Transforming HR for Small Businesses: Paychex’s Expertise and Solutions

Transforming HR for Small Businesses: Paychex’s Expertise and Solutions

Hosts: Steve Boese & Trish Steed

Guest: Josh Carty, HR Services Area Manager, Paychex

Our conversation with Josh Carty covers the latest trends and innovations in HR technology, with a focus on how Paychex is empowering small and mid-sized businesses to navigate the evolving landscape. We chat about the importance of combining powerful HR tech solutions with personalized service and support, enabling organizations to streamline processes, enhance the employee experience, and leverage data-driven insights. Key topics include the role of AI and analytics in improving recruitment, onboarding, and workforce management, as well as the advancements in payroll technology that can significantly boost efficiency and productivity.

Thank you for joining the show today!  Remember to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts!

H3 HR Advisor’s 2025 Workplace Trends Report

This episode of At Work in America is sponsored by Paychex. Want to be the workplace everyone dreams of joining? Then you need to get your hands on this new guide to employee wellbeing from our friends at Paychex: It’s not just about physical health anymore. This guide looks at the big picture, taking a holistic approach to employee wellbeing by thinking about mental and financial health, as well. It’s filled with expert advice that will have your employees performing at their best and staying with your business for the long haul. Visit paychex.com/awia. 

Transcript follows:

Announcer 0:00
Welcome to At Work in America, sponsored by Paychex. At Work in America digs in behind the headlines and trends to the stories of real people making a difference in the world of work. And now here are your hosts, Steve Boese and Trish Steed.

Steve 0:28
Welcome to the At Work in America podcast. My name is Steve Boese. I’m with Trish Steed. Trish, how are you doing?

Trish 0:33
I’m doing well. How are you, Steve?

Steve 0:35
I am well. I feel like I have not seen you in a while. After we spent weeks and weeks and weeks traveling to events, and then, yeah, I’ve been home for a while, but you’ve been out there keeping super busy. What have you been up to lately?

Trish 0:49
It has been busy. I haven’t had a break yet. So this will be my first week at home in a long time, in at least, you know, a month and a half or so. I actually though it’s been all good. Went to Paris for Unleash world. Ah, so kind of the brain child of Mark Coleman and we, we keeps getting better and better, I have to tell you, it’s, you know, a lot of vendors and a lot of thoughts around community. So I think that’s sort of the marrying of of the HR technology with the feeling of community, community in the workplace, and really all about people. So that was really uplifting. I talked to a lot of vendors in the space, heard some great sessions, and actually got to celebrate my birthday there.

Steve 1:33
Oh, happy birthday. Absolutely, yeah, that’s fantastic.

Trish 1:37
I didn’t realize they had a big cake and everything. So it was kind of fun, but wonderful. Also, I just spent three days in the Nebraska woods at a retreat, and we spent three full days, it’s called Boondoggle. I think this was the fifth time out of 12 that I’ve attended. And, yeah, you just go and you disconnect completely from phones, from work, and think about a different topic each year. This year’s topic was connection. So I’ll have to share with you, kind of after the fact, or maybe we can do a live about it. But it was really fun.

Steve 2:14
That would be super fun. Well, awesome. Trish, well, that’s good. I’m glad you’re maybe home, get a little bit of rest, watching details, etc. Last thing I’ll mention before we welcome our guest who’s waiting very patiently to come on with us, which I’m excited to talk to him in a moment, is our 2025 trends report from H3 HR Advisors. We published it, I guess, last week. Now we worked on it for a long time, yourself, myself and Karen Steed, and it’s our biggest one. Yet, it’s like 55 pages long, which is largely, I think, my fault, because I tend to go on and on and on. But I was so excited to cover all that. We have seven trends that we’re covering for 2025 from AI, of course, but also around caregiving and wellness and people analytics and so on. It’s really cool report. We’ll put a link to it in the show notes. I’m really proud of it. Honestly. We work very, very hard on it, and I’m excited that it’s out there, so I hope people get a chance to check that out.

Steve 3:10
Well, let’s welcome our guest, Trish. Well, before we welcome our guest, we have to thank our thank our friends at Paychex, of course, for sponsoring the At Work in America show. Paychex is one of the leading providers of HR, payroll, retirement and insurance solutions for businesses of all sizes. If you want to be the workplace that everyone dreams of joining, then you need to get your hands on a new guide to employee well being from our friends at paychecks, it’s not just about physical health anymore. This guide looks at the big picture. Takes a holistic approach to employee well being by thinking about mental and financial health as well. It’s filled with expert advice that will have your employees performing at their best and staying with your business for the long haul. You can find this report at paychex.com/awia , to download your free copy today, and our guest is from Paychex.

