Steve  0:00  
The HR Happy Hour Network is proudly sponsored by Workhuman. The workplace is changing fast, and the leaders who understand what's coming will have the advantage. Workhuman's annual trends webinar returns January 29 with research-backed insights on the hottest trends shaping 2026. Discover how top organizations are navigating AI, psychological safety, performance and equity to outperform their competition, plus exclusive findings from McKinsey's "Women in the Workplace 2026" report featuring an expert panel for McKinsey and Workhuman. You'll get the intelligence you need to lead with confidence this year. Join the trends webinar live January 29 at noon Eastern or catch the replay on demand, Register for free  at workhuman.com. 

Steve  0:43  
This episode of At Work in America is sponsored by Paychex, an industry leading human capital management company that helps businesses of all sizes succeed with its award winning combination of digital HR, technology and advisory services. Discover what 600 business leaders are prioritizing in 2026 and how they're overcoming today's biggest obstacles, uncover insights and strategies from this year's Paychex Priorities for Business Leaders Survey results to reclaim time spent on admin tasks, reduce turnover costs and keep your top talent, protect your data and defend against cyber threats and turn Your biggest challenges into wins in 2026. Head to paychex.com/awia. That's P, A, y, C, H, E, x.com/awia, to read the full report, don't just guess your priorities. Know them. 

Steve  1:52  
Welcome back to the At Work in America show. My name is Steve Boese. I am so excited to be here. I'm with Trish Steed, of course, Trish, welcome. How are you?

Trish  2:01  
I'm fantastic. Excited to be recording here at the beginning of the year. Happy New Year!

Steve  2:08  
Yes indeed. Happy New Year as well. I'm excited because we're welcoming back a guest, longtime guest, old friend of the show. Haven't talked to her in a little while, but she's back with us to sort of kick off our year and dive into some really interesting research that our friends at Paychex have published recently on what business leaders, HR leaders, particularly in smaller organizations like what's top of mind? What are their challenges? And more importantly, maybe, what are some of the ways we can help them manage those challenges. So our guest is Alison Stevens. She's a Senior Director of HR Solutions at Paychex. Alison, welcome back to the show. How are you? 

Alison Stevens  2:49  
Hello. Happy New Year. Trish, Steve, great to be with you. 

Steve  2:52  
Great to be with you as well. I mentioned you've been on the show a couple of times, it's been a little while, so maybe we can refresh listeners memories just about who you are, of course, and a little bit about what you do at Paychex; because the group that you, you manage and have been working with for a while is a really interesting group and It's not just about software, right, in which, which I think makes that group so special. So maybe let's learn more about that.

Alison Stevens  3:19  
I would be delighted to talk to you about my team. I'm always so proud of them, so any chance I get to talk about them, I'm all I'm all in. So yes, I'm the head of service for our HR Solutions Division at Paychex. And so what that means is I lead a very large team of HR professionals, experts who are all across the country supporting our clients with not just technology, but also guidance and expertise in HR. So our mission is to help our clients succeed. Help them solve problems, help them achieve their business priorities, and, you know, help them either learn about HR or ensure that their HR practices are compliant and transformational and strategic. We work right alongside of them getting to know their businesses really well. Ultimately, we want to be their trusted partner, and that's what we do each and every day. It's fantastic.

Trish  4:22  
I'm so excited that you're talking about that type of service, Alison, because there were many times in my HR career when I look back and I think I would tell people like, I'm an island. I'm here doing this all by myself, or it feels very much like that. And just the thought of how you all differentiate yourselves by having that, not just partner, even I think like that's just such a key, like linking arms with someone feeling like you've got each other's backs truly, so dear, do your clients tend to feel that way too?

