As a small business—we know that these dilemmas—reopening your workplace and keeping your employees safe—is at the forefront of everything that you’re doing. Yet,  we understand that you’re also juggling more than a few plates to ensure everything else people-related at your organization is also going smoothly.

This is why Zenefits recently partnered with Truework, to make it easier for you.

Truework’s employee health verification tool was created to provide some peace of mind to businesses of all sizes, that their employees are healthy, and that their workplaces remain safe in this time of crisis. 

And just like Truework’s flagship verification product—their COVID-19 employee management tool is —and will remain— free for Zenefits users.

Here’s how it works:

• Automated health questionnaires: Daily employee questionnaires designed by the CDC can be sent via text or email to confirm the health status of your team and with their consent, employees can easily upload temperature readings and test results to their profile.
• Intuitive and easy-to use platform: Centralize all of your documents related to employee COVID-19 status in one secure platform and monitor employee health status in one easy-to-use dashboard.
• Securely connect with your employees: We understand the health data is sensitive, and with Truework, you can ensure that you’re securely connected with your employees across your organization. Data is stored on SOC-2 and ISO certified infrastructure so you can rest easy that your employees’ data is safe and secure.
• Ease of administration: Automatic administrator notifications if an employee has possible COVID-19 symptoms, and/or a positive test or recent contact with confirmed cases. Filter employees by multiple locations with flexibility under number and naming of locations. Automate return-to-work eligibility based on questionnaire responses. Set up recurring cadences to send questionnaires.

For a little more context, check out this recent video podcast to see if Zenefits’ free access to Truework verification tools for health checks and employee verification might be right for you:

If you are a Zenefits customer, it’s easy to connect Truework to Zenefits with this self-service process to help you reopen your workplace, safely, and with better peace of mind. If you are a Zenefits customer, it’s easy to connect Truework to Zenefits with this self-service process to help you reopen your workplace, safely, and with better peace of mind.

The post Reopening your workplace—safely—with Truework and Zenefits appeared first on Zenefits.

I had the opportunity this week to talk to Natasha Miller, the founder and CEO of Entire Productions, a business that just secured it’s third consecutive INC. 5000 fast-growth award. The brutal irony? This year, that business revenue stream went from multi-millions to ZERO in a matter of weeks.

Natasha took two weeks to grieve the old, and then got right after building the new .  She recognized —in the quiet created when her “firehose” of new business requests came to a trickle— a multitude of opportunities not only to improve but to reimagine or “pivot” her business for the better.

Here is her story and our conversation about:
1. taking stock of skills, relationships and existing marketable value
2. applying business fundamentals to inform necessary, if painful, decisions
3. listening and relentless learning about new market needs and technologies to address them
4. building resiliency to lean into a pivot (and be ready to do it all over again).

And if you haven’t read it, another terrific business leader (and customer), Eric Edelson recommended a great book about how to find and leverage the upside in adversity: Ryan Holliday’s The Obstacle is the Way.

Discomfort has some silver linings. Here’s to finding advantage from yours!

The post Switching Up Your Small Business: Fundamentals of Pivoting in a Pandemic appeared first on Zenefits.

• 40% of US businesses are women-owned. That is 12.3 million businesses, generating $1.8 trillion a year.
• Women started 1,821 net new businesses every day last year. 64% of those were started by women of color. Latina women-owned businesses grew more than 87%.
• Private tech companies led by women achieve 35% higher ROI. Women-founded companies in First Round Capital’s portfolio outperformed companies founded by men by 63%.

Behind every statistic is a story. For me, it is exhilarating to learn the stories about women who‘ve not only succeeded personally, but who’ve also paid it forward to advance others in the process. Following are 10 such women leaders of small business and non-profit organizations who inspire all of us at Zenefits. (They also all happen to be our customers, so we’re doubly invested in their success).

Take a look at what they’ve done with passion, smarts and big-heartedness to build their own businesses and so much more. And if they similarly inspire you, there are a few ideas at the end for you, in turn, to help them pay it forward

Cindy Mi, Founder and CEO, VIPKid.
Long before the US grappled with remote learning during the pandemic, Cindy Mi made it both her life’s purpose and her business. Using technology to support powerful connections between students in China with North American English teachers, Cindy has not only engaged a generation of new learners, she’s laid a foundation for remote learning that crosses cultures, languages and time zones. In the process, she’s created a business cited as one of the “World’s Most Innovative Companies” and as one of  “The Top 10 Places to Work in 2020.”

