GoCo Review

• Modern human resources software platforms provide the benefits and compliance measures every company needs to operate successfully and efficiently.
• Choosing the best HR software platform involves examining the cost, flexibility and customer service your company needs to support your team.
• We examined five of the leading HR software platforms and chose GoCo as the best for custom workflows.
• This article is for business owners looking for flexible, all-in-one HR software with dedicated customer service support.

It's refreshing when a software platform understands that you know your business better than any outside service provider could, which is exactly how GoCo approaches its HR software solution. They'll let you define your processes, policies and partnerships, then help build a tailored HR solution to perfectly fit into your existing operations. If you already have a benefits plan that works for your employees, GoCo will add it and make it easy for your team to enroll online.

If, however, you're not happy with your current payroll service, GoCo will guide you through their payroll system, which handles everything from new-hire setup to final paycheck calculations and everything in between, with great features like single sign-on through a unified system. GoCo does a fantastic job differentiating itself from its competitors with a strong emphasis on dedicated customer service and expert-level HR support. Your dedicated GoCo customer success manager will work with you to build the best HR software solution for your needs. 

Pricing

GoCo starts at $5 per user per month for onboarding, employee self-service and MagicDocs, its digital HR document and e-signature system. However, they encourage you to contact customer service for a custom plan that suits your optimal HR workflow. One great thing about GoCo's entry-level pricing is that it includes a dedicated customer support specialist, something you usually see in top-tier or enterprise-level plans. We also really like the low-commitment demo that does not require you to enter a credit card for access. The full-featured demo account comes preloaded with employee data so business owners and administrators can run the platform through its paces in a meaningful way.  

Tip: Unlike many competitors, GoCo offers annual and multiyear contracts with long-term savings of up to 20%.

Usability

Anyone who's spent time with another HR software provider or used project management software will feel right at home with GoCo's simple dashboard. Other providers we've evaluated may have invested more time into making their systems look slick, but in terms of usability, we feel that GoCo does the job very well. As with any user interface, what's listed first can tell you a lot about the core purpose of the platform. The standard layout lists your inbox at the top left of the page, followed by easy reminders for time-sensitive tasks, with the flexibility via filters to customize the view.

Did you know? You are not required to input credit card information to view GoCo's free demo.

Source: GoCo

The home section for Workflow Overview provides administrators with a vibrant color-coded progression view for all in-progress HR tasks. As you start typing in the search bar, you'll immediately see a list of matching employee names to help find the right information without scrolling through your entire company directory.

The dropdowns make it easy to narrow the scope of your view to show all of your performance reviews or all of your completed employee surveys. In the template section, you'll find useful, customizable hiring workflows for employees and contractors; an option to add your workflow templates; and an area to edit your company's existing workflows. Initiating one of these workflows from a template is as easy as selecting the employee's name and clicking the "Start" button. From there, GoCo will take care of the notifications and keep your selected assignee(s) on task and on time.

Source: GoCo

The line charts and downloadable spreadsheets are not the most user-friendly in terms of data visualization and trend identification. If your team is well versed in Excel, then this is a minor issue at most. However, the seemingly endless list of custom reports you can build from the hundreds of existing variables does make this a powerful reporting tool.

Keeping in tune with their flexible mindset, GoCo supports the data fields your company already uses. You create additional "custom fields" and specify the field's level of access to determine if it's required or not. We stress tested the reporting system by selecting each of the hundreds of variables for our 12-person team and found everything generated in about 30 seconds with the option to export to CSV.

Source: GoCo

Features

Flexibility

HR software is only easy to use if it conforms to your company's processes. GoCo's software not only offers all of the features you need from a comprehensive HR platform – it's built around the way you want to handle your payroll, policies, 401(k) benefits and processes. That means you don't have to change your benefits or payroll provider if you don't want to. Instead, you can add them to your GoCo account and let your employees enroll online, accessing everything from one easy-to-use dashboard. They'll provide you with all of the tools you need to support your team, without any of the software or services you don't want.

Customer Service

Making mistakes with HR compliance can be costly and damaging to the reputation of your business, which could make it more difficult to hire the best people. Regardless of your plan, GoCo assigns a dedicated customer success manager to you, whose only responsibility is to ensure your team is set up for success. That means you have access to an expert on your side to ensure your workflows are functioning properly, your employees are being supported with the right benefits and payroll, and your company is complying with accurate and stress-free centralized recordkeeping.