Alison Stevens  4:54  
Absolutely, and you know, before coming to Paychex, I was in that role too, right? The. The one person HR leader, right? And, you know, we always used to joke it was the Department of free me, myself and I. And so, you know, that might be the case, or we are also at Paychex, working with, you know, large established HR teams and executives. So, you know, really runs, runs the gamut with respect to who we serve. But, you know, we hear it a lot. You know, our our clients that we work with are like, I don't know what I would do without my HR professional alongside me. You know, in particular, I think, in today's work environment, right, allowing our empowering our HR professionals to really help guide our clients, and they truly appreciate that. They appreciate appreciate, you know, having another voice and having someone that listens and really gets to know both them as leaders, business owners, as well as, you know, understanding what their needs are, so that we can really tailor the work that we're doing with them and customize it to what their priorities are. And we're not just giving them, you know, sort of a cookie cutter answer or a best practice answer. We're really providing them with customized guidance on what's important to them.

Trish  6:12  
Great!

Steve  6:13  
Yeah, and it's that real. It's that combination, right? That's that we've talked about this a little bit before in the show, but it's that powerful compilation of expertise insight, just expert level knowledge around compliance, around regulations, and also, you know, world class technology platform behind that as well, right which we can talk about at nauseum, and there's loads to talk about Alison, but one of the things certainly, we specifically earmarked for sort of this kicking off the year kind of show is to dive in a little bit to some research Paychex published recently. It's the Paychex 2026 Business Leader Priorities Report, Seventh Annual Report, where you're asking business leaders, HR, leaders, Hey, what are your challenges? What? What? What's sort of keep the old cliche a little bit about, you know, what's keeping you up at night? What are you worried about? What's hard? Where are you struggling? And it really helps, I think, for to dive into this for a couple of ways. One is to just to get that pulse of what business leaders are facing, what they're feeling, and then to think about how we as HR leaders, as as HR technology folks, listening to the show, how can we help them respond, right? How? What are some of the ways right that we can help them manage these challenges? So I'll take it off there. There. Alison, maybe you want to give us a couple, two or three notes from Hey, this is what this report is telling us this year about what these smaller businesses, up to about 1000 employees, right, are facing in their businesses.

Alison Stevens  7:41  
Sure. This was our seventh survey, our seventh annual survey. I always get excited. I can't wait for it to come out so we can see, you know what the findings are. And you know, every year is more fascinating than the next. So you know, for this year, I think we found that, you know, business leaders are aggressively pursuing growth of their business. And in fact, you know, over 60% make that a top priority for them. But at the same time, they're also managing, you know, the most complex, you know, operational environment in years. So you've got, you know, that pursuit of growth, but then the pursuit of managing your costs as effectively as possible in a, you know, in a cost challenged economy. So, you know, for me, that's the headline. And then when you break it down, right from finance, kind of that financial view, you know, almost 60% had rising costs, inflation. You know, squeezing their their margins as you know, an impact to businesses as they move ahead. You know, almost 30% said, from an HR perspective Benefit Administration, right? Was top in, in in the category for them, from an HR perspective, compliance, right? Also a priority. But then more specifically, data privacy, data protection, top of mind, of course, as we continue to all navigate, you know, the benefits and the complexities that AI brings as companies look to apply different types of technology leveraging AI. And then lastly, you know, also along the the notes of technology, right, like data security, employee data privacy, you know, still rises to the to the top. So, you know, if you kind of think about it from like financial view, HR view, and then double click, right? You know, what's driving costs that impact how you manage your workforce. And then you know, what are the actions you need to take that some, in some cases, may require investments to really ensure you can accelerate and make the right decisions for your business and thrive.

Trish  10:05  
Yeah, those are all huge topics, too. It's not like any one of those. You know, you could, you could really put all of your efforts, or your team's efforts, if you have one on any one, right? So why don't we break it down a little bit. I know a lot of people love listening to the paycheck shows, because they walk away with some some things not just to think about, but to take action on. So you mentioned a moment ago about the cost challenge economy. So obviously, you know, there were questions about that, and you were talking about sort of the repercussions of that for a business who is in that growth mode, what are you all seeing in the companies you're working with, or even as you're thinking about maybe potential companies that you're not working with yet? What strategies are you and your team finding maybe most effective when dealing with trying to grow in that type of an economic situation.