Rebecca Hope, Co-founder and Executive Director, YLabs
Rebecca’s passion to improve the teenage condition led this physician, also trained in design thinking, to start a social impact design firm while on maternity leave. YLabs teaches problem-solving to young people around the globe, so they can tackle some of the most endemic health and economic issues holding them back. One example, CyberRwanda, is providing equitable access to healthcare to prevent unplanned pregnancy and HIV; especially crucial with closed schools and limited mobility during COVID.

Janine Yancey, Founder and CEO, Emtrain
As a seasoned employment lawyer, Janine knew a lot about how businesses got compliance wrong. Really, really wrong. She founded Emtrain and built a “culture tech platform” to help business people face —and practice— really uncomfortable conversations to stop harassment, bias and ethics problems in the workplace. Emtrain’s programs tackle the thorniest and the most recent cultural issues. For example, the latest micro lesson is about discussing Black Lives Matter.

Pam Lamaster, Co-CEO, Searl, Lamaster, Howe Architects
Pam grew her career at a certified woman-owned business. In fact, she was so passionate about it, she eventually bought it. The award-winning architectural firm and its eco-friendly designs have been featured in Dwell, Architectural Digest and Modern Luxury. Beautiful design and agility helped the business grow and better weather COVID. Architects established the trend for open, collaborative offices. But during required remote work this spring, Pam recognized that some of her team was doing even better away from the office. So she’s drawing up a new blueprint for how work will work better.

Dr. Hai Huang, DDS, and Paulina Song, Lake Merritt Dental
This mother-daughter team leveraged a penchant for efficiency to transform Dr. Huang’s private dental office into a thriving group practice with a wider range of dental and orthodontic care. They even make time to give back to their community with an annual free day of dental care, “Dentistry from the Heart.”

Daughter, Paulina, has a passion for health-tech.  In fact, she found business operations more of her calling than dentistry. She carved out enough time with savvy operations, to not only run her mom’s practice, but to run a side-hustle.  She recently launched her own business, Zentist, for dental insurance claims processing.  Something to say “ah” about!

Natasha Miller, Founder and CEO, Entire Productions
Lights, Action, Pivot! Natasha just nabbed her third annual INC. 5000 fastest-growing business award for her events management business that orchestrated more than 777 projects in 2019. Yet, COVID wiped out six months worth of business for her live events in a matter of weeks. So, this classically trained violinist and jazz singer put on a different show; live streamed virtual events and related promotional items that do even more to reunite and engage remote teams. What an encore!

Jodie Heal, President, Heal Accounting
Jodie, an accomplished financial auditor, ditched her huge client load and long commute in favor of starting her own accounting business in her small hometown after she became a mom. Recognizing the huge financial risk of a compliance audit to a small business, she put all of her 300 small business customers on cloud-based technologies to avoid a mis-step that could put them out of business. In 2019, her unique cloud-based accounting practice earned Jodie a place among the top three “Women to Watch” in business for the state of Maine.

Michelle Liggett, President, Sky Trail Mgmt and Development
Michelle’s company performs back-office operations for more than a dozen businesses that build, sell, supply or offer family entertainment experiences with Ropes Courses Inc.(RCI). Michelle and her husband Jim, who founded RCI, are also reinvesting in their small town of Allegan, Michigan. They’ve been active in building up the picturesque riverside downtown area, adding a zipline over the water and renovating historic buildings into an art gallery, a restaurant and retail. This in turn, creates new jobs which help the 5,000-person town grow and thrive.

Adryon Ketcham, GOALS for Autism
Armed with little more than experience and a passion to make a difference in the lives of young people, Adryon launched her business in 2009. Today, she’s built a team and a waiting list for her at-home services. But, knowing that the unemployment rate for people with behavioral disabilities ranges from 75-90%, she has a bigger dream. She doesn’t just want to help these kids become more self-sufficient adults, one day she wants to employ them  in a business staffed entirely with developmentally disabled people.

How you can help women make a bigger impact

As we commemorate the historic voting milestone, take time to pause, take stock and celebrate all the women you know who are making not only small businesses, but any organization, community, family, school and society overall work better.

• Wherever possible, support their business, with yours.
• “Vote” your support of Women’s Equality Day with a little social shout out:
  • Post one of these pre-made Women’s Equality Day social tiles, (like the one below) and tag all the women-owned businesses you know with your endorsement. Use the hashtag #WomensEqualityDay.
  • “Like” and follow their social media pages (facebook, instagram, LinkedIn, etc)

Girls with a dream can —and do— become women with vision. That vision deserves our vote of support to pay it forward.

