Paychex Reviews

Pros

Time off, benefits- a good place to spend 2 years to get some experience....they put you in a place to gain some valuable knowledge

Cons

amount of workload, its a good ol boy network. branch leadership is horrible- unable to deal with the simplest of problems

Advice to Senior Management

Products that actually work would be great. Being paid in accordance with what is demanded of us would be another.

Pros

Paychex does offer a good benefits package and has great programs such as health wellness etc. They always try to have little contests to outweigh cons which suprisingly most CSR's didn't bother to upsell and didn't uptake on this opportunity for extra money. You are pushed to great heights within your professional career so you can take a lot of growth with your experience. They also offer a decent PTO accrual. Never really had a hardtime taking PTO as long as it wasn't a blackout date and enough notice was given. Other than that - I can't say good things - unless you are in sales this place is an absolute joke!

Cons

Absolute slavemill philosophy if you work in any admin/customer service role. While there can be some great members within peers or management - I was yet to witness any in my office or region. Most were more concerned with office politics/hs drama rather than making it a welcoming team that leaned on each other. CSR's tended to be so overwhelmed that they they took their unhappiness out on anyone that was doing well. The training is a joke! You are thrown at a desk after going to Corporate which fails to only teachyou software and that's about it. You get your client's pretty much all at once no matter how they try to spread it out and it is truly a sink or swim philosphy. A thick skin is a must to survive here!! Your closest sitting coworkers are the ones that train you on the job, as it is an overload of information to learn due to a ridiculous learning curve. Yet they offer a measly 13/hr for csr's and less for admins. Sales or mgmt is the only place to make any money to pay your bills in this economy. There is no way to compensate for the constant stress. Every day your role is to deal with headache after headache and get disrespected all the while. They offer incremental raises based on your own pace of bookwork/online training and tests but forget it - because you can't find the time! Your phone absolutely rings off the hook! Half of the calls are to get reamed by your clients of why something wasn't done fast enough. Where is the time to actually amend items or encode the payroll like your client's need you to? This job requires hours and hours of research with complex system and/or tax issues with little or no help or understanding to resolving them. The work piles up non-stop and then you fail essentially when your surveys are unacceptable. Client satisfaction is impossible to obtain due to constant software/server issues, lack of investment in updating products and technology, delivery messes, incompetant training, increasing cost increases to clientele and not enough csr's per client set. Half my team quit in the almost 2 yrs I was there. Let's not forget the only way to succeed is to kiss up and drink company cool-aid. How do the outstanding performers typically get rewarded?? With more clients ofcourse!! It's insane! If you want to do this job go to ADP and at least their you will start at 16-17/hr for the same stress. The company has lost sight of what clients pay for and why they are in business in the first place. I got fired after attempting to enter sales and move up in company. Big mistake and foul play was proven to unemployment office. I was a very ethical and driven worker that didn't deserve what I got. It's a blessing I am no longer there but it put me in an awful position initially. If I would've known I was to be a saint there without the ability to perform miracles - I would have never accepted the job. Don't waste your time! Many can agree with my experience - I wasn't just a disgruntled employee - I had a bad experience on my good faith. Don't make the same mistake I did.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay your service team what they are worth! While Sales and Ops will always be at war - your CSR's are the reason this company runs and the core of it all! Listen to your employees! If either half of your team is quitting or others are going to the bathroom to cry it ought to tell you something. Stop giving honest and eager employees bad reviews because they didn't fit into the tough skin mold this company lives by. This job is hard and in the line's of what CPA's do - yet without the pay or respect. Your job is to encourage and strengthen your team and support them. Yet little support is given. If any employee buckles - it is then their problem and they are made out to be a poor performer etc. What happened to a manager having the best interest of their employees? What happened to client's getting what they are paying for? Hire more people to fill these big shoes or lower your prices to what the client experience actually is now.

Pros

Can make some good money. Must be willing to work all the time.
Some DSM's are really great, others have no clue.
Conference can be a lot of fun.

