Surface HRIS Integration Guide

Surface allows you to connect any supported HRIS (Human Resources Information System) into the product. 

Setup should take 30 - 60 minutes depending on your HRIS. Supported HRIS include: BambooHR, Workday, ADP WorkforceNow, and more. A full list of supported systems can be found in the Appendix.

Key Benefits

  • You don’t have to continually upload data, you can simply set and forget.
  • You'll always have the latest employee data available in Surface.
  • Ask plain language questions about your workforce (e.g., what are some notable hiring trends over the last 3 months? Do we have any areas of the business that are experiencing high attrition?) and create and save your own custom reports

How It Works

  • Paradigm partners with Merge for all HRIS integrations
  • HRIS integration is a one-time setup that will require someone with administrative access to your HRIS
  • Once set up, Surface can sync data on a daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis

Please note: Surface will pull in several variables including job level, department, location, employee start date & termination date and where available, demographic variables like gender, race/ethnicity, birth date, disability status, and more. PII (e.g., name, email) is not collected.

Setup Process

  • Step-by-Step Overview:
    • Step 1: Connect HRIS to the platform.
    • Step 2: Configure data fields and permissions.
    • Step 3: Initiate data sync.
    • Step 4: Begin analytics.

Step 1: Connect your HRIS

If you are setting up Surface for the first time, you will be prompted to complete four onboarding steps, starting with “Sync HRIS data” (see below). 

Click “Connect” under the “Connect HRIS” option - the following page will appear:

Surface will guide your team through the integration process, but more detailed documentation for your specific HRIS may be available directly on the Merge site HERE.

Step 2: Wait for the initial sync to finish

It will take ~60 minutes to do an initial sync of your data once we are able to authenticate with your HRIS. The primary account admin will receive an email once this is complete. 

If you have any questions or are not seeing the completion email, please contact support@surface.ai and we’ll look into this further with you.

Step 3: Configure your data fields

The final configuration step involves mapping your HRIS data values to a standardized set of variables in Surface. We do this to create consistency across companies and enable benchmarking (e.g., what percent of Executives are women? What is the attrition rate for customer success employees based in Japan?)

Step 4: Confirm your connection

Once you’ve done an initial sync, reach out to the Surface team to set up a call. We’ll use this time to confirm the connection, and QA the data that’s pulling in to Surface to make sure it matches what you’re seeing in your internal systems.


You can set up time with the team using this scheduling link.