In The Thick of It

Those people are your number one assets.

I know that's a very common term in HR.

People are number one asset as an organization.

They're also your number one expense

as an organization as well.

So if an organization is going to

grow, strategies are key to everything.

But people need to be the

biggest part of your strategy.

Welcome to In The Thick of It Toolbox,

the special series where inspiration meets implementation.

Here we don't just share success stories, we

equip you with proven tools and strategies from

seasoned founders, turning entrepreneurial dreams into actionable plans.

Prepare to be enabled and empowered on your journey.

You're not just listening to a

podcast, you're gaining access to an

essential toolbox for your business success.

Let's dive in.

Welcome back to another episode of

In The Thick of It Toolbox.

Today is a special episode focused on

how small to medium sized business owners

can effectively manage human resources and payroll.

Well be speaking with Chris Goheen, president of

Workforce Go!, an HR and payroll solutions provider.

Chris will share his insights on the common

challenges business owners face when handling HR and

payroll internally, including staying compliant with complex regulations,

managing time consuming administrative tasks, and keeping up

with rapid innovation in HR technology.

We'll discuss best practices for leveraging technology

to enhance employee engagement, boost productivity, and

make human capital management an integral part

of overall business strategy.

Chris will offer tips on finding an HR partner

that matches your industry priorities and back end systems.

Whether you currently handle payroll in house or

are looking to outsource these functions, you'll learn

valuable perspectives on aligning people and operations with

business goals to enable your company to grow.

Welcome back to another episode of

In The Thick of It Toolbox.

I am joined today by Chris Goheen,

who is the president of Workforce Go!

We'll get into that in a minute and

talk more about what it is they do.

But real quick, Chris, you and I, we've actually done

a lot of recording together in the past, and usually

it's fun and jovial and kind of wacky.

But today we're going to keep this very

educational so we can still have fun.

Give us a little bit about your background.

How have you spent the early parts

of your career before joining Workforce Go!

So I've had quite a bit of transformation

over my career in the early years.

So heading into school, I actually had the

notion that I wanted to be in accounting.

That was the very first thing that I ever

wanted to do, so I went that route.

I actually worked for a public accounting firm and thought

that was a CPA route that I wanted to go.

Did that through school, and eventually determined that it wasn't

as exciting as I thought it was going to be.

So I've done a lot of

networking things through my career.

So I had the opportunity to then kind

of silo accounting into just payroll taxes and

start working for an organization where we did

tax management for Fortune 500 companies.

So we did that both from a technology

standpoint as well as an outsourcing group where

we would actually manage everything on their behalf.

Really enjoyed that, escalated my career through that,

and ended up managing a very large group

through all that, and then got more into

the account management, actually working with the organizations.

What were their strategies? What were their goals?

What were their problems?

I liked working with the people.

I liked hearing all that.

I liked problem solving in those areas,

rather than so much processing within there.

Through some acquisitions and some other things that

happened with the organizations I was working with,

payroll and human capital Management, or HR, started

coming into play from a technology standpoint and

started getting my hands into that more and

more and more, and helping organizations with that

as well, actually selling and helping them formulate

solutions for their organization.

So that's really how I got into the HR world.

It started with tax and evolved into that and

payroll and where we are now, and was very

technology driven and focused and getting solutions for them.

And I've continued that evolution to where I am

now, currently still helping organizations with their people and

how they engage with them and what they're looking

to accomplish through those engagements, through solutions like human

capital management and payroll and time and management in

those various areas there.

You mentioned you started down the CPA path.

Do you have those letters behind your name? I do not.

No. Never.

Never finished that out.

You took the off ramp before? Yeah.

They went this whole masters degree in five years, and you

got to sit for the CPA exam and only like 20%

of people pass it at a certain point in time.

And I was just like, mmm, yeah, let's take

this exit ramp right off of here for that.

So, not for me.

Not just that, but I mean, knowing people

that have gone that route, looking at what

life is like for them, and particularly during

tax season and, yeah, they can have that.

Yeah, I remember those days where you actually shift

your schedule, so you work a 36 hours schedule

instead of a standard schedule for that.

So it's, yeah, tax season, not the life I wanted there.

Yeah.

So how long have you been with workforce go and

what was it that made you join the company?

