Paychex vs. Workday Human Capital Management

It's better for larger businesses (50+) with various types of pay structures. Employees need to be comfortable with technology to take advantage of the self-service features. I've struggled with the default in the state tax section; extra steps must be taken when an employee lives in a different state than they work, and we don't know where they live until after completing their profile. So we have to go into the system and make the corrections, then notify the employee to go in and complete the state-specific withholding forms and follow up to confirm they do so.

Incentivized

I would say it's well suited in every environment because I think it does so much. It's like the holy grail of HRIS systems is what I like to call it because thinking about all parts of the employee lifecycle, it lives here in Workday Human Capital Management. So I love the fact that you can do the people data analytics, you can store employee records, the talent acquisition pieces there. I'm thinking I can't think of anything negative right now except for the fact that I can't drill down into the data for the people analytics side. Other than that, I think it's literally, yeah, the holy grail of HRIS systems, I love it and I would highly recommend it.

Incentivized

• It provides a well account of Retirement Plan Account Information.
• Alerts are sent to email when there is new information to access.
• Employee access both online and thru app.
• Paperless options.
• Easy and quick access to paystubs and tax forms.
• Easy employee retirement management.

Incentivized

• Since it is cloud based, it does not have version control issues (e.g. get 10 years behind on versions that are no longer supported), or the need for constant upgrades. This is completed behind the scenes.
• The flexibility of Workday HCM implementation and then taking it to day to day operations was superior. You can then blow and out and start using other system cababilities when ready.
• To enter the system, we must use multi-factor authentication for additional security of employee data. A user downloads their reports and then they are shown in their archive of work transactions and history.

Incentivized

• When it comes to audit reports, Paychex Flex could improve on helping clients locate the correct reports for audit purposes more easily
• When a client receives a discount, it would be helpful if the discount were automatically provided each year, or if the Paychex rep proactively reached out to the client first, versus the client having to call and request that the discount continue.
• It would be helpful if the invoice was emailed to the client versus the client logging in to access invoices.

Incentivized

• The web interface is awful
• Terrible, terrible, UI. No modern features like auto-save. I can't count the times I have lost work.
• Their UX team (if it even exists) must be aliens, because I can't see how humans would have come up with the UI conventions they have.
• Who creates a website application where you can't open stuff in multiple browser windows and tabs easily?

Incentivized

there are a lot of competitors on the market such as BambooHR and Insperity. Paychex need to make significant improvement on their offline customer service in order to compete with the other guys. Everything is online now and timely response to customer's questions is vital. Customers won't enjoy being put on hold for 45 mins every time they have a question regarding their HSA problems

Incentivized

It is work to make one system the source of truth for our data, but now that it is done, there is less work involved in staying on this path. This means for us that maintaining and/or implementing new modules like performance, finance, talent, etc. is simple. It's a no-brainer

Incentivized

Some things could be streamlined. For example, we could do custom options for the "add items" tab which has so many options that we never use. "Medical Pay" could be something that the system remembers for the applicable employees. Salaried employees' salaries should definitely be auto-filled. Overall the system works well but I think it could be improved to be easier to use and read.

Incentivized

Overall this is a highly useable product. It does require continual use to stay current on changes in the User Interface and functionality, but as noted earlier, this is a reasonable trade-off for the rapid rate of improvement. It is very user friendly and the templated business processes prevents the system from becoming overly complicated

We have not experienced any difficulties with unplanned outages. Notifications are always made for outages, and they do not effect normal business operations.

Incentivized

In 2014, Workday has changed the update process. There will be two updates a year; the updates will be delivered to customers typically in a 24 hour window during these two weekends a year. They also keep the Community up-to-date about any planned outages, etc. There is weekly scheduled downtime on Friday night.

Unless there is lag time within the internet, the Paychex Flex website loads exceptional fast, pages load quickly and reports that I need to print or download load quickly. If I need to create a specialized report, once I complete it I receive an e-mail telling me my report is ready to be downloaded. Changing between web pages is fast as well.

