How It Began

When it comes to anything software-related, Helium builds it. The custom software design and development company creates mobile apps, web apps, and websites for clients from their HQ in the Atlanta Tech Village — an entire building dedicated to tech startups in the business district of Buckhead.

“It’s a place for folks to start businesses from nothing, so there are a lot of startups or new companies like ours,” said Joe Norton, Partner at Helium. “It’s great to be around other folks who understand the daily grind of being a small business owner focused in technology.”

And as a small business owner, Joe is concerned about not only growing his business, but also creating an environment where his team is excited to come and work.

“For us, there aren’t many places as a developer where you can have your hands in so many awesome projects and work with a group of people that over time become close friends,” he said.

A Straightforward Payroll Solution

Building a great company culture can be a tall order when your time is spent on other things — like dealing with payroll. And Joe was tired of dealing with it.

“Payroll was proving to be a very manual process, and it was just a time waster,” Joe said. “We build amazing software, we’re not a payroll company.”

After exploring third-party options, Joe and his team decided that Justworks was the best fit for Helium.

“Justworks seemed to be the most well-thought-out and thought through solution for what we needed,” Joe said.

Onboarding Critical Talent

For a small business like Helium, talent is critical. The number of people needed for client projects tends to ebb and flow, and keeping up with all that onboarding is a big task. Thankfully, by switching to Justworks, Joe got the help he needed.

“Justworks has certainly helped in terms of onboarding and offboarding both employees and contractors,” he said. “When someone comes on, we don’t have to fiddle around with setting up healthcare, we don’t have to fiddle around with what documents they need to sign. We have a simple checklist now.”

Joe recalled that with his previous setup, he would have to collect a new hire’s information, then send them to the payroll provider, the insurance carrier, and a few other sites where they would need to create accounts. Now, he’s able to simply send them to Justworks.

“The people coming on board don’t realize it’s a smooth transition, but the people that went through it before can see the difference in what a pain it was prior to Justworks,” Joe said.

Justworks takes the guesswork out of [compliance] so I can focus on running my business.

- Joe Norton

An Added HR Bonus

Since payroll and onboarding woes were the main drivers of Helium’s decision to implement Justworks for the team, Joe admits he considered HR support to be a “nice-to-have” feature. But when HR questions did arise, having experts to talk to was a game changer.

“When the time came that we needed HR support and consulting, it was awesome to be able to pick up the phone and talk to someone about a particular HR question,” Joe said.

Justworks’ support has also helped Helium with much of their employment-related compliance. Joe can worry less, which is great — he’s busy enough as it is.

“The last thing I want to do is research what I need to do to stay compliant,” Joe said. “Justworks takes the guesswork out of it so I can focus on running my business.”