Alison Stevens  11:02  
Yeah, so right now, you know, I think we're, as we talk to clients we're really seeing, you know, they're increasingly interested in adopting, you know, the technology automation that both, you know, we can provide a paychecks, or, you know, so many companies in the HCM, HR industry are offering, you know, whether it's, you know, payroll tax filing, making sure they're they're managing their business compliantly, you know, looking for that automation versus, you know, having to rely on Another source that is also going to be another cost. I've talked to countless clients on my own, you know, just listening to them of oh, you know, I spend this many dollars a year, and it's big dollars right on leveraging a relationship with a law firm to make their policy well in this day and age, that is not always necessary, because, you know, at Paychex, we we offer that it's automated, it's aI driven, it's platform based, and it's dynamic. So, you know, working with an expert, they can move through that, that process of building policies really quickly and have that peace of mind that they don't have to worry about, and then they don't have that additional cost. And can, you know, start to really streamline their expenses? 

Trish  12:30  
You mentioned that specifically, too, I'm thinking back to my last job where I was truly HR leader, and that just that relationship with a law firm. It was a an everyday call. I probably spent an hour a day on that. So if you're even thinking about it's not just the cost savings, and maybe, you know, handling it more efficiently and accurately, but it's also just, it's saving your leaders time to do other things truly, which we've kind of talked for decades about wanting, and I feel like now it's here, right? Because you have that automation.

Alison Stevens  13:04  
Absolutely, and I tell the story a lot about, you know, back in the day too, when I was in HR, as an HR executive at a company and the CFO used to, like, yell at me from down the hall because you'd be opening the mail and looking at the bill from the law firm. Because same thing right on the phone with them for hours, so not to have those conversations anymore, and absolutely...

Steve  13:31  
Maybe, maybe said differently, engaging with those outside experts or outside counsel for those really critical things where you do require an outside cancel, right? Like, there are times when we do need them, but we don't need them for every last, you know, shred of employment regulation, right? That gets created by a state or a local, you know, agencies.

Alison Stevens  13:55  
Correct, and then if something changes within, you know, state, local or federal, then it's, it's automated, right? It's coming to you, versus you having to go and get it. So, you know that peace of mind that also comes with knowing that there's, you know, employment law and compliance platform, you know that we have at Paychex that's going to enable my team to, you know, navigate 1000s and 1000s of complex employment laws to be able to create documents for our clients that are we know are compliant, and so we can then give our clients the assurance that, you know, we're always going to make sure that they're taken care of.

Steve  14:37  
I didn't know that Alison. I don't know if that's new since last time we talked. But that is really cool, like that, that that capability and that offering, because, yeah, Trish, I said that, as you said, that would have alleviated a lot of the time you spent right with outside counsel as an HR leader.

Trish  14:55  
You know, Steve, I think too, if I'm thinking, if I had that at the time, it. Also positions. You know, we think a lot about HR and how we're positioned with the rest of the C suite, or our leaders, right, other leaders in the organization, and it puts you more in an expert role. If I'm having to take all my own time just to try and stay on top of compliance, researching it myself and maybe getting it wrong, I have no time to become an expert, whereas, if it's being I wrote down, it's coming to me, right? So if it's coming to me, that gives me my time to be able to understand it and think of ways to then articulate that to the rest of the business, which it positions HR in a whole new way, which is what we've wanted. 

Alison Stevens  15:38  
Exactly, right! And you know, you can thread that through to, I think, to the point you wanted to make earlier Trish that if you're spending your time more strategically as an HR leader or a business leader, right, then it's enabling time for you as that leader to spend time on more strategic things, and perhaps the people around you are also enabled to do more In that kind of layer of strategy versus the tactical, day to day tasks that can now be streamlined, automated, empowered, you know, powered by AI. 

Trish  16:09  
Sure love that.

