How Gusto Provided Strategar with an Easy and Reliable Platform for Health Benefits Administration

Yareli Esteban, CEO and founder of Strategar, spent 17 years as an advertising executive at places like Univision, Chevrolet, and Avocados from Mexico before starting her agency in 2013. She wanted to create an agency that prioritized genuine human connections and focused on addressing everyday challenges, especially for underserved communities. Yareli’s business acumen and compassionate leadership extends to how she thinks about offering benefits to her employees. 

From Strategar’s earliest days, Yareli prioritized offering health insurance to her team. She noticed that wasn’t necessarily common across her industry, especially for newer agencies with smaller teams. But she wanted to attract top talent and ensure her team’s well-being right from the start. 

Before Gusto, Yareli used to manually do payroll and her team’s healthcare benefits administration. She had to figure out on her own how to offer healthcare benefits and spent hours manually reviewing, selecting, and paying for health insurance plans by herself. 

Strategar first started using Gusto for payroll. Yareli no longer had to worry about that aspect of her business since she knew she could rely on Gusto to always deliver her employees’ paychecks on time and correctly with minimal involvement from her. After learning that Gusto offered health insurance administration, Yareli started using those services because she knew she could now expect the same easy and reliable process. 

Using Gusto for health benefits management gave her access to a fast, easy-to-use, and trustworthy platform for health insurance, while also allowing her to attract and retain quality talent. 

• “I spent 10 to 15 hours a month [on payroll and health insurance administration before using Gusto], which is a lot of time that I can now use to do the exceptional work that I'm good at.”  

• “I can't buy the peace of mind from things getting done correctly… I think that peace of mind for me is why I love Gusto and why I've recommended it to other small business owners.” 

How Strategar Created a Positive Work Culture with Gusto’s Help

Dallas, Texas is a competitive market with many organizations trying to recruit the employees they need. Offering health care insurance coverage is a key differentiator when prospective employees are deciding where to work next. 

• “Offering insurance to an employee that has a bachelor’s degree or a master's degree is now an expectation. I’ve been told in the past that I could offer different incentives [instead of providing health insurance], but I think the people who are working for my agency need health benefits.” 

• “Health insurance benefits allow us to promote a healthy environment for our employees so they can be their best, feel their best, and be the whole human when they come to work at Strategar.” 

More than just offering health insurance coverage, it’s important to offer tailored health insurance plans. Before Gusto, Yareli was only able to manage offering one plan to all employees, but that didn’t reflect the needs of her diverse team. Strategar also works specifically with healthcare companies and multicultural populations, so Yareli and her team have seen how everyone has different medical needs and thus, how important it is to access a wide variety of care options. 

Now, her team can easily select the plan that works best for them. 

• “In the past, we all had to have similar plans. But, a person who is single in their 20s will likely have different healthcare needs from someone who's in their 40s and is married with children.”

• “Knowing that my employees have the best plans available in the market for businesses like ours...Having the breadth of choice has been great for our employees and has allowed us to become a really attractive place for people to come work and stay at." 

How Gusto Helped Strategar Attract Top Talent with Competitive Health Benefits Packages

Having access to quality comprehensive health care also allows employees to stay healthy so they can do their best work and enjoy what they’re doing. Moreover, it signals to workers that their employers are invested in them. 

Within the next year, Yareli plans to start offering short-term and long-term disability insurance to take even better care of her team – and she plans to use Gusto to make it quick and easy to expand Strategar’s benefits offerings.

• “The benefits platform on Gusto is just a winner from our perspective: it puts the control back in employees’ hands. They're able to select the plans that are best for them. They have the flexibility to not be stuck with one size-fits-all and that power to choose and freedom ensures that we have a really great environment. We're giving people the best that's out there at the best price. 

• “Providing benefits that are customizable through a self-serve platform gives our employees peace of mind that we care.”