Steve 4:13
As you may have figured out by his background. He is Josh Carty. He is the HR services area manager at Paychex with over 15 years of Human Resources experience, Josh has a passion for HR technology and how it helps businesses manage their workforce and increase employee engagement. He currently leads a strategy team within Paychex HR services with the purpose of increasing the adoption rate of HCM tech amongst businesses and their people. Josh, welcome to the show. It’s great to have you. How are you?

Josh Carty 4:44
I’m doing well. Thank you, Trish and Steve, thanks for having me on the show. I’m a big fan of your show, so I’m glad that I’m able to participate on this end.

Steve 4:54
Great stuff. Well, yeah, what’s the first time we’ve had you on the show? We’ve been, as we said in the in the beginning, we’ve been working with our friends at page. Explorer years on a number of fronts, and we love our friends at Paychex do amazing work, especially for America’s small and mid sized businesses. So let’s get to know you a little bit more. Josh, tell us about you, and then a little bit about your role at Paychex.

Josh Carty 5:15
For sure. So you know, I’ve been in HR, as you mentioned, for over 15 years. Different facets of it, different, you know, roles within paychecks. I actually started my career here back in 2015 when I started, it was as an HR generalist. So what we are tasked with doing is, you know, helping small businesses, as you mentioned, with their HR needs, right understanding how to approach workforce management and all that entails with it. So just basically consulting with clients and those businesses. And so from there, you know, I moved into the leadership role here at Paychex, I had a team of HR business partners. Is what we call them today. They used to be called HR generalists in the past. And with that, I just led the team, you know, from a strategic standpoint, right? Like, how do we help companies succeed when it comes to managing their people? And so from there, and you mentioned, I do have a passion for technology. Love technology and what it does for society. I moved into the HR services center of excellence and what we are tasked with, as you mentioned, is the, you know, the assisting, you know, the field and assisting businesses with, you know, just understanding the technology, right, being comfortable with it, embracing it, and just being successful with it. So that’s our passion. Team is phenomenal. They do a really good job, and they really lead with the you know, with with passion, right? With with wanting to help people, and I think that’s what makes us pretty successful.

Trish 6:50
I’m so glad you shared that, because, as someone who had worked in HR for many years, myself before coming to the analyst side, whether I was in a small company, a mid sized company, that was always a place of kind of a black hole, if you will, because there was never any assistance back then for businesses like the size that I was working in, in terms of understanding the technology that was a huge gap. So one thing I love seeing is that Paychex and now you are really reaching out to those companies and offering that help. I think it’s something. It’s one thing to run an HR department, especially in a small to mid sized business, but it’s a whole nother thing to understand technology and how it can actually help you. So what’s the reaction that you get from some of these businesses that I know have probably experienced it like I had, versus what they can have with you now.

Josh Carty 7:42
Yeah, for sure. Great question. And by the way, Trish, happy birthday. Happy birthday. Glad you’re able to go overseas and celebrate that. That was pretty cool, yeah, for sure. You know, it’s funny you mentioned that too, because I went to HR tech this past year, and I had the pleasure of speaking to, you know, a variety of attendees. And you know, there was a couple that stood out to me, and their thought process was, wow, technology, it’s great. There’s all these cool things that it can do, but I just need help with understanding it, implementing it, how this best works for me. So they’re still looking for that service side of the of the solution, right? And so technology by itself is wonderful, but couple it with the service delivery, now you really have an effective all around solution that’s going to help your businesses succeed. So we appreciate you know with with the our service delivery, what we value of it is the fact that if businesses have questions, if businesses want that additional hand holding or that support that they’re looking for, the training that they’re looking for, that our service org is there to assess. They’re there to help. I think it’s a game changer, actually. I think when it comes to where I work with within HR services, remember I mentioned the HR business partner, what we greatly appreciate about them is that they make sense of it all right? You know, it’s not just the consultation of of HR, but it’s also here. Let’s show you how you can leverage technology to help you manage your workforce more efficiently. And so, you know clients that have that service, you know, they really get full value, all all in, you know, all around solution when it comes to that full service delivery, or, I guess, solution. So it’s pretty cool.