Steve  16:12  
Alison, you mentioned like one of the headlines from this report is the focus on growth. 60 plus percent of organizations, and these are really small businesses right around the United States, really focused on growth, trying to drive growth, and trying to manage in a complex world, in an increasing cost world, right to try to manage growth. And the report, as many of the resources that Paychex do a great job of offer some really good ideas, advice, tips, etc, for leaders, and I want to bring up a couple of them around managing growth, because that talk growth often means scale, right. It means more people, it means more locations, right? It doesn't always mean that, but it often does, right? And so the report talks about, hey, integrated technology platforms is one of the ways you could scale much more efficiently, automated compliance. We've talked about some Alison as well, but one other one I'll mention. I'd love for you to comment on faster onboarding, and then time to productivity as a lever that organizations could try to pull to help manage growth and try to scale faster. And I know you guys work with your clients and the Paychex Flex tool, as well as great tools for onboarding. But I was so interested to see that particular one was pulled out, because I don't think we often think about that as onboarding as a growth engine.

Alison Stevens  17:35  
Yeah, you're right. Um, and I think there's that is, that is a topic we could spend a ton of time on. But the way that I look at it is, you know, onboarding as a vehicle for efficiency and streamlining work and reducing tasks. So everything from integration of your payroll, your benefits, your you know, people, technology and analytics, right? That allow you to go straight from Okay, the candidate is now moving from candidate to employee, and then even before that, right? How do you use technology to even get that talent in the door? You know, whether you're using AI to screen candidates or using some of the AI tools, you know, through Paychex and our partners, right, that helps bring those candidates like, find them directly to your door, and then once they're there, how do you streamline that process of, you know, welcoming that employee and giving them that first, that first experience of being an employee of your organization? So, you know, benefits, enrollment, benifits admin, making that a streamlined process, making sure that the employee has knowledge of all the benefits you offer, and being able to get that information digitally and being able to enroll online rather than having to fill out pieces of paper, right? So making that process much more streamlined, I think as companies realize that that does not have to be like a full day in a room with a stack of paper anymore, and it can be done digitally with, you know, supplementary information that also helps an employer convey what is their culture, right, what are their values, so that the employee is sort of getting the best of both worlds in that onboarding experience, and that's going to make them stay right, and then that kind of next layer of, you know, making sure, when I talked about the value that that my team brings to to our client base, it's, you know, really understanding what their needs are and their priorities. So we're helping them, you know, make those benefits decisions on, like, what are the programs and benefits you should be offering, you know, based on the industry that you're in, or the, you know, the geo that you're in, or what type candidate you're trying to attract. So you can kind of see how, that's why onboarding gets placed into the category of this discussion, because it's just become so critically important. And, and, you know, every business that we talk to, they need to retain those employees.

Trish  20:06  
Yeah, it excites me when you talk about the benefits portion there, because I recall I spent my whole career, like a little confession here, not ever wanting to lead benefits. That was and actually even payroll, I did not like either one right until, until I became an actual leader in HR, and I figured out how strategic those things can be. So when you're talking about which benefits do you select for your organization that is such a complex thing to handle on your own. I've tried it. It is not fun. It you know, if it's you and your CFO sitting down, for example, in a smaller business, especially, right? And, you know, you've always got the sort of the voices saying, oh, make more cuts, don't, you know, offer less so it, I think having, you know, you all as partners on that too, it's not just going to give those great benefits then ultimately, in you know, to the end users, to the employees, is actually making the HR team feel more empowered, right? Because we all want to help people. We want our employees to have a good experience. And I think if you don't have that person sometimes guiding you, hand in hand on what benefits can be offered to pull and push different levers that going to make someone maybe stay or join or, you know, are you seeing that too when you're talking to maybe customers where they haven't used you in that way before and now that they are, what kind of reaction do they have when they're getting that specific assistance?