The post Equality, Paid Forward: 10 Inspiring Female CEOs appeared first on Zenefits.

Gallup, who’s been studying engagement trends for over two decades, recently reported the most significant drop in engaged employees since they started tracking employee engagement in 2000. The vast majority of US workers —69%— are either “disengaged”or  “actively disengaged.” Yikes.

As a sales director for Zenefits, I speak to dozens of CEOs, CFOs, and HR professionals each month and see consistent trends between the groups thriving and those merely surviving. While great products and innovative ideas play a significant factor, how leaders treat and invest in their employees remains consistent with flourishing companies, even during these challenging times.

Employers that have learned to address these significant pillars of wellness are healthier too, even amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. In environments with the right connection, tools, content, and resources, people feel heard, valued and cared for. In turn, they are more engaged, productive and make a stronger impact on customer satisfaction.

Following are a few themes and tips for creating a culture of wellness that I’ve seen from companies who get it right.

Eight tips to build healthier behaviors across your organization

1. Lead with empathy. Everything has changed, both at work and home, recognize that with your team. The best leaders are genuinely concerned for their team members and want them to succeed. While empathy is and has always been an important trait, it is even more vital in challenging times. If your people don’t feel you care about them now, you’ll lose their trust, which not only adds to their stress level but disengages them further from doing their jobs.
2. Listen more, track less. Especially with nearly 60-70% of the workforce moving to remote work, everyone wants to be aware of what is going on. But there is a fine line. Many employers go wrong by over-tracking progress for their newly remote teams. They implement more scheduled meetings, require daily check-ins, request constant status updates, etc. These added checkpoints can further disengage —and exhaust—your team. Find a healthy balance that includes more listening and less tracking.
3. Reconnect your employees with the company mission. Since our jobs and priorities have shifted, it’s easy for your staff members to lose touch with your company’s mission. Everyone these days, especially millennials, are driven by purpose. We all want to be part of something, and bonding your team around a shared mission will increase engagement and loyalty to the company. The craziness going on in the world presents a unique opportunity to refocus our teams to drive toward a common goal. Seize it!
4. Provide mental health resources. While COVID is changing our jobs, it’s important to remember that it’s also shifted the dynamics at home, which is —for some— more stressful. Companies like ours are opening more channels of communications with specific sessions for: working parents; educating each other about diversity and inclusion;  holding office hours for wellness brainstorming and even hosting CEO listening hours.  In addition, many insurance carriers include EAP programs that offer free counseling sessions for your employees to talk through issues with a professional. Even if an EAP is not available to you, every business leader can point their teams towards free, relevant, and helpful online resources such as youtube videos, articles, or blog posts. It doesn’t have to be directly related to their day-to-day jobs either. I would encourage you to look at resources addressing things material to everyone, such as tips on getting a better night’s sleep, how to focus or prioritize, better manage their finances, or balance family and career.
5. Set a semi-regular, anonymous, pulse of the team. No better way to find out — and stay informed— about your people and what they need than by going directly to the source! For organizations of more than 15 people and for remote organizations, short pulse surveys mixed with less frequent but more detailed engagement surveys provide the candid and uncensored feedback you need to address change. How they felt in March when everything was new could be very different in August. I strongly suggest allowing employees to complete these anonymously, so people feel comfortable providing their raw thoughts and opinions without any fear of backlash. Lastly, the key to helping their wellbeing with these surveys is your reliability to follow up and your team’s belief that you will. Employers of all sizes should also get more comfortable having candid conversations while creating a safe and trusting environment where your people feel comfortable delivering even constructive criticism freely.
6. Set clear work boundaries. Working from home should not mean working 24/7. It starts with management as they need to set the tone. Can that 8 pm email you are about to press ‘Send’ on be sent in the morning? Working hours should still be a thing. Respect your people’s personal time by letting them know it’s ok not to check emails before or after reasonable working hours. Let them know your belief that now is the best time to connect with your loved ones, go for a mid-day walk, pick up a new hobby, or follow whatever passions they have outside of required work hours.
7. Educate your people about their relationship with technology. Modern society’s constant connectedness has been an ever-increasing problem, but now more than ever, it’s important to disconnect. As discussed above, it’s okay to put their phones down after working hours, but it shouldn’t stop there. Simple tricks like using an alarm clock vs. their phones to wake up, not looking at blue screens late at night, or to live life without feeling the need to capture every second on their phones will go a long way with their stress levels.
8. Tools. Our jobs have changed. Is what you were doing or the way you were doing it before still working? One of the main drivers of stress and disengagement merely is not providing your employees with the right tools to do their jobs effectively. We’ve all been there. Employers have high expectations of us, but we feel we are trying to achieve them with one hand tied behind our backs. To provide a few examples… Can a 10-step process but cut down to 2 or 3? Can manual or redundant tasks be automated? Can tedious paper forms go digital? Can we communicate more real-time versus back and forth emails? Can employees self serve versus being forced to go through HR bottlenecks?