So I've been leading workforce go for eight years now.

So what made me join a little bit

of story about how workforce go came about.

So I worked for a very large global software firm

here based out of the US, and I ran and

led their north american sales division for Human Capital Management.

HRMs is what it was called there for that,

and had a couple of colleagues and friends approach

me and they wanted to develop their own practice

and start getting into that from their perspective.

And I was at a point in my career where I

felt it was a good time to take a little bit

of a, more of a challenge on and help build a

practice from the ground up type of situation there.

So left that organization that I was with

came in as a practice manager for this.

We wanted to, with technology, make sure

that we had the leading edge of

solution that we were coming out with.

So we went into looking at cloud solutions

we could bring to the market rather than

your traditional on premise software solutions out there.

Got through another couple other partners that were

in the industry and looking to accomplish that.

They had a little bit of shortcomings in certain areas.

How do you implement software?

How do you manage software?

How do you get into the cloud business?

And those were expertise that we had.

So we eventually merged two organizations together

to form what is today workforce go.

I have been leading that ever

since, for the past eight years.

You mentioned you're ready for a challenge.

And, man, if there's one thing I know

about you, you're a hard charging, you're a

driven person and a hard worker.

So challenges don't scare you.

No, typically they don't.

I'm always looking for that next one.

Sometimes looking for the challenge

gets the best of you.

I'm a very visionary person and always looking

for that next horizon to get to.

And sometimes that can get the best of you.

You get a little ahead of yourself, but always looking

for that next challenge out there, it's no surprise that

you guys have done as well as you have.

So let's talk more about payroll and

HR, just from a general conceptual level.

Take the technology out of it.

So running a small business myself, I think about

early days when I was actually the one doing

payroll and so forth, man, you've got tax filing

deadlines, you've got all kinds of compliance.

You've got, it's just crazy, man.

Maybe elaborate for me what kind of

these challenges are in dealing with payroll

in a small business environment?

Well, really, I mean, you hit on

quite a few key things there.

And I know you said to take technology out of it,

but I think one thing to relate is back to technology.

Technology is a very rapid pacing change right now

with AI and everything going on, but payroll and

HR are on that same pace from that.

And it really comes around all the

regulation changes that are happening out there

and how organizations keep up with that.

So as you mentioned, with payroll, it's not

just the ability to issue a paycheck to

someone or a direct deposit to someone.

There are so many regulations and rules that you have to

stay up with that you may not even know about.

So that's where it comes in.

And helping small businesses, medium sized

businesses, even larger businesses to stay

up with what's going on there.

A good example of that is a lot of states

are now adopting what are called same day pay rules.

So it's not a matter of, I have somebody

separate with an organization and I'm on a bi

weekly payroll cycle, so I'll pay them next Friday.

No, the regulations and legislation say you have to

pay them right then and there, and now your

taxes are due right then and there as well.

So it's about being able to help employers

stay in compliance with all of that and

things that they're not aware of and then

can help them manage, because the penalties and

things that come down from that are very

dramatic, especially when you're a small business organization.

The government takes people

issues very, very seriously.

People in pay issues very seriously. Very seriously.

Very seriously.

So you wanted, I mean, most organizations are worried

about getting out of compliance with regulatory items around

their business in general, but the people ones will

really hit you when you get into labor disputes

and payroll and those type of areas.

They are coming down very hard on that.

Now, you mentioned this trend, same day payroll

or something like that, same day pay.

What are some other things that are coming

down the pipe or have recently popped up

that people need to have on their radar?

The big things going on right now are

around benefits in healthcare and mental health.

Those are the big industry topics right now.

So healthcare itself is actually

going through a complete reform.

There's what's called the CAA act, the

Consolidation Appropriation act, that has come out

that is going to revolutionize how employers

offer affordable health care to their employees.

So there are actually lawsuits that are happening now

where affirms are going out to the employees themselves

for big box employers and going, they're not offering

you the most affordable health care under the new

CAA act, and we'd like to file a lawsuit

on your behalf type situation.

So there's a lot happening within that, and

that act is going to revolutionize how healthcare

is costs and is offered to employees.

So that's a big one coming out.

And mental health is the next big thing.