Trish 9:34
I wish I had it 15 years ago. I can tell you that.

Steve 9:37
Josh, that’s one of those challenges, right? For sure, right? We see all the time. We spend a lot of time in the enterprise tech space. Often enterprise tech just, oh, you know, over focuses, or maybe rightly focuses, who knows, on those really large companies, right? And those large companies have so many I don’t know, relative advantages, right? They can. They. Bigger teams. They have better IT support. When they’re stressing with new technology, they can go hire consultants right to help them like so that’s, you know, they’ll go to the Big Four, go to those major implementation consultancies to help them navigate new technology and work through implementations and and many of those things, and those resources are just not readily available or available at all, right, to small companies or even mid sized companies, right? So I really like how you you emphasize that that need for that service, in that advisor role, that you guys can perform to help them both understand the technology, but also actually get the most value out of it. I’d love for you to comment a little bit about, and you can anonymize it. Josh, if you like, like, like, how you guys would help a company sort of go from maybe step one, which is, okay, they’ve got their payroll up and running, right? Because every company must do that, to then maybe, you know, growing into the technology and getting more value out of it?

Josh Carty 11:02
Yeah, for sure. So I think over here at Paychex, you know, we do a really good job of our implementation process when it comes to being proactive, where, you know, we’re we’re not just saying, let’s turn the system on and here you go, right? There’s a process that we go through, especially for newer clients, you know. So that process, typically, is an implementation. It’s, it’s a lot of, you know, early hand holding. And with that, there’s training, right? We offer training in a variety of formats, because, you know, people learn in different ways. So we provide those types of solutions for any client. You know, if they want one on one training, they get it from us. If they want more of a group session with other businesses, you know, that want to be trained on a similar, you know, platform or feature that we have in Flex, we can provide that too. We have job aids. We have our Flex Help Center. We have our chat, you know, within the HCM so and plus, again, you know, with the foundation of it all, we have the service org, right? So we have the service org that’s always there. They’re a phone call away, they’re a message away, they’re an email away. You know, that’s also that they’re there and available to help their businesses with this.

Josh Carty 12:14
So, you know, one example with my team, what we do is we provide a series of trainings, you know, for our clients. And with some of those trainings, they mostly focus actually on the more of the the HR portion of the full HCM, right? And so with that, our team again, hands on. You know, if a client needs help, they can actually reach out to us directly, which is pretty cool. They can reach out to my team directly. But the other thing that they can do is, if they’re working with their HR business partner, and you know, there needs to be that collaborative type of session where you have one of my team members, the HR business partner, the client contacts to kind of really talk full circle, how to navigate the system, but also how to strategically use it, you know. There’s an opportunity for those as well. So we tend to do that. We do that often, you know. And we’re even proactive, you know, which is pretty cool, right? We’re looking to be more proactive with with clients, so when they have solutions? Are we able to reach out to those clients proactively to say, hey, we know you have this solution, and what assistance do you need? We have these resources. We can help you. We can train you. So we’re there, you know, for the clients and for our businesses. So, so I think it’s, you know, I think we do a good job overall when it comes to helping clients better understand the system, because that’s what’s going to make them successful, right? Is our technology. Don’t get me wrong, the technology is wonderful and it is easy to use. It truly is. But there’s times where, you know, it’s technology at the end of the day, so people still have that resistance, and you know, there’s, there’s that comfort level that isn’t all the way there. When it comes to technology, especially new technology paychecks has some pretty cool things that we’ve recently rolled out. And so it’s all new, you know, so we just want to make sure that those clients are successful with, you know, even the latest and greatest in our technology staff.

Trish 14:21
I’m glad you really described in detail. The way forward, I think, for small and mid sized businesses, is to have access to maximize that value, right? It’s not just about having good technology now. It’s about actually getting the most out of it. So maybe we spend the next few minutes then on diving in on some of the some of the work you’re doing around some of kind of those trend items, right? Why don’t we kick it off with employee experience? That’s the one that that topic never seems to go away, right? As long as you hire people, you’re going to worry about the experience they’re having. You mentioned you’re at HR tech, and obviously you’re you’re very well in. Brained in the paychecks tech as well. So maybe just spend a few minutes and talk about what you’re seeing in the market as it relates to employee experience for those small and mid sized companies.

