Challenge and research
By 2024, 70% of new Gusto customers were micro-businesses hiring their first 1–5 employees and my team's business goal was to increase acquisition of HR tools amongst them. However adoption was low. I conducted interviews with 15 new employers and found why:
Hiring was informal
Most new employers recruited via personal networks and did not need our applicant tracking tools or performance management.
New employers craved guidance on compliance, we didn't help
Newer employers felt burdened by complex government requirements when hiring. Worried about penalties, they looked to Gusto for clear guidance and support. However we offered a scattered experience.
Cost drove decisions
SMB owners only acquired tools when absolutely necessary, being extremely cost-conscious.
The existing experience was scattered across Gusto using different pattrens.
Defining the framework and where to start
With my PM's input I mapped out the vast arrange of use cases we had to tackle. We decided to start with compliance trainings in California, due to its opportunity size, complexity and Gusto's full control over the experience.
I also worked with engineering to visualize how ML could rank and prioritize compliance tasks.
Initial explorations: Compliance awareness
As a lead, I coordinated working sessions with my content writing partner and the designer from our task system. We ran explorations focused on creating core awareness patterns for our compliance experience.
Initially we tried to minimize UI footprint and keep users in the home screen to understand and act on compliance rules. The required real-estate needed to clearly communicate complex compliance rules made us discard this approach.
Compliance in a contextual sheet constrained information delivery
Step by step scaled better and avoided information overload
Emerging design patterns
To ensure scalability I partnered with content design to set the tone, principles and patterns: Clear language, visible but not threatening consequences of inaction, driving users to Gusto solutions balanced with transparency on external options.
MVP: Enrolling employees in training
In the final flow, I prioritized a clear and safe experience, highlighting Gusto as the best solution to enroll employees in training. On the employee side, I put emphasis on using email and in-product notifications to remind employees to take trainings, helping companies be fully compliant.
Within three months we consistently saw that 10 out of 12 employers who saw HR training compliance notifications acquired trainings for their employees.
Adding more use cases
Once the compliance engine launched, payroll, benefits and HR teams came to us to plug their use cases into the framework. I led the onboarding for each team, reviewing their requirements, adapting their patterns where needed, and maintaining consistency across the product.
Multiple teams adopting our framework
The compliance hub
Early explorations focused on organizing information, and making sure we set clear expectations on what customers needed to do, Vs. requirements already handled by Gusto.
Some options were: Organizing compliance by type (payroll, HR, benefits, recurrently handled by Gusto) or by a combination of urgency and State, which is an industry standard we wanted to follow.
Organize by state