How Zenefits Can Help

Free resources on supporting wellbeing during COVID:

• WORKEST news, tips and guidebooks, updated 3-5 times a day
• HR Office Hours. Video podcast discussions with experts on impactful practices you can use.

Zenefits products

Zenefits provides tools that not only allow you to pulse check your employees, gaining much needed valuable feedback, but we also enable your people to collaborate (from anywhere) more effectively. Employees or managers can give kudos and recognition with the ability to filter visibility by department, team, or location. We also can ensure everyone is better informed and up to date of important company announcements: from annual open enrollment to new policies about COVID safety.

Furthermore, we help provide the right content and resources your employees need to address their stress and wellbeing. In partnership with Thrive Global, we draw on the latest neuroscience and psychology to help your employees build healthy new habits and create proven sustainable behavior change. Managers and Leaders can track results over time to monitor progress or identify issues before they contribute to productivity declines.

These tools and resources combined help your employees keep the right state of mind to be productive while enhancing the connection to your organization and their peers. While there are many standalone services out there that tackle one of these critical areas, Zenefits stands alone in addressing the total motivation and total self of your staff by tackling them all. The best part? All of our wellbeing resources, collaboration tools, and engagement tools can be managed in the same cloud-based, easy to use, and employee-friendly platform you manage the rest of your HR and payroll.

We’ve got your employees, and we’ve got you too. Here’s to a healthier team and a healthier business.

The post Eight Ways to Build Wellness into Your Business appeared first on Zenefits.

As a positive sign of the times, today, many do. This holiday symbolizes freedom and equality and reminds us how far we have come — and how very far we still have to go to create an inclusive, diverse, and just society.

At Zenefits, we will take this day as one of many steps —together—to stand united with the Black community to lean into this problem. We have a tremendous opportunity to leverage the passion, commitment, and creativity that brings us together as a business and use it to create necessary change in our society.  To be clear, we are far from having answers, but we do have some early direction on how we want to more fully participate.

Get Educated: First, it is really important to understand the problem. Individually and collectively we’re looking, listening, reading, and recommending to each other content and resources from a wide variety of sources. We’ve also curated examples we’re sharing across our team.

Get Vocal: Talking about inequality and oppression, violence, ignorance and the exclusion that comes with it is hard and painful. But like anything worth changing, it deserves our focus and attention. We’ve long had a practice of fostering tough conversations at Zenefits, but this is one where we need to dig deeper into our shared values and collective beliefs so we’re opening forums, we’re providing examples and role-playing to move from “should be” to “living it” in our daily practices with one another, with our customers and partners, and in our communities.

Get Active: The most powerful steps to re-imagining and constructing a more just world starts with careful observation and action. As a business, we help facilitate that with Civic Time Off and Volunteer Time Off to help our team members engage and participate more fully through voting, civic engagement, and problem-solving on issues that matter to them individually and to their broader community. We’re also pleased to support —and promote— customers across hundreds of minority-owned and not-for-profit businesses that are actively building more equal opportunity and social reform every day.

In addition to the above, we are also taking steps to ensure systematic inclusion across the company and within our product. Some of these steps include:

• Continuing to improve upon all of our existing diversity policies, procedures, and programs to drive inclusion, eliminate bias, and promote diversity;
• Creating a baseline of knowledge to build upon as a company, to include unconscious bias training, an anti-racism policy, radical transparency, accountability, and awareness;
• Engage our employees and our customers to actively have a voice in how we approach diversity and inclusion in our business practices and in our products. As an example, the Zenefits platform gives our customers pre-built reports to track diversity in their workforces and in their hiring, offers integrated employee training on diversity & inclusion, and provides employee engagement surveys to help companies understand and address employee sentiment.