Josh Carty 15:10
Oh yeah, for sure. Trish, I mean, it’s a good question. I think when it comes down to it, we know there’s what, five generations in the workforce now. So, so we have that. And with that, there’s a couple of things that stand out to me, especially when it comes to the millennials. I’m a millennial, you know. So I think about, you know, my personal experience. I think about Gen Z. And you know, the biggest thing for us when it comes to the employee experience is, you know, technologies really make it simple, you know, for us, right? Like when I do my job, you know what administrative or tedious task can be off of my plate can come off my plate so that I can focus on more strategy, right? Solutions, problem solving making a greater impact to the to the business, versus being stuck, you know, taking notes and and, you know, doing other tedious tasks that we know technology can solve for us, right? And so when I think of some of our solutions that help with those, you know, tedious tasks, let’s take the position of perhaps a recruiter, right? Or even a department of one, you know, let’s, let’s do that department of one. We see that very much. So in a small market space, you know, you wear many hats and HR, you are the HR department, and we know part of HR is recruitment. So with recruitment, we know that’s a pretty challenging task, but a very necessary task, and so a lot of the work that goes into finding talent is pretty, you know, tedious. It’s, it’s something that takes a lot of time off of your plate, right? Because you have to really invest a lot of time into searching for candidates, screening those candidates, reaching out to those candidates, things of that nature. What I appreciate about our paycheck solutions is we have platforms within Flex that can help make this a more seamless process, right? Really take away some of the time that a person has to dedicate to find a talent.

Josh Carty 17:21
For example, Copilot is something that I think of. So with our Paychex Recruiting Co-pilot, the benefit of that is, if you need talent, it will help you find the best eligible talent for you. Okay, using AI. AI is a thing. I know we’re probably going to get more into that, for sure, but if I’m a department of one, and I can have this technology, this paychecks, recruiting co pilot, help me source the candidates that I need for my job, all I have to do is, you know, probably put in a job description, maybe some qualifications, and let the system do its thing, and then it’s going to return some great quality candidates for Me. The net, takes a lot of the screening, which takes a huge chunk of time for any recruiter, any department of one is going to remove that, put it to the side, so I can then focus on engaging those candidates, reaching out to those candidates, lessen my time to fill so that I can also focus on other things I need to focus on, and by the way, you know, to make this even more simple, let’s say, if you hire someone from finding someone within the co pilot, it should be as simple as being able to take a click, a click of a button to be able to move that candidate through Our flex onboarding process, a seamless self onboarding experience for a candidate. For the candidate to be able to be added on to the HCM as a new employee, set up their self service, it’s a seamless walk through process for the candidate, because we can’t forget about the candidate experience, right? We want candidates, especially when you think about millennials, especially when you think about Gen Z, to have a seamless onboarding process. That’s what they expect, that’s what they’re looking for. Make it easy for them to complete the task they need to complete, so that they can be as effective as they can be with the skills that you hired them for initially.

Trish 19:15
Yeah, I’m really glad you mentioned that specific piece of the process, Josh, because I was literally just speaking with an HR leader yesterday, and she was talking about how, still in organizations, that’s the big drop off point right, from the moment you’re hired to the moment that you’re actually an employee onboarding, right? And there’s still so many companies that are not getting that piece right. I love that. Paychex has had the advantage to to insert that into the process, so that even if you’re a team of one, right, or a small team trying to say who’s handling this, it doesn’t get dropped. I mean, I’ve been guilty of it myself in organizations I was in in the past where there’s that drop off. So I think just. You know, highlighting the value that there isn’t that drop point between the moment you’re a candidate and having an experience versus the moment you’re an employee and having an experience. So just wanted to take a minute and highlight that too.

Josh Carty 20:13
For sure. And you know, the other thing too, is, you know, department of one. Let’s talk about, you know, those HR professionals. I used to be in the department of one early on in my career, you know. And it’s tough, it’s lonely, you know. But the other thing too is that it can cause a lot of stress. It can cause a lot of burnout, and so, you know, removing some of those tedious tasks, you know, from that one person, your HR professional, will also lessen their stress, right? Their well being, you know, which is also key, right? Every employer should be concerned with their employees well being, especially those who are within HR, right? Because they’re, they’re a vital backbone, you know, to the success of of your company. And so, you know, what I would say is, if you don’t have a technology solution that really care or, you know, helps solve for some of that, you know, the burnout and the stress load, the workload that can be stressful for someone really consider researching different technology solutions to make that easier, because if you remove a lot of those tasks Right, your your person that you hired right, that you were excited to bring on to your company, that HR person, you know, they’re going to be more effective, they’re going to be able to show you exactly what you hired them to do, you know. And so that’s, that’s my thing that I wanted to make sure I mentioned.

