I am happy to report that the media attention regarding Zenefits has died down a bit. Although unlikely, we hope that we played an infinitely small part in stopping the free publicity that was generated each time that Parker Conrad sneezed (see our July 2015 blog post regarding the free publicity generation that all of us were guilty of over the last year). In any event, Zenefits has recently taken steps to further disrupt the HR Technology and Broker marketplace.   The first was the creation and launching of their nationwide broker listing – a listing that was intentionally, methodically, and strategically shared with the marketplace to encourage employers to reach out to their broker to see if they could “match” the level of service that Zenefits was offering. This was nothing more than a marketing ploy as their “database” really didn’t house much information…but was intended to rile up the broker community and they wanted to get more free publicity as they expected us to lash out, produce more web content (free publicity), and get us talking about them. Zenefits seems to subscribe to the belief that any publicity is good publicity and I’m happy to say that we, as an industry, didn’t bite too hard on this attempt. We should all remain quite confident in our ability to exceed the service and expertise of the Widget Maker out West. Additionally, it appears that Zenefits is looking to disrupt the payroll industry just as it has the broker industry. Word on the street is that Zenefits is building their own payroll engine. The theory had always been that Zenefits would simply buy a payroll company (Zen Payroll seemed most likely as they share common investors and are literally a block away from one another). However, it appears that Zen Payroll is looking to “pull a Zenefits” and is considering a launch of an in-house broker/agency to compete against Zenefits. So, Zenefits is opting to use some of their recent infusion of cash to build a payroll engine within their platform. This is definitely something we’re keeping an eye on and will keep you posted as we learn more. Here is a link to a recent article written on this topic. I apologize in advance for the project name and visuals within. The Widget Maker is nothing if not edgy.