That is a benefit and something that employers need

to be engaging with regardless of your size, small,

medium, large for all organizations and the tools that

you offer to help with that.

Right now, you talked about HCM, human

capital Management, as well as payroll.

There is a dividing line between the two, right?

There is.

Could you maybe explain a little bit

more about what the HCM side is?

Yeah, so we talked about the fast paced nature of HR.

There's a lot of acronyms out in the industry.

There's HCm, there's hrms, there's hris.

And really that talks to the evolution of HR.

Really what it boils down to is human resources

today is about people engagement and how you make

them part of your business operations with all that.

And that's really how we need to

be thinking about human resources out there.

So HRIs is a little bit of an older term.

It's human resource information systems.

And what it was doing for organizations

is just the ability to track information.

If John called in and wanted to know something

about his benefits, you could quickly see what benefits

he had or how long he's been with the

company, or that it's just repository of information.

HRMs took that a little bit to the next level.

It was a human resource management system.

So you got a little

bit more engagement happening there.

And now we're in the capital

management or the people engagement side.

So it's really how do we provide the tools with

the people related information to make sure they're engaged in

the business and what we need and how we're keeping

them productive that we have out there.

So it's really the difference in

the evolution that's happening out there.

It's not just about the information

and where we store that anymore.

It's about how we utilize that and

how we engage with our team members.

Now we'll talk a little bit more about specifically the

kind of work that y'all do in a minute.

But for people that aren't working with someone like

workforce go, how are they managing payroll and HCM?

It depends.

So again, speaking of that landscape of businesses

out there, small, medium and large out there,

you know, in those small area, it's, it's

still very spreadsheet driven these days.

It's word documents, I have paper

documents, we have packets of information

or spreadsheets where we're tracking.

It's very document heavy with all of that, very

disjointed very hard to report on or have visibility

into medium size because of compliance rules that start

to come into place and all that.

They need something a little bit more where

they can report they have more visibility.

They get into that repository side of that,

and then as you continue to grow, it's

more about how they engage with their employees.

So they're looking for that next level of employee

self service and benefits, enrollments and portals that employees

can access and see their information within.

So it's all about where they're at

in their journey for that and what

their requirements are within the organization.

For someone who isn't working with someone like

y'all, how does that organization keep up with

all the regulatory changes and tax rate changes

and all those kinds of things?

A lot of times we find it's they don't and it's

I do it until I get caught type situation within there.

So, and that's very hard for organizations

today because it is such a fast

pace changing with all the regulations.

There are new regulations coming out on a monthly and

a quarterly basis in how you engage your employees.

So it just takes getting caught that one

time for you to realize, unfortunately, it hurts

when you get caught with all of that.

Jeff yeah, so when somebody gets caught, or hopefully before

they get caught, they have the realization that it doesn't

make sense for them to do it themselves.

What does an organization like

yours provide for that company?

Our approach to all of this is we talked

a lot about what human capital management is and

what payroll administration, and those are great things to

bring to an organization, but really it's more about

that engagement side, and we look at it in

how people are part of the business today.

So how do we not only manage and

help with all this people related information, but

make it part of your operations and engage

those people in your operations aspect of that.

So it's not just tracking their information, their dates

of hire, their birth dates and all of that.

That's great.

We can do all that basic stuff within there.

It's not just about processing payroll

and keeping you in compliance.

It's about operationally.

What do you do as an organization?

What's important for your employees to be able

to contribute to what you do as an

organization and keep them productive and engaged and

on a good path within the organization.

Those people are your number one assets.

I know that's a very common term in HR.

People are number one asset as an organization.

They're also your number one expense

as an organization as well.

So if an organization is going to grow.

Strategies are key to everything, but people need to

be the biggest part of your strategy in terms

of how you engage with your customers.

Is this a turnkey?

You guys become this for them, or is the

expectation that they're still going to play a big

part in that employee engagement and you're providing them

the tools and strategies to help do that better?

What's kind of the dividing line?

Yeah, it's really, really the ladder

of what you said there.

So we typically meet with an organization.

We want to understand what are your goals, what are

your requirements, what do you do as an organization?

And then we're going to help provide the

tools to engage with your people out there

and really do that and bring that to

the table, bring those efficiencies to the table.