Steve 21:35
Josh, thank you. I mean, you’re really what we’re talking about is kind of the manifestation of what’s been a kind of a macro trend in enterprise technology over the last, say, 15 to 20 years, which has been the ability for providers like Paychex to develop and then deploy these really powerful, modern and advanced solutions and make them available for businesses of any size, even down to an organization that’s small enough that they, like you said, Josh has a department of one in HR, you know, previously, when I started in this business, like that simply was not the case, right? If you wanted to have automated sourcing and, you know, digital onboarding and mobile enabled onboarding and things like that. You had to be at a big company working with one of very few really large providers, right, who were developing those kinds of tools. And that’s simply not the case anymore, right? You can be a very small organization and work with some of the most modern tools that are available. And yeah, as you said, Josh, sometimes you need help, right? Sometimes you need some guidance. You need some assistance. After all, if you’re still a department of one, you’ve got a lot of things to do, and staying really up to speed and abreast of the latest technology innovations, that may be a challenge for you. And certainly you mentioned you were at HR tech, and there was lots of companies there, and HR people there. And one of the things I think we hear a lot is, both from small companies and larger companies, is, man, we’re getting just inundated with new tech, and especially around AI, right? You mentioned a little bit about it, but I’d love to talk about that some more. Are you getting a lot of incoming inquiries into the into the service delivery organization, into the HR business partners there, from clients that say, Hey, I know there’s a lot of AI happening in HR tech. I don’t what should we be doing about it? How do we approach it, etc. What’s kind of the what’s happening out in the real world, right, with with AI in the HR tech space?

Josh Carty 23:41
I think, you know, first of all, we know AI is here to stay, right? I think that’s established at this point. You know, that it’s here to stay. It’s not a trend, it’s not a fad. You know? I think when it comes to businesses, and we go back to tech, right? I was at the tech conference, and I spoke to some people about AI, and the biggest thing for them was they came. I feel like in 2023 during the tech conference, it was more of, I’m curious about what AI is. And I think this year’s tech conference with me speaking to people, personally the attendees, it was more of, how can I implement AI to my organization, right? Like that’s where they are. They are willing to embrace the technology. They are willing to bring it on to the organization, because it knows the positive impact it will make on their their workforce and their business. You know clients at Paychex, right? Similar idea. You know where they are curious about AI. We know that we’ve we’ve seen that in different ways. Let’s talk analytics. I think that’s a cool thing to talk about. So with analytics, we have a solution. Okay, we have a solution for businesses that are looking to understand more about their workforce, and they want to do that through the data that they have within Flex, within our HCM, and so we do have as a solution for that, and that’s HR Analytics Premium. It is powered by this year. And so with that product, it’s also AI driven. And so what’s nice about that? Because I gotta tell you, you know, when it comes to the HR professional, I can’t say that most HR professionals are experts in the field of data analytics, right? And being data scientists and understanding the trends and being able to turn insights just like that based on just looking at a spreadsheet. That’s challenging. It comes with time. There’s a lot of effort with that. Again, we go back to the tedious task that you get to remove.

Josh Carty 25:40
So with that, what’s nice about, you know, using AI as an engine for HR analytics solution is that if you have a question about your workforce, if you have a question about your data, you can ask the tool. There’s a conversational intelligence tool, and you can ask the AI within HR Analytics Premium, just simple questions, right? You can ask questions such as, what’s my turnover trend? Especially if you’re just curious, if you think you may have higher turnover, or if you’re just concerned about turnover, you want to make sure that you’re observing it and keeping an eye on it. You can ask questions like that, and then allow for the tool to give you the answers. It’s a conversational, you know tool, so you could just speak in its natural, in your natural form, you know, you you know, would like to, you know, form a sentence. You could form it. It’s really, you know, quite intelligent. And then from there, it will give you the results you need. It will give you the insights to what may be happening. It can even give you some suggestions of what you can do to kind of help resolve, you know, some of the trends there. So it took a lot of time. So the technology itself, what was nice about that is the time that it would have taken to get to that insight. You know, you you no longer lose that time, right? You don’t have to do all the research of your own data. The system had it for you. So, you know, when I think about like, you know, the technology that businesses are looking for, I think they’re just looking for really, like that co pilot in many things, right? So when you think about flying a plane, right? You have this co pilot that helps you land the plane, which is pretty cool. It’s not where you have to do everything yourself, right? You have a new tool in your in your kit, which is the AI that’s really going to give you the answers that you need. It’s going to give you the insights that you need. And then you, as the HR professional, you’re able to make the final decisions based on the answers you receive from your co pilot from this tool that’s also available in your toolkit. So I guess that’s the way I look at, you know, AI, and probably what some clients may be asking us or curious about when it comes to how AI can help their businesses.