At Zenefits, we believe in equality. We believe that black lives matter. We believe in action — of “walking the talk.”  And we know from past experience that we have tremendous potential to create change when we approach a problem together and resolve to fix it.

Now, more than ever, it’s important that we take care of ourselves, one another, show compassion, and strive for justice. We are all connected, and our futures and fates are intertwined.

So, together, let’s do better. Be kind. Ask questions. Get involved. Celebrate freedom.

The post Changing: Together appeared first on Zenefits.

As remote work becomes more common, as businesses continue to diversify the mix of employee types they employ, and as employees continue to raise their expectations of what employers provide them to do their jobs, a fresh look at the tools your business is run on is required. Their work — and yours — shouldn’t be stymied by using the wrong tools (often for small businesses that means choosing from clunky systems intended for large enterprises). Equally important, you shouldn’t be applying a rinse-and-repeat approach to aligning an existing HR process to new technology, once you find it.  Otherwise, you might just be creating new headaches for your new normal.

As a Sales Director at Zenefits, I’ve had thousands of sales calls in my near 5-year tenure. And, I’ve recognized a pattern of questions that really aren’t serving potential customers well. If HR software has finally made your priority list, I suggest you take a different approach to the questions you’ll be asking vendors to ensure you partner with the right company and system that will help move your business forward.

Everyone Asks #1: “Our process today is (insert lengthy, manual, multi-step process here), can we do this in YOUR system?

What they SHOULD be asking: “Our process today to accomplish ‘X’ is (insert lengthy, manual, multi-step process here). How can we accomplish ‘X’ using your system?

Why? The biggest mistake I see small to medium-sized businesses make when evaluating HR systems is trying to find a system that allows them to do something exactly the way they’ve always done it. Evaluating systems is also an ideal time to assess your processes and determine if they still make sense or perhaps if there is a better way. Remember, your processes today were likely designed within the confines or limitations of your current tools and systems. That doesn’t make it right. Be open to recommendations for a better way to achieve the desired result.

Everyone Asks #2: How is this going to save me time and make my life easier?

What they SHOULD be asking: How is your system going to make our company more efficient and our employees more productive, myself included?

Why? No doubt, your time is precious. The good news is that most of the legacy systems out there are built solely for the system administrators, so you’ll likely achieve this, but where they fail is designing for what will end up being the majority of your users, the employees. The bottom line, if it’s not easy to use, employees won’t use it. While on the front end, some of your tasks might have gotten easier, many of those tasks would be eliminated if the system you purchase offers employee self-service, collaboration tools and is intuitive and easy to use. Keep the bigger picture in mind, the entire company, and everyone that will be interacting with the system. If an HR system streamlines everyone’s process, allowing all employees, in addition to admins, to focus on their roles and revenue-producing activities, that is a much bigger win for the company.

Everyone Asks #3: Can we schedule another call(s) to see a full demo of all your capabilities?

What they should be asking: Can I get a free trial of your system so I can see first hand if your product meets our needs and come to the demo prepared with questions?

Why? This question is crucial and very well may be the most telling. Software salespeople are well trained on the pitfalls of the systems they represent and are highly skilled to avoid them during a demo. Nothing is worse than finding out the shortcomings during implementation or after. I’m not saying a demo isn’t an incredibly valuable part of the evaluation process; it is. Still, if the vendor doesn’t have the confidence to let you trial their offering yourself, post-sale surprises are imminent. Digging into the system before the custom demo not only shows you how easy the system will be to adopt but also allows you to ask any questions based on your experience to address any potential issues before signing a contract.

Why the right questions matter even more right now

Evaluating HR software can be a tedious but eye-opening process, and one of the most important purchases any business can make. HR systems are what a company runs on, so choosing the wrong system or not uncovering limitations during the sales process can be costly. While features and functions are important, the overall experience the system provides employees and candidates is more. The right tools that empower employees to collaborate better, to better do their jobs, and be able to see how their work is impacting the greater organization not only means your best people stay longer but they are more motivated to do their best work. Providing a digital, easy to navigate onboarding experience means top candidates may choose you over your competitors. The ability to do all this and more in one single app via their mobile phones means they are more engaged, more productive, and get more done — from wherever they might be working in the new paradigm of work.

Transparency during the sales process, in functionality, pricing, and fit with your business priorities, is vital to help you choose the right HR software. In fact, any vendor you are considering should enable you (and a few of your employees) to do a trial with their system before you buy, so you can see, first hand, the impact possible for your organization. This is our standard operating procedure at Zenefits. Challenge other providers to do the same.