What we want to take out of the mix is

the administrative work so you can focus really where you

need to focus with your people out there.

We don't want you have to worry about reminding

somebody that they're on PTO or that their birthday

is coming up or remind them to do something.

The technology takes care of that.

We want you focusing on what are the best benefits,

what's coming down from the Consolidation Appropriation act, and how

do I engage with my team members on that?

How do I take some, somebody from this level and

offer them learning to go to the next level?

So really, how do we grow as an organization?

So we bring the tools to the table

in order to do that while keeping you

in compliance with everything that needs to happen.

Yeah.

And that's the kind of HCM side of things.

And as far as the payroll goes, do you all do

the quarterly tax filings or do you guys put them in

a position where it's just a, hey, sign here and go,

what does the payroll aspect of things look like?

Payroll aspect, we offer actually the full gamut.

So there's a couple options for organizations with

any vendor in the industry out there.

Some specialize in certain areas out there.

There are solutions that offer what is

called an in house model of payroll.

That is, you have the software, you can process your

payroll, you can issue checks, direct deposits, and you do

your own tax management within there as well.

Typically that takes going out to

government websites submitting your payments.

They may produce the returns in the forms

for you to file out of the software

within there, but you're doing all that yourself.

Typically you have an in

house payroll administrator doing that.

Then there are what are called outsourced solutions, where

you are actually submitting your payroll to an organization

they are then taking it from there.

They are issuing your payroll checks,

they're doing your direct deposits, and

typically managing your taxes as well.

The tax management is typically the number

one reason people outsource their payroll.

They're like, I don't want to do taxes.

I don't want to mess with that compliance.

I don't even want to get in trouble.

I want to give that to somebody else.

So we actually offer all those options and

a hybrid of those options within there.

So it can be a full in house model, it can

be a full, what we call payment services model, or it

can be a hybrid where you process your payroll, but we

will do the tax management for you as well.

So kind of all flavors available out there.

I don't want to have anything to do with taxes.

Just tell me what I need to do. Yeah.

How much do I pay?

Where do I send it?

Take it off my hands?

Most people are like that as well, so, which

is why there's cost advantages and other advantages to

keeping it in house and having control over that.

But it's. I do. Same sentiment.

I don't want to deal with those taxes.

I don't want to know that

my liabilities crossed a threshold.

And now it's not due Wednesday, it's due Monday.

You guys take care of all that

and that responsibility from that perspective there.

I sleep better at night knowing that

I have people to do that.

There's a term, and I kind of know what it means,

but I'm sure you can help me understand this better.

Peo.

What is a PEO?

A PEO is a model that was introduced a long time ago.

It is essentially what's called

an employee leasing organization.

So, peos, most of the time, you leverage

a PEO as an organization, as buying power.

It really came around benefits, which,

again, the whole landscape of benefits

in the industry there is changing.

But what a PEO model brings to the

table is the employees of an organization are

actually not the employees of that company.

So let's take your organization as an example.

If you used a PEO, your team members

would actually be employed by the PEO.

And it brings a conglomerate of individuals together.

So you have more team members, and you're buying

power for benefits and other types of offerings.

You have more buying power at that time.

You can get benefits cheaper, and you can offer

benefit costs cheaper to your employees by doing that.

So you're essentially leasing employees

is what you're doing.

They still work for you, they still perform for you,

but they are essentially employed by the PEO themselves.

So they get a much broader base of team

members to bring better benefits to the table.

They do all your payroll, they do all

the HR and they do all of that.

It's not necessarily 10th. Employees.

They are full time employees with you.

They're just not employed by you at that point in time.

There's a distinction between that and what you all do

and what causes somebody to choose one over the other.

Peos used to be very big with, with more

small sized businesses because again, it allowed an organization

that was ten employees or twelve and 25 employees

to have the ability to offer benefits which are

very valuable to team members at an affordable cost

to those team members.

So if you were to go directly to a provider

out there as a small employer, your cost is going

to be extreme and you can't absorb all that.

As the employer, you have to pass

some of that to the employee.

So this was an option for them to be able to do that.

It also brought in the

landscape of the compliance side.

I don't have to worry about HR.

I don't have to worry about these rules

because these employees are employed by the PEO.

They're responsible for that and

everything that happens there.