Cons

Senior Management who haven't been out in the field in years and have no clue.
Corp who have no concept that the economy sucks right now and continues to raise quotas.
The "disposable" mentality the management has about sales reps.

Advice to Senior Management

Take a realistic look at what the economy and market are doing and work with your sales reps to encourage them to sell instead of continually beating on them.

Pros

The company is focused on growth, process and system improvements, upper management is involved, IT staff is knowledgable, co-workers are engaged

Cons

extremely limited growth opportunity outside of the NY offices... branch locations are virtually all customer service roles and their supv/management

Pros

Great training program, high caliber of new hires in your program and other partnering program. Good pay and benefit package when you assume the best.

Cons

Ripple effect in bad sales department management. You can have a shortage of payroll reps who feed you 80% of your business, so you have to make up for it elsewhere, while you have a limited territory. You are held accountable for your quotas, but no accountability exists for conditions conducive to your success (i.e. inflow of new clients, productive internal partners etc.

Advice to Senior Management

Work on using the carrot more than the stick and you will foster more loyalty (seems like it's unique to my Zone on the whole)

Pros

Great Training, nice office, decent pay although I heard it is not as good as competitors

Cons

Management treats people awful, many people complained and no one did anything about it. Three of the tops reps left the company. Micro-manager treats reps like a child. When you want to take a vacation, get ready for a guilt trip or for your sales leads to go to someone else. Billing errors constantly, price goes up and down and they can never seem to fix the problem, which falls back on the rep, it's a turn and burn job, always hunting for new business no residual income

Advice to Senior Management

Managment needs to learn work life balance, treat reps like adults especially when they perform. Do something about the bully management syle, Paychex is a solid company but managment isn't

Pros

Great product/service to sell, backed by a company that is extremely well respected. The pay may not be what it was 10 years ago, but that is industry wide. Nevertheless, the pay is very good. As long as you work hard, do you what you know you should, you will make a very good living, while building a ton of experience that will make you a highly coveted recruit for other careers that are far more lucrative. You also get a chance to see just about every possible type of small business, which for me, has been a huge reward. You also have a massive amount of freedom! This may just be my bosses style (and it works I'm 110% of quota year to date), but I can virtually do whatever I please, whenever I please.

Cons

It can be a rat race. You can get caught up in the sales vs operations war, internal sales battles, and constantly trying to hit that ever elusive "quota" month in and month out. But then again, this is sales right?? It is a HIGH ACTIVITY job, and by that I do not mean cold calling or telemarketing 12 hours a day, but being organized enough to make sure you meet with 5 different people per day. 2 new prospects, 2 CPA's and a current client. Where most people get lost is having low activity and then low numbers. At that point, your quota is "unattainable", when it really is not. Even though you do have a lot of freedom, it can also be your downfall. Happy hour is rarely unacheivable, beach in the summer is there, etc. Your discipline is what keeps you on track.

Advice to Senior Management

Your sales team is not going to be your most effective and efficient form of marketing. For the love of God, please start advertising. We have a great line of products and services, and telling the masses via television, radio, online, etc., makes the Sales Rep chances of closing much higher. Plus it will drive in more inbound leads, which close higher nationally than CPA referrals. DC will be happy to be a test market :)

Pros

The pay is competitive, the benefits are even better. The job is stressful but all sales roles general are. They will take good care of you, though.

Cons

It can get pretty boring... same thing day in and day out. The company doesn't change things up often and the role doesn't get anymore exciting.

Advice to Senior Management

The management needs to remember to keep employee's best interests in mind. It's not always about the almighty dollar, but also the health of your employees.

Pros

The training is pretty good at the start, and you are given a territory to work, but a lot of other reps dig into that.

Cons

Some reps get away with stealing leads, the management micromanages employees, and track your every move. There is not much positive feedback when you do well.

Advice to Senior Management

Find a better way to track lead generation, give more praise to reps working up the ladder or continually doing well.

Pros

one of the best companies ever worked for

Cons

was in a start up at the time tough to work through

Advice to Senior Management

keep doing what you are doing