Justworks vs. Namely

Overall, Justworks is a great platform to use to manage organization wide payroll, benefits (medical/dental/vision), and other misc. HR related services (401(k), life insurance, AD&D). The value Justworks brings to our organization greatly exceeds its cost, which I find very reasonable. I particularly love its customer service, which is fast, reliable, and helpful (By calling a number, you get connected directly to a customer service rep., no answer machines or need to press multiple buttons/selections to get to where you need). By implementing Justworks for our HR needs in the U.S., it greatly reduces the time I spent on HR administration duties while offering great benefits and HR services to our employees.

Incentivized

Namely is nice because it has everything all in one place: performance, applicant tracking through Greenhouse, payroll, time off, hourly timesheets, and benefits. From the payroll side, Namely is especially helpful for remote employers who have employees in multiple states, especially Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana. Namely will automatically update the payroll profile of the employee with the state and local tax for the work or home location, whichever the employer chooses. I have found a few mistakes with the local tax being assigned not matching the Ohio Tax Finder, but for the most part, it is accurate. It is also helpful that we can create multiple payrolls for multiple periods and they are included in the overall fee

Incentivized

• The JustWorks platform is extremely user-friendly. Everything is built in with a seamless user experience. 9 times out of 10, if my employees are looking for something, it is right in front of them.
• JustWorks has amazing customer service. Every member of their team is equipped to answer any questions you may have. This is super helpful when you have an immediate need and can't get a hold of your Account Manager. They can look up your account, answer questions and relay the information to your Account Manager providing seamless communication.
• JustWorks did an outstanding job walking my employees through their initial set up process. While hesitant about switching insurance carries, our Account Manager was able to answer every question we had with transparency. They even made suggestions about rolling over deductibles that had already been met and gave important information about current healthcare providers being in network.

Incentivized

• Namely has helped with our COVID sick leave response. It has made a major difference both with the weekly payroll and the 941 tax filing
• Keeping track of our multiple PTO plans. Thank goodness for Namely, I have shredded my old PTO spreadsheets.
• Employees like the convenience of the cell phone app. As a payroll administrator, I like the Geo Tracking tool where I can see where some are when the clock is in or out.
• The flexibility inside of the payroll system both as you are finalizing an employee profile and when you are processing payroll is a major advantage.
• The reports I get out of Namely in Excel format work well for me.

Incentivized

• More HR info in regards to compliance and resources for employees to stay in compliance (they have just started to do this with sexual harassment but more things like this would be great!)
• Better integrations with company holidays and timesheets. They have recently updated PTO to integrate so I'm hoping that company holidays would also be a feature added.

Incentivized

• in my opinion, HORRIBLE performance review platform, we had a really hard time with it and would not recommend that you use this function
• In my experience, poor customer service, difficult to get ahold of them when you need support
• Capabilities are limited in comparison to other more robust HRIS systems

Incentivized

Administrators and employees love Namely. It is very easy to use and streamlined. Employees stay engaged with news feed updates and enjoy all the self service options. The time cards are very easy to access and clocking in and out for non-exempt employees is a breeze. Namely is part of our family.

Justworks is a really good platform for payroll and even vendor payments. There are some areas of improvement that Justworks could make in the area of bulk processing, to decrease administrative time as well as reporting. There are no reports we currently use from the Justworks platform as we have not found them useful.

Incentivized

It is very simple to use for myself, the HR team, and our employees. I find the payroll process very user-friendly. Reporting is simple to navigate and produce the required information requested. I know our employees enjoy the self-service feature and use it on a regular basis, which saves me time.

Incentivized

Justworks offers many different options for customer service. You can contact them via email, phone or Slack. They are quick to resolve issues and if your Account Manager is out of office, they have other Managers covering your account who are knowledgable and ready to support. They also have an office in New York, which makes their support even more localized.

Incentivized

Unfortunately, in more recent years we've had a lot of difficulty with Namely as they've undergone a lot of internal changes. It took 4 returned emails saying the person no longer worked at Namely to find someone to help me (I finally called payroll) and it took a while to get connected with a direct source of help. Namely now has set up their "pod" feature of communication which works well for the most part, but is different. I felt spoiled when we first started with Namely, but now it feels very much like working with most large companies' help centers. There is a system to go through and you do have the option to click "urgent". In general the help is efficient, but it still takes a few days and it's hard to speak with someone directly. It is all done via online communications and is difficult to actually speak to someone on the phone. This works well for most cases, but I do feel frustrated more often than I'd like to with this type of communication. (2019/2020)

Incentivized

There were so many specialists in the implementation process; it would have been nice to have fewer people who had a more holistic understanding of the platform. Also, the onboarding meetings covered so much technical information that there was relatively little time for questions (though questions were invited). Eventually, everything worked out.

Incentivized

ADP was our previous PEO and, in my experience, they were old, clunky and never got back to us. In my opinion, the customer service was non-existent. Insperity was out of our budget but I think it is a good product. Paychex Flex was similar and I like their product for payroll; however, we wanted to offer healthcare, commuter benefits and a 401k to employees and although Paychex is starting to offer those items through 3rd party providers, it wasn't as integrated of a solution as Justworks presented.

Incentivized

We had used Namely in conjunction with Wurk for payroll and Ease for benefits enrollment. Unfortunately the "fraken-system" was very cumbersome to manage. The fraken-system was used due to the limited options in the cannabis industry for providers who were willing to work with us. We eventually transitioned to OnePoint to have an all-in-one system but also left it because it was not able to scale with the organization.

• The tool is much cheaper than hiring an outsourced payroll provider (cheaper than other PEO).
• Cheaper than going to market for health insurance on our own.
• Manages all employment tax, etc. which is a huge help and would require additional resources to manage without Justworks.

Incentivized

• When we were over 100, it provided a huge benefit to us due to the accuracy of payroll, benefits integration and management, and org chart and performance tracking. Having all of that in one place was a huge improvement from the former disjointed user experience.
• When we dropped below 100 due to covid, our insurance rates went up 93% to offer comparable plans, and we had to move over to a PEO for benefits which meant we also had to move payroll. It was hugely disruptive, and now our employees have a bad experience when trying to manage their HR lives in multiple places. It is confusing and, again, disjointed.

Incentivized