So I didn't have to worry about that.

Again, with the changing landscape that we have

going on, especially with benefits right now, that's

becoming a little bit less of a need.

And the options that are coming out with healthcare

for smaller employers, that's becoming a little bit less

of a need for them out there.

So it'd be interesting to see

how that landscape continues to change.

How many employees do I get to before I start to

say I need to look for a partner like workforce?

Go, well, I mean, there's all sizes.

And you know, what really dictates that

I answer that question in twofold?

One is going to be just what the requirements are

of how you engage with your team members or what

you need to engage with your team members.

Before you get into that, though, first

and foremost, what typically drives engagement with

an organization like us is compliance related.

So there are compliance rules that kick in based

on certain number of employees that you have where

now you need the support of technology and to

be able to administer that Cobra administration.

As an example, when you hit 25 employees, you

have to have CobRA at that point in time.

So you need something to administer

Cobra at that point in time.

When you get into the 50 and 75

range, now you have reporting requirements around EEO

or OSHA or other types of compliance.

Compliance reporting that kicks in

based on all of that.

But those again, those regulations

are starting to change now.

We've seen a lot of changes around w

four s and how we do that.

I nine and employment verification.

That is an ever changing

landscape and it's coming downscale.

So it's not so more I can wait till I get to

this size now it's more I've got to act on this earlier.

So we're seeing the landscape of adoption of tools

for human capital management come way down for this.

Not just I need a payroll solution anymore,

I really have to manage this information.

The other side of that that I was

talking about there was what's important for my

business and how do I gauge my employees.

So it may not be just hr

or just payroll that I'm looking for.

Maybe learning is something very important.

I have training and compliance and things that

I have to send my team members through

whether it's security training or cyber training depending

on what industry you're in.

So maybe a learning management tool is

very important to me for that.

Or I do a lot of recruiting I have

based on jobs that we have, I recruit a

mass volume of people so something to administer applicants

and onboarding and these things are very important regardless

of the size of my organization.

So it may be more feature functionality related

rather than compliance related within there as well.

So there's a couple factors that drive that.

When you were talking about that certain

thresholds you now enter into new waters.

I think about myself, theres so much going on day

to day and it wouldnt even occur to me that

oh we crossed x number of employees and now we

have to go do insert fill in the blank.

And I got to imagine that you save a

lot of peoples sanity by helping manage those things

for them or guide them in the right direction.

And we do, we talk with

a lot of organizations about that.

Its again not only what your goals and requirements

and strategies are today, but as you continue to

grow that's where we're going to help you.

As you hit these thresholds we're going to

let you know we do a lot of

information and knowledge sharing with organizations.

Have you thought about this or this is coming down?

These changes are happening out there.

How do they impact your organization?

Some of them are federal, some of them are state

specific, some of them are just department of labor laws

that are happening out there, some are just tax changes.

They need to be made aware of that are happening.

But we try to keep you in the know

so you can be proactive to those decisions.

The decisions are still ultimately the employers.

Again, we're providing the tools to help with that.

The decision is ultimately yours, but we want

to provide you the tools and the information

to make that decision and manage it.

Who are you typically engaging with?

What role are you typically engaging

with within your customers organization?

So typically we're talking with a CFO,

the c level players within there.

And you brought up the dynamic of

payroll versus HR a minute ago.

We see it different in a lot of organizations.

Sometimes payroll sits with finance,

sometimes it does not.

It's combined with HR or however

they determine as an organization.

But a c level player like a CFO is typically involved.

Depending on the organization, you may have a

people officer, somebody that is specifically required, and

your administrators are in there as well.

So your HR, your payroll administrators, because they're

the day to day operations that are happening,

so they need to make those decisions.

What's a little bit unique about us, and

again, the approach that we take there is,

and what's happening with the people landscape in

general, is that you can't just think about

how I manage the information and the people.

It's how is it part of the business side?

So we see a lot of the operational

folks coming into our conversations as well.

If it's a construction organization, it's, you know, I've

got field operators out there and they're coming in.

Well, this is what we do on a

day to day basis in the field.

And how do we engage with our team members out there?

So we're seeing many different

roles start coming into play.

It's not just I'm talking to the HR manager or

the payroll manager any longer, it's the c level players.