In the past two months, the world and the way we work changed. In reality, in a healthy business, work is always changing. So, too, will your requirements for software to support that change. Therefore, as you finalize your HR vendor selection for “fit,” ensure all vendors you are reviewing have the pace of innovation to evolve as you do so you won’t need to re-read this article sooner than you would have wished.

The post Three Things Every Buyer Should Be Asking HR Software Vendors appeared first on Zenefits.

Over the past month, we’ve fast-tracked our efforts at Zenefits to:

-Source, digest and provide tips and tools to understand the new programs, on our
WORKEST news site.

-Connect conversation and questions in our online community, ClubZen

-Answer the most frequent and the toughest questions in our HR Office Hours
weekly webcasts.

-And, importantly, we’re also updating our products to close the gap between the
availability of new relief programs and small business’ ability to apply for them.

Following, is a quick overview of how we’ve updated our products to help make it easier for our customers to take advantage of:

1. The Payroll Protection Program (forgivable loan) — a total fund of $349 billion — is accepting applications on a first-come, first-served basis until the end of June. As of this writing, the federal government is considering an additional $250 billion for this program.
2. The Family First Coronavirus Relief Act — provides paid sick time and leaves of absence for small business employees and tax credits for their employers.

Get the RIGHT Data to Apply for the Payroll Protection Program 

We know that time is running short for companies to apply for the massive federal $349 billion Payroll Protection Program loans. So, to make it easier to apply, we’ve created a calculator — available to all Zenefits Payroll customers — that uses the data from your past 12 months of payroll to calculate how much of a loan you could qualify for. Note: Companies on Zenefits Payroll that are less than a year old or those who’ve been running payroll less than a year, can also use this tool.

Further, our report pulls most of (and in some cases all of) the necessary data you need to provide on a PPP application, in one downloadable Excel sheet.

• New 12-month Payroll Report: “Coronavirus Emergency Loan” 

This new report estimates how much you can borrow based on calculations directly from Zenefits Payroll. We pull in salary, wage, commission or similar compensation; payment of cash tip or equivalent; payment for vacation, parental, family, medical, or sick leave; allowance for dismissal or separation. We also pull in group health care benefits information along with retirement benefits like 401(k) and 403(b) along with tax information. For many companies this is all that is needed. However, some companies that have international employees or an outstanding amount of an Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) made between January 31, 2020 and April 3, 2020 may need to add additional information into the report our system provides. This information then can be sent in directly with the loan application.

Additional resources are listed at the end of this article, including the application itself.

You can learn more about the Paycheck Protection Program, if you are eligible for a loan, and how to apply here.

Families First Act: Enter, Track, and Ensure Payroll Tax Credits for COVID-19 Paid Time Off 

The goal of the federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), otherwise known as Bill HR 6201, is to ease the burden of COVID-19 on businesses and employees.

Even though the end goal of this act is to help small businesses and employees, abiding by its guidelines and regulations can be extremely challenging. Many new things must be tracked, reported, and withheld in order to properly adhere to this bill and reap its full benefits.

Since the origination of this bill in mid-March, Zenefits has been working on the most optimal way for our small business clients to handle this in our system. Multiple product teams and engineers have spent countless hours reading, scoping and building an end-to-end solution, which is outlined below.

Zenefits supports and streamlines the management for this act in a number of ways, primarily from a time tracking and payroll perspective:

• Easy COVID-19 Time Entry

First, we have proactively added in the appropriate types of Emergency Paid Sick Leave categories directly into the Zenefits Time Off app for all customers’ accounts. Employees can choose from one of two new drop down time off options: COVID-19 Self Care or COVID-19 Family Care. We’ve also highlighted this with a yellow banner at the top of the Time Off app.

• New Leave of Absence Feature

The Leave of Absence tool has a prebuilt, template policy called COVID-19 EFMLA that admins can use to track their workers’ emergency sick leave taken to remain compliant with H.R. 6201 (FFCRA).

This tool also allows companies to create additional Leave of Absence policies. It will primarily function as a record keeping tool for your company. In order to make changes in ancillary products, such as Zenefits Payroll, Benefits Administration, and Time Off, use the guide here.

*This tool will need to be turned on by our team so if you are interested in using this feature, please reach out to your Customer Executive or Customer Manager. If you do not know who this person is, you can reach out to Customer Care at zenefits.com/support.

