Gusto empowers New Apprenticeship to engage its distributed workforce.

Competitive benefits, payroll, and HR on one platform

When New Apprenticeship Chief of Staff Justin Voeller was looking for affordable HR software, his top priority was ensuring the new platform could implement a range of benefits to support current employees and attract new talent. Voeller found that without a competitive benefits package, the tech hiring pool was limited.

“Being a small company, it’s really nice to have HR and payroll that can be handled by one person, so that other employees can focus on other areas of work. It’s nice to have everything consolidated and it’s really sped up the time it takes to handle payroll and employee benefits.”

Through Gusto, the company now offers a 401(k) plan, health and dental insurance, and a $1,000 annual stipend for technology expenses, with Gusto managing the reimbursement process. 

Saving up to eight hours per month through simplified onboarding

Since 2020, New Apprenticeship more than doubled its workforce - and they needed quick and efficient ways to bring on new staff. The company uses Gusto’s user-friendly onboarding suite to consolidate key documents and processes. For instance, the onboarding checklist eliminates back and forth between admins and employees, reducing the need for admin oversight and saving them time. 

“We use a variety of Gusto’s onboarding tools, including the offer letter template,” says Johanna Voeller, Operations Director at New Apprenticeship. “The platform stores a variety of documents and makes it easy for employees to access things like their W2 and W4 forms from their dashboard. Using Gusto is so much easier than trying to keep track of things in Google Drive. We save up to eight hours a month on the entire onboarding process, which is especially useful as we continue to add more contractors.” 

Once contractors are onboarded, Voeller finds value in Gusto’s ability to export timesheets every pay period, which ensures contractors are on track to meet their scheduled hours.

Multi-state compliance made easy

Because the shift to remote-first work environments happened so quickly, keeping up with ever-changing tax rules and regulations in multiple states was difficult for many companies. As a burgeoning business with a distributed workforce, New Apprenticeship utilizes Gusto to maintain its compliance across several states. Gusto has saved New Apprenticeship 8 hours per month on compliance-related processes, including federal and state payroll taxes and regulations.

“We use Gusto to navigate tricky employment and tax law,” states Justin Voeller. “Right now, we have employees in nine states, but that number will continue to grow. We recently started the process of registering in a new state, and Gusto’s compliance guide has been helpful in figuring out which forms to fill out and how to fully comply.”

Harnessing technology to advance the employee experience

Delante L. Bess, Vice President of Technology at New Apprenticeship, understands the power of data. Through Gusto, Bess manages collecting and analyzing the qualitative data gleaned from employee surveys. He also uses survey data to inform his ever-evolving technology roadmap for the company, which serves as a guide on what types of tools will elevate business goals and employee success. 

“I believe that it's absolutely essential right now to have readily available, employee-driven data so leadership can better understand the psychology of our organization. The surveys we administer through Gusto provide vital information that helps us make well-informed business decisions that put the employee first,” explains Bess. 

For example, thanks to feedback gathered through employee surveys, New Apprenticeship realized they needed to provide staff with retirement benefits and help them plan for their long-term financial health. They decided to set up a 401(k) plan through Gusto’s partnership with Guideline.

Gusto’s usability and targeted functionality reduce the demand on Bess’s team to constantly develop new surveys. “As a cloud-based platform, Gusto provides a more modern user experience than other tools on the market,” states Bess. “The UX is fantastic. It’s not clunky at all … Gusto helps my team focus on the results of these surveys instead of trying to figure out how to develop and activate them.”

Engaged employees and successful apprentices

Moving forward with an employee-first mentality, New Apprenticeship plans to scale its apprenticeship cohorts and employer partnerships. 

“The company currently supports about 500 apprentices a year. The plan is to bring in several thousand in the next year or so,” explains Justin Voeller. “Being champions for more apprentices begins with championing our own employees. That means making sure they are supported and that they can make their voices heard within our organization to enact positive change.”