Because organizations are seen, they have to think about

people as their overall strategy as an organization.

Yeah, it is much more broad than just making

sure they get paid on time and paid, correct?

Yeah, that's almost the easy part now. Interesting.

So if somebody is thinking about bringing in

somebody like you, what do they need to

consider as they evaluate different options?

So I think that goes back to thinking

about your business, your operations, and what's important

for you and for your team members to

engage in with the organization.

It's not just going out and finding an HCM solution

that's going to do HR and benefits, enrollment and recruiting

or payroll and all these various areas out there.

It's about for us to

successfully grow as an organization.

What's most important for us to

engage with on our team members?

Is it learning, is it just payroll?

Or is it time management?

And how we do that what's most important to us.

And when you're looking at solutions out there, you need

to look at those solutions, identify those priorities for yourself,

and identify a solution that is strong in the areas

that are key to you as an organization.

So you may have a solution come to the table for you.

And they're the best recruiting solution on the market.

Recruiting is not important for you.

So, and their time doesn't do what you want it to do.

So it's very hard to find the all in one.

Everyone has their strengths and

their weaknesses in solutions.

Some focus in certain areas, and sometimes you do

a best of breed approach to things, but I

think it's identifying what your organization does, whats important

for you, and what you really need to engage

with your team members on.

And that needs to be a focus.

Make sure you check the other boxes, but that needs

to be the strength of the solution for you.

I think this kind of ties into what

you were talking about, but industry specific things

like you mentioned time, like how does it

track time from one industry to another?

There may be different needs, different requirements.

And then the other thing that jumps out at me

is, again, you talk about what do you need?

The backend systems that you might need to tie

in with is another big part of it.

And so considering, does this system

play nice with these other systems?

And I know that's an area that you guys

really focus on, is working very, very well with

other systems that are critical in the workflow.

Yeah, because there are, and again, this ties back

to the people being part of the operations.

And you got to take both into

the mix when you're thinking about this.

And human and capital management

does not address everything operationally.

Advise within an organization just doesn't do job and project

management or AP and AR GL, any of those areas.

But that's a very key component for a business.

So how do you tie the people

related aspect of everything into those?

And that's through integrations, which I

know you focus on as well.

But that's through integrations and a lot of

the conversations that we need to have and

organizations need to think about from a people

perspective, how do I tie everything together?

It's not just focusing on this silo there.

We've got to think about the broader picture. All right.

One of my favorite questions to ask Uber

drivers is, what's your craziest passenger story?

And I've heard some absolutely wild ones.

I know a lot of people in HR, and

similar to those Uber drivers, people in HR have

some crazy HR stories without naming names.

You got a crazy HR story.

You can share a crazy HR story that I can share.

I don't know how crazy the story is.

We had a client that was in the cannabis

industry and would call us and we'd have talk,

and they're trying to manage team members and actually

managing a lot of, how do I do management

of my team members using the product too much.

So I found that very interesting.

And we had a lot of conversations with them about

they can't clock in and out after we had a

pad where they, they would go up and do a

facial recognition, and it couldn't recognize because it did a

retina scan, couldn't recognize them clocking in and out, and

their product affects the retina, and their product affects the

retina, and the team members were using the product a

little bit too much. So I think that's one of the

more interesting ones that I've heard.

And I got a call and I was having a conversation with

them about it, and I normally, I'm a good solutions guy, but

I was like, I have no solution to that whatsoever.

Never been approached with that situation or have no

solution to that other than maybe a policy.

Dial it back, guys.

Or wait till you get off.

Yeah, dial it back.

One of the two that we have there.

So that's one of the more unique

ones that I've heard most recently there.

Where would someone begin their search

for a peril HR provider?

So, I encourage a lot of things when you're searching.

One, definitely do your interview,

do your due diligence.

Don't just go to one and go, wow,

they check the boxes, do all that. Get some comparison.

But as far as finding those, to do the comparison, start

with some of the solutions you have today with that.

If you have an ERP package today,

they most likely have a marketplace or

partners that they work with out there.

I would definitely do that because

there's already a level of engagement.

And again, that circles back.

It's a reoccurring thing that

I brought up several times.

People and operations working together.