Alison Stevens  21:41  
You know, yes, and it's been, in some cases, it can be a real joy. It's so rewarding for us to be able to sit down with them and sort of understand, okay, you know, what has been your your process of benefit selection or plan design in the past? And then, how can we be helpful? Right? We have the Paychex agency, which is, you know, exists to be able to help clients, or our PEO organization, right, both exist to provide, you know, best in class benefits to small businesses all across the United States. And so, you know, more recently, we've actually been working with an outside partner that has is offering kind of a lower cost to our clients of group benefits, right? So dental and other ancillaries and in this day and age, right? Talking about the priorities of this research study, right? Clients want to grow, but they're also faced with rising costs. So how do you marry the two and still be able to meet your business objectives of growing or scaling? And so we're able to have those conversations and offer them a solution and a remedy, versus, you know, having that conversation, whether it's alone with them sitting there, wondering what to do, trying to make sense of it on their own in a very complex area of HR, to be able to navigate as we talked about, and then being able to deliver on giving them that opportunity for optimization of cost, but also the support, right? So not having to reconcile your your benefits with your, you know, payroll data, right? So we're offering that integration that, again, speaks to that efficiency. And so that's where I always say, that's where you're translating the investments in that array of integrated HR technology and solutions, plus the expert of an HR professional bringing that all together. So it puts, you know, hours of time back in your day.

Trish  23:40  
Yeah, it does. And I think that the end, end outcome also, you know, it may be six months, nine months, a year later, you actually have employees coming into HR then saying, Thank you so much for, like, making sure that we have the benefits that are actually helping my family. Like I've actually had times where, like, you get thank you cards, for example, you know, because you're giving them something that is so well thought out, and so organizations that don't do that step, it's like, you're, you're just missing out, I think, at this point.

Alison Stevens  24:10  
I totally agree. It's, you know, it's a game changer. You have to be, you have to react and respond to the needs of your workforce. And, you know, I think some of our early conversations, right? We're around, you know, the evolution of the workforce in America now really putting, you know, well being and health and at the top of their list. So, you know, employers have to act in kind to be sure that they are providing a robust set of benefits to their employees, again, because retaining them is so critical.

Steve  24:42  
And that definition has of robust has expanded quite a bit, and there's a great line in the report that I wrote down, and it said the quote is, "health insurance costs more right to companies, but matters less as a competitive advantage," because they're baseline, right? Everybody expects, okay, well, I'll have it. I'll have a good I'll have good medical coverage, you know, sponsored by my employer. And everybody expects that. Everybody sort of demands that. So what else can employers do? Right? So that that robust is such an important word, you said Allison, because increasingly that that retention lever and that engagement levers, you know, benefits is such a big driver of those things. It's I just got through doing a whole show about, like, the emotional connection of people to their benefits that I did over the summer with someone. And it's really true, right? And so helping having expertise both on the service side, on the technology side, to help organizations. Because again, we're talking about small businesses here, right? We're talking about a business here that's 50, 70, 80 employees. The person running that business, they're running the business. They're not in the weeds of what's the latest in, you know, employee, mental health benefit, technology or support, right? They just can't know that, right? And so it's very, very important, because it speaks to the growth challenges that we talked about, cost, certainly cost challenges. But also, you know, how we're how we're treating our employees.

Alison Stevens  26:19  
Absolutely. And, you know, I say often, right, we're here to help our clients, you know, solve their solve problems. But what? And I think sometimes, right, like you might hear when I say solve problems, of, oh, you know, we're solving an employee relations issue or, you know, something unique or specific just to that business, which is true. But if you zoom out, it's exactly what you're describing, Steve, where you know we are every single day helping those small businesses. You know whether we're acting as a translator of something that's quite complex that they need to determine that must be part of their their benefits program. But really, you know, thinking about it through the lens of the employee of you know, does this make sense for what you know? You hear from them of what your employees need, are you talking to your employees? So you know, everything from giving them the vehicle to engage their employees and talk to them and get feedback through, whether it's a survey tool or employee engagement exercise, to then the plan design to then being able to assist them in the rollout and helping them increase their knowledge and acumen in benefits administration and design, so that you know both the digital materials as well as like Their confidence raises, so that their employees feel confident that, yes, wow, I made the right choice with my employer, and I'm really happy with the benefits that they offer. So that to your point, Trish, they're coming to them saying, Thank you, instead of asking questions that sometimes you know, the business owner may have a lot of difficulty answering, and it's not for any fault of their own. It's just there's so much to know. So we're here to help them in the simplification of this broad array of topics and actions that ultimately lead to how their employees feel about working at their company.

Trish  28:14  
Yeah.