Trish 27:56
Yeah, I’m glad that you mentioned the Co-pilot piece, because I think what we heard at Tech was people are certainly ready to implement it and figure out how it can work in their organization, but they also were still a little bit afraid that it could replace them. And what you’re describing is what we were also hopeful for, which is, it’s really intended to empower you. It’s intended to assist you and aid you in doing something, maybe more quickly or more accurately, faster, and instead of replacing you or your team members. So I love that. One of the things I was really impressed with at HR tech, specifically in your booth, and if you could talk a little bit about this, is some of those payroll advancements when it comes to tech, because as someone who used to run payroll, I have to tell you that I watched the speed at some of these solutions that Paychex has in place now for leaders, and it would have gifted me back hours each week to spend with my family, if I had had those. So maybe touch a little bit on, you know, the top one or two announcements or new advancements you all have made in the payroll space.

Josh Carty 29:06
And if I may, Trish, just to kind of get back to your point about the myth out there about jobs being replaced by AI, you know, just real quick too, it’s, it’s not that the AI is going to replace anyone’s job, right? And to your point, it does. It’s a tool. It makes you more efficient and more effective. But the skill based folks who understand AI, who embrace AI, who leverage AI, those are the folks okay, that could replace your job, right? Especially as AI continues to advance and become more embraced and implemented into businesses. Companies are going to make sure that they have the talent, the right talent, with the right skills that are going to be able to manage the AI tool, maintain the AI tool, direct the AI tool. That’s really where the the challenge comes into play. So again, you know word of advice. Embrace the technology and begin understanding it more. Begin figuring out how you can implement it into your day to day, so that you’re the most effective, you know, resource for your company as you can be.

Trish 30:12
It’s the people are going to replace you, not the AI itself.

Steve 30:16
I think too, like we talk a lot on the show, so about departments of one in HR. And I can’t think of a better way for those people to really both improve their sort of, you know, their workflow, and maybe take some stress away and manage against burnout, etc, etc, by leveraging these tools to get a little bit more efficient, to get a little bit more productive, to just maybe help, you know, quasi automate some of the routine tasks to allow them to do more as well. Because there are, after all, they’re, they’re really only a department of one at the end of the day, and we can’t, you can’t replace them, then there’d be, you know, department of zero. And that obviously wouldn’t, wouldn’t happen. So, yeah, it’s well said, Josh, thank you for bringing that up. Yeah, so payroll tech real quick, Josh, what Trish is, I knew she was going to ask about this because she’s been banging the jump for payroll technology for long as I’ve known her. So what are folks excited about on the payroll tech side?

Josh Carty 31:15
Yeah, I mean, I think our payroll product is we make it very seamless and easy for, you know, the payroll department to be able to process payroll, you know, simplified, right? You know, it’s, you know, you have auto payroll that you can do within our system. You know, there’s different things that you can plus, you have a service team that’s there to help you too, which is always a key thing again, for Paychex, we have a service team that’s able to help our businesses understand payroll, but also help them through processing their payroll as well. And again, I think when it comes to any payroll process, and I worked in many HCMs. Paychex makes it very simple. It was developed with the small business in mind and the time that they have. We know small businesses wear many hats, right? I mean, the owners are usually your person that’s running payroll. They’re your HR department, you know, obviously they’re your operations leader, you know. So again, they’re wearing so many hats. We just want to simplify the product and the solution. So that’s what I appreciate, I think, when it comes to the HCM, you know, in general, you know, I do think about the employee experience, right? And so with Flex, we simplify it, where it’s so simple for an employee to be onboarded, it’s so simple for an employee to be able to have access to their pay records, access to, you know, even their reviews, right? You can do reviews and flex, you know, and they have access to that. They can complete the reviews and flex. Other things, you know, when you think about the employee experience in today’s market, you know, a key thing that they’re also looking at is not only how to simplify my job and make it easier through technology, but it’s also, hey, you know what’s going to keep me here? I need benefits, right? And it’s the right type of benefits. And so with our system, you know, I think of Flex Perks, you know, for example. And what I appreciate about flex perks is that it gives those employees access to benefits that they may not traditionally get from a larger sense. So if you think about your major benefits, like medical, dental, vision, things like that, those are great benefits.