Workflows

For small to large companies experiencing strong growth or HR departments with limited resources, getting access to the right automated workflows can be liberating. GoCo can help ensure your admins never have to repeat the same task twice by automating everything on your daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly to-do list. You will find quick access to workflow templates for your employee equipment request, onboarding checklist, semiannual performance review, involuntary termination checklist, new-hire orientation, employee surveys and talent acquisition. The workflows also support custom fields and offer hundreds of reporting variables to build reports on any data in your system.

Source: GoCo

Team Feedback

Building a better company culture entails taking the time to understand your company from employees' perspective. The dashboard's "Team Feedback" tab provides administrators with a holistic view of employees' satisfaction based on regular one-on-one meetings, with objective ways to score performance and areas for subjective notes for praise or improvement.

GoCo consolidates all of this data for quick analysis on your team member's successes, their progress at your company, and you can see a companywide view of your survey and performance review results. The result is a set of reviews and reports that are especially useful, since your HR administrators will easily understand the data and initiate meaningful change or reward an exceptional performer.

Source: GoCo

Team Feedback

Building a better company culture entails taking the time to understand your company from employees' perspective. The dashboard's "Team Feedback" tab provides administrators with a holistic view of employees' satisfaction based on regular one-on-one meetings, with objective ways to score performance and areas for subjective notes for praise or improvement.

GoCo consolidates all of this data for quick analysis on your team member's successes, their progress at your company, and you can see a companywide view of your survey and performance review results. The result is a set of reviews and reports that are especially useful, since your HR administrators will easily understand the data and initiate meaningful change or reward an exceptional performer.

Source: GoCo

Setup

Implementing GoCo is a fairly straightforward process that does not require a dedicated IT specialist. You will, of course, need to be prepared with all of the basic information for your company account before moving on to details like selecting your payroll structure or your employees' health and financial benefits options through GoCo's easy-to-use wizard. The full implementation video tutorial takes about 20 minutes to explain each aspect of the process. And if you run into any issues along the way, you can be connected to a GoCo support specialist.

Customer Service

Another way GoCo distinguishes itself in a crowded field of HR software service providers is with their dedicated customer success managers. While some competitors we've reviewed only offer phone support through their top-tier subscription plans, every GoCo customer is assigned a manager whose sole job is to "bend over backward to make your team successful." Their full customer support team is available by live chat, email, and phone on weekdays from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. CST from their headquarters in Houston.

They also offer an extensive catalog of articles, e-books, webinars and thorough industrywide surveys to keep your team up to date on trends and best practices. Extra items, like their in-depth e-book Report: The State of HR in 2021, focus on what's changing and what's ahead for the future of work, showing us that GoCo does more than focus its efforts on sales and retention. If you have an especially complex question, you'll be able to get expert advice from a certified HR professional rapidly.

Drawbacks

New and smaller companies without a great deal of experience in human resources may find the flexibility provided by GoCo to be slightly overwhelming. For these customers, the option to choose between a set list of standard subscription packages may make more sense with an all-in-one HR software service provider like Gusto, for example. However, experienced HR professionals working for companies of any size should have an easy time making sense of the numerous options and identifying the right features and employee benefit solutions.

Small businesses with low turnover could find many of GoCo's features to be overkill. These companies may not benefit significantly from the automated workflows, as a result of having fewer repetitive tasks for onboarding sequences, hiring checklists or promotion approval flow, and other recurring HR functions. In these cases, it's possible that building and managing automated workflows that are only utilized a few times each year for tasks related to onboarding, benefits, payroll and compliance are not saving much time or creating better outcomes.

Summary

Who we recommend GoCo for:

• Any business looking for a highly flexible, all-in-one HR software platform that works seamlessly with the payment or benefits providers you already enjoy using
• Small businesses that value having a dedicated support specialist at no additional cost to help with any of their HR or compliance needs
• Small and medium-sized business shopping for a tailored HR software and service provider capable of keeping your team on task through easy-to-use workflows 

Who we DON'T recommend GoCo for:

• Small businesses with low turnover or slow growth that won't benefit as much from many of the automation features
• New businesses owners who are unsure of what they need and could find themselves overwhelmed when piecing together a tailored HR software solution