In A Pandemic-Altered Landscape, Tech Firm Gusto Wants To Make Human Resources Software Accessible To And Inclusive Of All

Look hard enough at the common thread running through the seemingly disparate stories that make up the mishmash of this column, it’s not hard to notice that accessibility touches nearly every aspect of technology—and of human life. To wit, no one would associate Airbnb with accessibility for disabled people; and yet, the relevance abounds. The obvious component is the technicals bits on the web and in apps when browsing and booking stays, but the accessibility of the housing itself is accessible tech in its own right. It’s merely in an analog form.

So it goes with HR systems developed by San Francisco-based Gusto. The company makes software that Human Resource departments can use in their business. On its website, Gusto promises to help organizations “save time with benefits, hiring tools, and HR all in one place” that ultimately helps people “work faster and reduce errors with automation and reliable service.” Gusto’s modus operandi derives from the fact the employer-employee relationship has changed forever, mostly due to the pandemic. As such, the company tries to offer an all-in-one solution for small- and medium-sized businesses who may necessarily be embracing new-to-the-masses dynamics like remote work.

Gusto has a short video explaining how their technology works.

As with their brethren in the industry, Gusto is steadfastly committed to making the world a better place vis-a-vis diversity and inclusivity. It matters to them not only technologically, but at a human level too. One such person is employee Kevin Fritz, who works as Gusto’s employment counsel. Fritz has muscular dystrophy and has used an electric wheelchair most of his life. In an interview with me last month, Fritz said he’s “proud of the fact” he believes himself to be one of the few severely disabled people to work in private practice. At Gusto, Fritz traverses various teams to ensure personnel actions are managed accordingly and appropriately.

Fritz joined Gusto in January this year, having been drawn to the company for their emphasis on automation. Automation, he told me, is a critical component, of a lot of assistive technologies. The ability to push one button to do something at once instead of laboriously repeating oneself is accessibility. Moreover, Fritz felt like Gusto’s focus on automation and his background in employment law were a match made in heaven. “[It’s] awesome to see how our product continuously evolves to businesses, also [offering] opportunity for businesses to be even more with their own base and be more compliant. More offerings [means] more ability to do your best for their employees and their business,” he said.

“[I joined] Gusto in large part because I’ve always been drawn to work on products that make it easier for businesses to run and to look after their people… the special sauce with Gusto is just the friendliness and the humanity that we sort of infused with the way that we think about designing an experience that, for a lot of companies, can look pretty transactional,” Fritz added.

Of course, an ingredient of Gusto’s special sauce is the user experience. At Gusto, the UX side of things falls under the purview of chief design officer Amy Thibodeau. In an interview with me concurrent to Fritz’s, she made clear she ascribes to the idea that accessible and inclusive design is simply good design. They’re inextricably tied. Accessible design, she said, is important, because most people—especially those in the disability community—have the budget for the “big, fancy Mac monitors” that dominate the desks for many. Designing accessibly means designing to look (and perform) well pretty much anywhere, on any piece of equipment. Using Gusto may well involve upper-echelon hardware like an Studio Display or Pro Display XDR, but it could just as well be a nondescript, hand-me-down display or even one’s phone on a bright, sunny day outside. “We build experiences that are mindful of accessibility. When we’re thinking about things like contrast, we’re thinking about making sure that our content is structured in a way that makes it extra readable. We’re serving everyone, especially those people who require it, because maybe they have low vision or they’re navigating the experience in a different way,” she said.

Gusto’s mission, Thibodeau told me, is ultimately about building software that helps businesses take care of the people who work for them. Things like correctly paying people, offering benefits, and more are all things Gusto wants to make more accessible for businesses—with the awareness that the people in charge of these duties are all individual human beings and thus have unique needs and tolerances when it comes to actually doing the necessary work.

Feedback, Thibodeau told me, comes from many different directions and is positive for the most part. Gusto “tries to be mindful” of where the feedback is coming from; they want to hear viewpoints from a diverse and representative group of people so as to be as inclusive as possible. The world of human resources is a complicated one, and according to Thibodeau, it’s imperative for her and her team to “[make] these experiences and concepts easier for them.”

For his part, Fritz said while Gusto absolutely listens to its customers, they don’t have hyper-focus on one modality or one developmental domain. Accessibility is abstract, and it is deep and wide-ranging, so they really concert their efforts on more broad strokes efforts to Gusto’s software the best it can be for everyone. Fritz emphasized Gusto doesn’t perform specific monitoring of disabilities and their associated feature sets, but they do “adjust or lead to the broadest number of votes, but then also dive deeper into that appearance experiences for people as they continue to use our software to match,” he said.

Looking forward to the future, both Fritz and Thibodeau are in agreement accessibility is slowly but surely becoming “the standard-bearer in the [tech] industry,” Thibodeau said. For Gusto, she said, the work in this realm is never finished; it’s evergreen. They aren’t going to relegate to a box on a checklist and wash their hands of it. Gusto is continuing to invest and collaborate and learn.

“I think the thing that is really important to me is that we are having these conversations [about accessibility], and we have these working groups in the working relationships where we’re talking about accessibility and we’re making steps towards continual improvement,” Thibodeau said. “I think as long as companies are willing to kind of make that commitment and that investment and talk about how important accessibility is, we will continue to see technology become more and more accessible. We’ll continue to see society become more and more accessible alongside of it. We’re never going to be perfect, but we have to continue to invest in [making our products accessible].”

Fritz added: “I [have always] felt that the workplace should reflect this society that we live in, and the society that we live in is and has always been very diverse… I’m very impressed with the tech industry, and I feel we are getting it right.”