Incentivized

From my perspective, the system runs like a well oiled machine and I have not had any issues with customers complaining about speed. If a report is taking long to run, the report can run in the background and you can go about your business. For larger enterprises, there is additional space and machines to process the application in what Workday refers to it as Extended Configuration Tenant

Neil Williams makes this entire system work - without our direct contact with our professional advisor - this would be just like any other platform and the relationship would not have the dimension that is has. Using chat or phone support with a new person every time you need support wastes time, as generally the person you are talking to does not have an intimate knowledge of our company. By having an assigned professional representative that knows our companies, this provides a level of confidence of caring coming from the Paychex side.

Incentivized

Support is provided by OneSource, the reseller. They really have no expertise and their level of technical expertise is poor. When we went to our training, the room was filled with OneSource people going through the same training. We finished training in 1 day, they took 4 days. They are hardly experts. Workday has come out with two more releases since then and Onesource have doubled in size in the last year – so it’s hard to see how they can keep up.

There is an online community/portal that is pretty good. There is however no easy answer to “guided completion”

We did online training only

Incentivized

Some training is offered online. Cost is per-person. This also gets quite expensive. Training doesn’t follow a logical path A to B. Starts in middle. When you try to do it afterwards at your desk, difficult.
• Training scenarios are not very real

It was easy to understand and follow along. I do like the informational videos that we can utilize before we opt to call in for customer service support. It has made a difference since sometimes that resolves the issue I may have had and saved myself a phone call to Paychex support.

Incentivized

I have done for report writing and mass imports (EIBs). They give materials and you run through examples, i.e. you don’t just watch them do tasks, so that is helpful. Training is expensive – a single reporting writing class is $600 per person for virtual training

Implementation was very smooth. The most cumbersome task was entering the current employees into the system during initial set up, but Paychex staff handled most of that and verified against prior system reports as well as internal reports provided to ensure 100% accuracy.

Incentivized

We had a small team - 5 of us total. It would have been nice to have a little larger team, but we made it work. Definitely helped that for our first payroll our 3rd party partner OSV was onsight. This minimized issues.

Incentivized

In addition to the ones listed above, we also used BenePay, a local payroll company. We found Paychex Flex priced in the middle, with ADP the most expensive and too complicated, with many features that were unnecessary for us. We found that Paychex Flex's features and reporting to be sized right for our size (around 30 employees). Paychex Flex also offered a very reasonable service to apply for the ERTC

Incentivized

The workday human capital management stacks up against ADP due to the overall different features that we have got in a single platform. With Workday HCM, we do not have to select multiple vendors or tools to manage employees, salary details, career progress, etc. Also, the workday human capital management is very easy to use in all the different use cases that I mentioned above.

Employees can log in at home and get up to date information on their FSA balance and any medical bill reimbursements they may have uploaded. At renewal time they have the ability to make changes to their FSA or for new employees star the enrollment.

Incentivized

Workday has released Financials and is continuing to develop it's Human Capital Management footprint with the addition of Workday Recruiting. I think customers will find that is easy to add on additional functionality in the system. Workday does make it easy for customers to make changes without relying on IT resources. The Business Process framework is a visual tool that allows functional resources to make changes and see the flow of the transaction

• With Paychex Flex we have been able to improve our compliance with required documentation for new/rehires
• Moving everyone to direct deposit and mobile clock in/out eliminated lines at punching stations and paycheck pickup stations
• Lost checks is a thing of the past

Incentivized

• To get the most value out of all possible automation in Workday you really need to use a lot of their modules, otherwise you may not be able to solve for some pretty important and necessary needs.
• The system maintenance is way more than what I have seen with some other systems and therefore you need a quite large team dedicated to it.
• The ability to automate a lot of administrative tasks and the ability for employee and manager self-service definitely create a lot of opportunity for HR to spent time and effort elsewhere. A lot of the automation that can be leveraged in Workday also allows for eliminating third party vendors as well as the cost of their maintenance and integrations.

Incentivized