The Gusto Small Company HR Manager

“What was the moment this product clicked?” — share yours

An HR manager, office manager, or operations lead at a company of 10–75 people for whom payroll and benefits are one of many responsibilities, not the whole job. They run payroll twice a month. They onboard new hires. They manage benefits open enrollment once a year and feel mild panic every time. They chose Gusto because it was less terrifying than what came before it. They trust it, mostly, but payroll is the one area of their job where a mistake has immediate and personal consequences for real people.

• →Run payroll accurately and on time without it taking more than 30 minutes
• →Onboard new employees in a way that doesn't make the company look disorganized
• →Stay compliant with state and federal requirements they can't always track themselves

• —State tax registration requirements that surface after they've already hired in a new state
• —Benefits enrollment where employee confusion becomes their support burden
• —Year-end W-2 and tax filing that always reveals something they should have caught earlier
• —The feeling of not knowing what they don't know about compliance

• Payroll is trust — an error is not an inconvenience, it's a broken promise
• HR compliance is a moving target and they're not a lawyer
• The best HR tools are the ones that tell you what you need to do before you need to know it

Runs payroll twice a month for 10–75 employees. Manages health, dental, vision, and 401(k) through Gusto's benefits administration. Handles new hire onboarding — including I-9, direct deposit, and benefits enrollment — via Gusto's self-service onboarding flow. Is the primary Gusto administrator. Has a bookkeeper or external accountant who also has Gusto access. Has needed Gusto support twice; both times it was good. Has anxiety about the annual 1099 contractor season.

• →Proactive multi-state compliance alerts before a new hire is created remove the
• →"I didn't know I needed to do that" payroll delay
• →Employee-facing benefits materials that reduce "which plan should I pick" questions
• →to the HR manager restore benefits enrollment to a workflow instead of a support queue
• →Year-end preparation timeline that starts 6 weeks out removes the December scramble
• →Compliance confidence score or checklist that surfaces gaps without requiring a legal background

Pairs with `small-business-accountant` for the payroll-to-bookkeeping handoff workflow. Contrast with `enterprise-chro` to map the full spectrum of HR function sophistication. Use with `greenhouse-primary-user` for the full talent acquisition to payroll onboarding journey.