Josh Carty 33:18
Of course, Paychex offers that to businesses as well. But let’s take Flex Perks, right? Let’s talk about the ancillary benefits. Let’s talk about disability. Let’s talk about insurance, different insurances, pet insurance, you know, heck, you know, I’m a dog lover. We have a dog, you know, and we have insurance for our dog because that’s our family member. Of course, we do, right? So you know what flex perks does? It’s a self service type of function where it allows for the employee to elect those benefits, okay, that they want to and some of the benefits, if it’s at a deduction cost, it allows for the employee to approve those deductions, for it to feed right into the payroll system so when you’re processing payroll, that’s, again, another step that you no longer have to do as the payroll person. You don’t have to worry about getting a deduction, deduction form, filling it out, keying in the new deduction, and flex how the system does it for you. Let flex perks do that for you. And then just one more note about, you know, something like flex perks is it removes the administration of it, right? Because it’s all through flex. So, you know, you don’t have to virtually the the employer, the client, contact the admin. They don’t have to worry about setting employees up for the solution. They don’t have to worry about reaching out to employees to let them know that the benefit available, this does the work for you. So for the employee experience, someone like me that does take advantage of of ancillary benefits for my family, you know, that’s, that’s the that’s what’s going to keep me and an employer right when I have access to those types of things. Again, I’m a millennial, so. I do consider benefits and perks for my family, what’s going to, you know, and my well being, right? You know, with with perks, there’s, you know, it’s beyond just, you know, the the ancillaries, but it’s also about your well being. It’s also about your financial well being, right? Because there’s a lot of solutions within perks for people and families to find financial resources that they may need and tap into. So again, that’s that’s what Perks does for for the employee experience.

Steve 35:33
Thank you, Josh, first perks is a great product, by the way, that’s one of the top products of the year. We’ve done a couple of demos on that, and I think we that’s even part of the video we made at HR Tech with Nathan. Got into some of that stuff too. And it really kind of to me, the sort of the sum right of the conversation is like for small businesses, medium sized businesses, the ability to access powerful technology for recruiting in AI for payroll tech, and this is Flex Perks and a benefits as a benefit solution is just amazing. And the ability to have a team at Paychex to help you navigate that technology and help you understand how can apply to your organization, how to implement it, how to get support on it, that’s really the difference here, and it’s really making a big difference in the in the experience of literally hundreds of 1000s of small businesses. That’s kind of the summary for me. You know, as I think about this, that’s a great summary. Yeah, awesome. Great stuff. Josh, this has been really, really fun conversation. It’s great to have you. Great to sort of have you make your debut on the At Work America podcast as well. We really appreciate your time today.

Josh Carty 36:44
Hey, likewise, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you much for having me.

Steve 36:46
Great stuff, and we’ll put some links in the show notes, certainly to you know the report we mentioned earlier. But also, Paychex has tons of resources available. And as we head into year end Trish, we always do a year end show with our friends at paychecks always makes tremendous resources available for the community right as they head into year end and have to worry about closing out the year and reopening the year, which is always a big issue in payroll and benefits. So you can look forward to that too.

Trish 37:12
Absolutely. We love having Tom on and and it’s not just for Paychex clients. It’s really there as a free resource for anyone who might be needing a little bit of extra assistance at your end.

Steve 37:21
Good, good stuff. All right, we’ll wrap there. Thank you, Josh, once again, thanks to our friends at Paychex. Trish, thank you. Great to see you. Great to have you back in the United States for a little while, feeling good and being back home. Happy belated birthday, and thanks for listening everyone.

Steve 37:38
Thanks for listening and catch all the show archives hrhappyour.net and you can go to h3hr.com for a copy of our 2025 Trends Report as well. So anyway, thanks so much. My name is Steve Boese. We’ll see you next time, and bye for now.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai