccessFactors is the SAP HCM suite for SAP-centric enterprises. Otto is not a SuccessFactors module and does not sit inside SAP. Choose SuccessFactors if SAP is already the system of record. Choose Otto if there is no SAP landscape and the job is Türkiye people + pay.

These are category frames, not scorecards. We do not publish a comparison table.

Where to read next

Frequently asked

No. Playbook A is built for founder + accountant. A first HR hire can inherit the same trail (Playbook C).

No. Otto prepares the pay-run draft. The accountant (or you) confirms. See /insan-onayli-ik.

No. Remote-first and multi-city teams are a first-class pattern (Playbook B), as long as employment is Türkiye-shaped.

Unsupervised payroll or hiring writes, PDKS hardware, job-board or apply-for-me flows, invented case studies or ratings. It is also not a mid-market HCM suite: see the category frames on this page.