So, do your due diligence, starting there

first and then just searching the web.

I mean, there's a million and one different.

Here are the top ten providers in the marketplace out

there, but also look for organ solutions that may specialize

to certain things that you do out there as well.

So if you're in construction or you're in manufacturing and

distribution, there are solutions that key to that that will

help check some of the major boxes for you right

off the bat with all of that.

So web searches are always great.

There's many different associations out there, APA SHRM,

that can help you with that as well.

But I think the number one place to

start is some of the tools you already

have in place today, like your ERP system.

For somebody who is considering transitioning their HR

payroll systems, what are the things they should

be doing now to prepare for that to

be as smooth a transition as possible?

Where are your pains?

Identify where your pains are today.

So again, one of the biggest advantages of an

HCM solution is it takes the administration out.

So what are you doing?

Manual we talk with a lot of organizations

where 60% of hrs time is spent doing

administrative work, paper, email, phone, engaging face to

face in meetings just to get things done.

Type situation, where are those at?

And how can we take that small ancillary stuff off

the table, but then again, meet with the operations side,

what's very key to them, and have those requirements ready

when you're looking at solutions out there.

So if you have a field team, what are

they going through and pain wise, because if you

can solve that, you can keep people productive.

That's where the happiness is going to come in.

The basic things of being able to view

pay stubs online or request PTO off or

those, that's not the important stuff.

It's what's key for the organization

within there and your team members.

Are there any data considerations?

Like, we do a lot of work in the CRM space,

and so oftentimes when we're migrating people, a big part of

it is, hey, you got to go clean this data up

before we can really take this on for you.

Are there things like that that people need to do?

There is some data cleanup, but typically we're

doing that in the process out there.

So, yes, do be aware there is some data cleanup,

and that goes into the aspect of when we're moving

to a tool like ours within that situation.

It's not the goal of just to move what

you're doing now to a new place to do

the exact same thing as you were doing then.

So that comes into the data side of look, yeah,

we want to get your data out, but what's important

for you for the data and where do we need

to clean this up a little bit there.

We also find sometimes a lot of things were

not being done correctly with old data within there,

so we need to clean that up as well.

So yes, there is a lot of data analysts, a

lot of bringing data in, reviewing it, and making sure

for what we want to accomplish moving forward.

Do we have the right data and is it clean

and good data for us at that point in time?

Chris, is there anything else that we haven't covered

that you would want people to know about this?

We've covered a lot of important stuff in there.

I think that the major things that came out of

that is when you're thinking about HR, payroll, HCM, HRMS,

whatever acronym you want to use within there, it's about

your people engagement and your operation side.

Make sure you're keeping those together.

When you think about the solutions that you're looking

for, identify your requirements and what you need, but

keep on with the regulatory changes that are happening.

Right.

The landscape, I attributed it to technology and

what's happening with AI right now is very

fast pace changing, and it's going to have

a dramatic impact on employers out there.

So stay on top of that or engage with

somebody to help you get the knowledge and the

information around what's happening there and the tools you'll

need in order to, to manage that, because it

can have very good benefits for your, your employees,

benefits that make them want to come to your

organization and be productive and stay long term.

And that's ultimately the goal that

everyone has with their team members.

Chris, for anybody who is embarking on this journey, how

would they go about finding you and your team?

So a lot of different places that, of

course, our website, you can go out to

myworkforcego.com and find us there.

I mentioned earlier looking and where to start with

that, whether it's a general web search, you can

type in human capital management or any of those,

and we'll pop up in those searches as well.

Or start with your erps again, what's very important

to us is bringing those two worlds together.

So we work with a lot of partners in the

ERP space, and we're typically in their marketplaces, so you

can start there and find us in those areas there.

But generally our website is a good place to go.

All right, so biggest thing, make sure that you're

combining the operational aspect with your payroll and Hr.

Get everybody on the same page and

focus on the biggest pain points first. Absolutely.

Awesome. There you have it.

Chris, thanks so much for coming in and being

a guest on In The Thick of It.

No, thank you so much for having me.

That was Chris Goheen, president of WorkforceGo!

To learn more, visit myworkforcego.com

If you or a founder you know, would like to be a

guest on In The Thick of It, email us at intro@founderstory.us