• Tax Credits in Payroll

Zenefits has also created three new COVID-19 earnings types in Zenefits Payroll. Amounts entered into these new earning types will automatically apply as a credit against all Social Security, Medicare, and federal income tax liability within the same calendar quarter.

You can learn more about how to do this in the Zenefits system on our Help Center, Training portal and on YouTube.

Stay tuned for more product, service and content enhancements from Zenefits in the coming days and weeks. Our mission is to clear the obstacles you face in running and growing a small or mid-sized business. We are doubling down — especially in these gut-wrenching times — to help do all we can to also keep America’s entrepreneurs in business.

Note: Zenefits is not affiliated with, nor endorses, the financial assistance programs listed in this article. This article is for informational purposes only. We cannot advise on how to apply for any of the programs listed. Readers should consult the programs directly with questions or concerns.

The post New Zenefits Product Support for COVID-19 Relief Programs appeared first on Zenefits.

I was inspired by the people at Zenefits who advocated tirelessly for their customers and felt a sense of mission empowering small and mid-sized businesses. I was inspired by our customers, who every day competed with much bigger companies with many more resources, yet still beat the odds.

That inspiration became our purpose — to level the playing field for small businesses. And it’s what’s propelled our incredible growth.

Now small businesses all over the country are facing their own crisis. 

The fight against the COVID-19 outbreak has disproportionately impacted small businesses. In many places, the best case scenario means fewer customers and revenue. In the worst case, work has stopped altogether. Businesses, many of which already operate lean, are making tough choices, between paying people or bills, making payroll or shutting down.

As a partner to small businesses, we can’t do business as usual. We don’t believe small businesses at this time should have to make the choice between paying for payroll and making their payroll. That’s why today we’re launching our In It Together Program for small businesses.

Starting today we are offering new customers our payroll product free for 12 months with an annual subscription to any of our base HR product subscriptions. This also applies to current Zenefits customers without payroll.

As always, payruns are unlimited, and include your federal and state tax filings. Zenefits lets you pay workers of all types — including full time, part time, contractors and gig workers — wherever they are. 

For our existing payroll customers, we are upgrading your HR account and making our Well-being app available to all of your employees this week. During this period of uncertainty, we want to make resources available to employers to help battle stress and promote the health of their employees. We thank our partner Thrive for participating in this program. If you are a current annual customer no action is required on your part. The app will be turned on for all employees in your Zenefits dashboard this week.

We are also providing all current customers with weekly HR Advisor webcasts answering customer’s most pressing questions about HR and payroll at no additional cost. Customers can submit questions here. 

Additionally, we’re expediting benefit enrollments and cases related to COVID-19. If you or any of your employees experience a benefits-related emergency, such as timely access to insurance enrollment, you can use our the #COVID-19 hashtag in the case details section of your submission and we’ll get it expedited. We’re also proactively monitoring our channels for COVID-related inquiries to ensure they receive the requisite attention.

And we know systemic changes are happening with breakneck speed right now. We’re working overtime to help our customers navigate those changes. This includes providing immediate training on how to track sick and family leave in compliance with the Families First Coronavirus Response Act. We’ve also quickly responded to special enrollment periods that insurers, such as UnitedHealthcare, have announced.

If you are not a current customer, you can learn more about the free payroll offering here. If you are a current customer and you have questions about the Well-being app or digital HR Advisor webcasts, look for information from us later this week, or reach out to your designated customer manager.

We continue to provide free tools and information for all small businesses, regardless of vendor, multiple times per day at Workest.com. Our customers can also connect with us and each other to share best practices in our Club Zen community. And our SVP of Business Operations, Issac Vaughn, is providing updates regarding both Zenefits and other helpful information to all customers on a weekly basis.

Over the past week, I’ve heard a lot of people saying that “we’re all in this together.” At Zenefits, “In It Together” has been one of our core values the last three years. It’s on the walls of our — now closed — offices, adorning our clothing and internal awards, ingrained in our culture.

It’s in that spirit that we’re taking these steps.

We’ll get through this because we’re in it together.

The post How We’re Living “In It Together” with Small Businesses During This Crisis appeared first on Zenefits.