Steve  28:16  
Alison, I want to hit one more topic that report really points out, and it sort of drove me crazy a little bit before we let you go and well, just because, like, it shouldn't be this way, and it should be, which is the amount of time business leaders report getting caught up in HR admin and admin tasks, and the amount of time we're spending even just to run and manage our payroll, which is almost 20% right? Like of time spent on doing payroll stuff, right? According to the report and and it said one of the highlights was nearly 1/3 of leaders report spend, so they spend 11 plus hours per week on HR admin. I wanted I looked down to make sure I read that right. Cool. It doesn't have to be that way. And I know we've talked about lots of ways that you and the big team you work with at Paychex help help organizations with that. But look, there's so much opportunity. I guess for the average organization listening to this, there's a lot of opportunity to reclaim time back, and I think that could be one of the biggest drivers of efficiency, but also the opportunity for growth, right? And Trish, you said right at the beginning of the show, right? We've been talking about freeing up time forever, ever and ever and ever, but it still is an issue, right? We still need to work on it. And I was like, I read that this morning. I was like, Wow, I can't believe that.

Alison Stevens  29:42  
I know, and, you know, I agree, and we're here to we're here to help. And I think it's very easy to talk about it, and it's much more difficult to sort of sit and almost give yourself a grade of, okay, you know, I've done all of these tasks today, and how many of them could be automated or lifted off my plate to spend more time on the more critical things I need to do to lead my business every single day. And, you know, we're human, so we're creatures of habit, and so we develop habits, and it's very hard to break them, but, you know, I think that that is what inspires and motivates me to lead a team. That is, you know, we're continuously reminding our clients or potential clients, of the benefits of of automation, even just making the choice to bring together, you know, what might today be multiple vendors and invoices that you're managing every month and bringing that to one bill, right? So that, you know, your 401, K, your health and your your ancillary benefits and your payroll and your HR outsourcing services are all all together, and you don't have to then adjudicate all of them. It's one. And then on top of that, right, taking advantage of whether it's, you know, streamlining your payroll and your employee data, and that, you know, moving away from managing it by hand. I actually had a conversation; I've been doing a road show with my teams and just joining their team meetings and listening right, just listening in. I'm not, I'm it's wonderful. And just heard this story where an HR professional was talking about a client who he's like, I'm talking to this client, and they have been, you know, for however many years, every week that they're processing their payroll, they're also, you know, they were taking the retirement plan deductions manually, right, putting it all together to then upload. So it's like, okay, you know, how do we bring that to them as an integrated solution? And I was like, wow, how many hours of the week are we saving them? It's probably, you know, more than 11.

Steve  31:59  
There is so much more in this report that we don't have time to talk about today, but I would encourage everyone listening to the show to go out to paychex.com We'll put a link right to this report in the show notes. Download. It's free. It's about 23 pages long. You can read it like over morning coffee one morning or on your lunch break or something so but there's plenty there stuff we didn't get to today, but great, great recommendations throughout the report for how organizations can approach growth, how they can approach costs, how they can, you know, think about automating systems using AI, right? AI is an area we only maybe hinted around, and maybe Allison, when you come back, we could talk more about AI in the small business context. I think that's a fascinating area we could dive into, but so I totally encourage folks to do that. And then I want to thank our friend, Alison Stevens, for coming back to the show and joining us. It's great to see you, and we hope it's going to be a great year for small businesses around this great land of ours.

Alison Stevens  33:02  
It will be, we're here to help them. So thank you. 

Trish  33:05  
Awesome.

Steve  33:05  
Great stuff. Trish, great stuff. It's going to be a great year on the show. This is what our 17th year of doing shows something.

Trish  33:11  
It is our 17th year.

Steve  33:13  
Or 18th. I don't remember. 

Trish  33:15  
We're finishing our 17th season. So yes, we are going into our 18th and we always, always start with Paychex. So thank you so much. It's good to see you. Happy New Year.

Steve  33:26  
Great stuff. Okay, go out to hrhappyhour.net for all the show archives. Alison Stevens, thank you very much. For Paychex, Trish, thank you. We will see you next time. Bye for now.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai