Paychex Reviews

Current Employee – been working at Paychex

Pros – Treats employees very well. Great culture, great opportunity.

Cons – If you dot work hard you will not succeed.

Advice to Senior Management – Keep doing what you are doing.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Paychex full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Many opportunities for those willing to pursue them. The job is what the individual makes of it, not what the ideal is. I enjoy my job and enjoy that I work with.

Cons – Maybe too many meetings of no value. Projects can take too much time or worse and be pushed to a fast track to complete in too little time.

Advice to Senior Management – Pay attention to the comments you hear, there probably is truth. Take action promptly to resolve issues with staff otherwise it festers with those that want to work and want to do a good job. Left unchecked, well, the good ones leave.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Paychex full-time for more than a year

Pros – Great Management
Great Operations
Healthy work/life balance
Benfits are great for a Large Company

Cons – Expectations to build referral business with a variety of networks (Banks, CPA's, current clients, new clients, etc...) can be very overwhelming.
Base pay... low for this area... When sales are good, life is good. Slow months when your working your tail off make it difficult to live off of low take home pay.
Turnover is high.... mostly due to more money offered.

Advice to Senior Management – Increase base pay. More monthly incentives to hitting revenue or unit quotas.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Paychex

Pros – As long as you are hitting your number you have all the freedom in the world. Work with a lot of young, fun people

Cons – Very high stress, you need to perform or else you will be miserable. Monthly quotas so the pressure never stops

Former Employee – worked at Paychex full-time for more than 8 years

Pros – The management team was incredible in the area I worked in. They also focused a lot on growth and development.

Cons – Sometimes the hours were long which provided for little work life balance. The management team was good about allowing for additional time off during the slower times of the year.

Advice to Senior Management – Continue to listen to your employees

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Paychex full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Good atmosphere/culture. Great overall opportunities for growth. National "Brand" recognition.

Cons – Some technologies are dated. Not an EEO company.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Paychex full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Paychex provides you with everything that you need to become successful in a sales orginization. cell phone, client lists, and support.

Cons – As an HR solutions representative the ramp up time may take a while since you will be learing all of the high level and details aspects of HR. Once you get familiar with the product and value proposition, your success should be imiminent. Just work hard and check your ego at the door.

Advice to Senior Management – Pair up your new employees with your top level sales representatives if you want to shorten the ramp up time. The problem is how do you incentivise your rockstars to do so? I can garauntee that if you do a business analysis by using the strategy that it will result in great profits for the orginization.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Paychex full-time

Pros – At the risk of sounding idealistic:

- You support small businesses in your area and help them to be successful. You will drive past restaurants, stores, insurance agencies, law firms, day cares, dentists, construction companies--you NAME it--and say "I do their payroll!" You meet clients from all walks of life and get to hear all their stories.
- You learn lots about how the real world works. You know what the pay scale is for just about every job. You understand more about what politicians are saying on TV when they talk about the economy. You understand what goes into and comes out of your own paycheck. You even make smarter decisions with your own money once you learn how to calculate the benefits of retirement plans, flexible spending accounts, etc.
- There are lots of opportunities for growth and promotion within the company. Many positions from corporate or another branch can even be worked remotely. You don't necessarily have to be willing to relocate to seek promotions.

And now the less fluffy-stuff:

- The pay is pretty good for an entry-level job. Let me repeat: a Payroll Specialist is an ENTRY-LEVEL job. Pay varies by the cost of living in the area, but I find that my pay is pretty comparable to the administrative employees for a lot of my "white collar" clients. (And remember from above, I know what they get paid!)
- Lots of paid time off. You get 2 weeks' vacation, 4 floating holidays, 5 sick days and 6 paid holidays a year. You also have PTO for doctor's appointments. Many branches do a "flex" schedule where you can work four 10 hour days and have Friday off (on a rotating schedule with others.)
- No micro-management for those who don't need it. They say it all depends on the branch, but I feel like my supervisors encourage me to work independently and think for myself. Nobody watches how often I get up from my desk or questions me if traffic is bad and I get there at 8:05. I assume they would (and should!) if it were a chronic issue affecting performance.
- The job isn't going anywhere. While other companies have been shutting down or cutting jobs, Paychex is growing. They did put a freeze on raises at one time (it's been lifted!), but I've never heard of lay-offs or down-sizing.

Cons – - Client load is heavy. You may have anywhere from 200-300 clients. I had to retool my organizational and time-management skills to cope with it. There are days when it can be pretty overwhelming.
- Year-end. This is a brutal time for anyone in the financial industry and Paychex is no different. Usually you can't take PTO during December and January. They were very up-front about this all through the interview process. It's a pain but it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.
- Clients can be vicious when you make a mistake. (And you WILL make mistakes. See above. The client load is too heavy to perform perfectly all the time.) You're dealing directly with company bank accounts and people's money. An extra zero or a brain-fart can be a costly mistake. You don't get to just get them off the phone and be done with it. You'll have to deal with them again and again. If you're prone to anxiety, this can be tough.
- Self-study training modules are pretty dry and there isn't much time to complete them. You earn raises in your first year by completing training tests, based on phone-book-sized manuals that you are supposed to make time to read. You can't take them home (and you probably wouldn't want to) but there isn't much free time for it at work.
- Sometimes staffing isn't proportional to turnover. I'm not sure what the process is for replacing someone who leaves or promotes out of their position, but it seems like each department is always one body behind the workload. When they hire someone, it takes about a month before they can really be of any use, so in the meantime others have to pick up the slack for the empty seat. If your branch experiences a lot of turnover, this can be a chronic problem.

Advice to Senior Management – - Offer regularly scheduled downtime to new Payroll Specialists to complete training modules.
- Balance out turnover with re-staffing in a way that doesn't leave the rest of us playing catch up when someone leaves their position.
- Keep growing the company using the same strategies you have been. Overall, I think this is a great place to work. My "pros" outweigh my "cons" in the scales of job satisfaction!!

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Paychex full-time for more than 8 years

Pros – Management is trying to change
Stable and steady employment
No lay offs, room for growth if you are technical
Generally nice people to work with

Cons – expect much professional movement to be lateral
Need more accountability
projects still being date driven, wither products are stable to deliver or not
low pay
unforgiving if you make an error

Advice to Senior Management – Continue to find ways to move faster, use technology
Work on creating consistent and quality managers - there is still a lot of work to do

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Paychex full-time for more than a year

Pros – Its a job and its better than being on unemployment. Not much else to say

Cons – Low base salary. Low input from managment. Old school management style.

Advice to Senior Management – Get better management at field level.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company