ClubZen, Zenefits’ online customer community, has over 2,200 members, exclusive access to Zenefits’ subject matter experts and key product teams, as well as free feedback and support from those who understand your daily challenges: your peers. ClubZen has become an increasingly valuable resource for all things Zenefits. Current customers recently voted ClubZen the #1 unexpected feature for the platform. It offers participants the feel of a VIP experience that is also community-focused. Members post discussion topics ranging from challenges they face in their respective roles to how to use the Zenefits platform more efficiently.  Many of the responses come directly from peers but it is not unusual to have Zenefits team members provide feedback and suggestions that contribute to the conversation. To add a bit of fun to the experience, participants can earn rewards, like gift cards and Zenefits swag. This customer-driven experience offers a window into the everyday world of the company administrators. Reviews, referrals, and success stories are just some of the fruits harvested from these consumer community gardens.

Online customer communities have become the latest leverage for the conscious consumer. No longer impressed by flashy gadgets and giveaway gimmicks, customers are looking for an authentic experience that resonates — not only with themselves — but their peers. According to leadernetworks.com, “people spend most of their time online with colleagues in professional networks (41%)”. The same research also revealed that “80% of respondents participate in online groups to help others by sharing information and experiences, and 66% participate in a professional community to belong to a group of colleagues and peers.”

As companies recognize a need to shift away from arbitrary upselling to an individualized experience, they are accessing the invaluable information that communities offer. Smaller sample sizes and access to superusers provide a perfect professional petri dish for beta testing and product feedback. Teams like product, UX, and sales are benefiting from the insight gained from these dedicated industry diplomats.

Tribe.blog indicates that, “In many cases, communities give brands an opportunity to test the use of branded communities in a more controlled, private environment, with 54% of respondents indicating that the company’s experience with private online communities has ‘changed the way we think about collaboration in general.’” It goes on to say, “Furthermore, 86% report they have experienced ‘deeper/richer insight into customer needs’ and 82% say they have gained the “ability to listen/uncover new questions.”

Online communities are often safe spaces for open, honest discussions. Each customer brings a mix of work and life experience that is as varied as the individual. The wisdom shared by more seasoned professionals is extremely valuable.

As the Community Manager of ClubZen, I moderate and facilitate many of the conversations initiated. What impresses me most is the willingness of many to show up fully to support and share with those less familiar with the nuances needed to navigate an increasingly complicated HR landscape. Compliance and custom fields are just a couple examples of the topics up for discussion. Difficult conversations like the death of an employee or how to manage a micromanager are sensitive subject matters addressed with vulnerability and a sense of comradery. We, at Zenefits, benefit from these conversations because we get a better understanding of how the HR industry is evolving to meet the needs of the employees served. Popular topics have included 4-day work weeks, 2020 compliance, and handling employee concerns about the coronavirus.

Communities are built on mutual respect and understanding. As we listen to understand what matters most, the hope is to respond in ways that build bridges and alleviate stress. Zenefits believes that our partnership with customers does not end with platform capabilities. With resources like the Coronavirus Resource Center, found both through ClubZen and Zenefits’ media site, Workest, Zenefits recognizes the responsibility we share with providing our customers access to content, information and support that is meaningful in more ways than one.

As more and more companies see the value of these communities, an entire industry has emerged in order to support and enable them. Organizations like CMX, a community consulting company that advises organizations on community strategy, have built a business model around online communities and the systems needed to make them successful. Statistics from their research indicate “85% of marketers and community builders believed that having a branded online community would improve the customer journey and increase trust.”

Entities like Influitive have made it their business to successfully support online customer communities. Balancing supportive software with meaningful metrics, these companies are the future of online engagement. Providing spaces for marketable meetups (both in person and virtually) have moved customers beyond their two-dimensional walls to three-dimensional experiences, making it easy to connect the dots and build bridges.

During a recent customer panel discussion at Zenefits’ Sales Kickoff event, a customer shared some impressive feedback about ClubZen, saying they get more out of their experience in ClubZen than out of their HR Professional Management membership.  As the evolution of people operations continues to play out in public spaces, customer communities are one real way organizations address the need to authentically engage resulting in meaningful metrics.

But the members of ClubZen already know that.

The post ClubZen: Membership Has Its Privileges appeared first on Zenefits.

1. Resources you can use

As all of us work to create new and better practices for workplace resiliency, we’re committed to sharing the latest people operations ideas and insights. Here are a few channels where you can find fresh information and inspiration.  We hope you’ll find them useful to not only to find answers but to share your own thoughts.

The post Customer Care and COVID-19: Bringing Together Ideas in the Time of Social Distancing appeared first on Zenefits.