Gusto AI agent for your HR help desk.

Gus is Gusto's AI assistant, available in the Gusto platform plus ChatGPT, Claude, and Slack. It answers payroll and HR questions for the business owner or admin explaining compliance rules, running off-cycle payroll, pulling reports. Gusto's own documentation confirms the Slack integration is read-only and admin-facing: employees cannot submit a time-off request or update their own details through it. Workativ is built for the employee side: it answers questions and takes action submitting leave requests, updating personal details directly in Slack. Workativ and Gus serve different users and run alongside each other.

Cofounder is Gusto's more advanced agentic AI, built to execute payroll runs, pay contractors, and pull custom reports with owner approval before each action. It operates on the business's payroll and financial workflows, not employee HR self-service. Workativ operates on the employee side of Gusto PTO requests, personal updates, policy Q&A, and onboarding coordination and extends those workflows into systems outside Gusto, such as Okta, ServiceNow, and Jira, which neither Gus nor Cofounder reach.

No. Gusto's Slack integration, built on the Gusto MCP, is read-only and admin-only. Admins can ask questions like who has a birthday coming up or what a recent payroll cost, but employees cannot submit a PTO request, check their own balance, or update their details through it. If an employee wants to take an action in Gusto today, they have to go to the Gusto platform directly. Workativ closes that gap by giving employees a self-service AI agent in the same Slack workspace.

Workativ connects to Gusto via its public API, using OAuth2 authentication and role-based access controls. Once connected, Workativ reads from Gusto employee records, PTO balances, payslips, policy documents and writes back: submitting leave requests, updating personal details, and triggering onboarding workflows. No developer required.

Yes. Employee asks in Slack. Workativ reads their live PTO balance from Gusto, confirms availability, and submits the request through Gusto's time-off workflow. Manager receives an approval card in Slack one tap to approve. Gusto record updated. Employee confirmed in the same thread. This is the specific action Gusto's own Slack integration doesn't support for employees today.

Workativ automates three core Gusto workflows: new hire onboarding (a Gusto new hire event triggers Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 account setup, an IT access ticket in ServiceNow or Jira, and a day-1 Slack checklist), leave approval (employee requests in Slack, manager approves in Slack, Gusto record updated), and offboarding (a Gusto termination event triggers access revocation across connected apps and an equipment return notification in Slack).

Yes. Gusto's core customer base is companies with roughly 5 to 50 employees, often without a dedicated HR person. Workativ is built for that profile: a no-code setup a founder or office manager can configure directly, published pricing with no custom quote, and deployment in 3 to 5 days. Most Gusto customers set it up without involving a developer or an HR specialist.

Yes. When Gusto adds a new hire, Workativ triggers the onboarding workflow: provisions the identity account in Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, raises an IT access ticket in ServiceNow or Jira for anything outside those platforms, and delivers a day-1 checklist to the new hire in Slack before they start. Gusto remains the system of record. The workflow is set up once and runs for every new hire.

Yes. Employees update their address, emergency contacts, or bank details by asking in Slack. Workativ verifies their identity and writes the change directly to Gusto. No portal login. No HR ticket. Gusto record updated and confirmed in Slack.

Yes. Workativ connects to Gusto using OAuth2 authentication with role-based access controls. The AI agent only reads and writes what it has been explicitly permitted to access. Gusto data is never used to train models. PII is masked in all conversation logs. Every Gusto action is logged to an immutable audit trail. Workativ is SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, GDPR, and HIPAA compliant.

3 to 5 days for standard HR self-service PTO requests, pay queries, personal updates, HR policy Q&A. No developer required. No implementation project. Workativ's no-code platform connects Gusto, configures the AI agent, and deploys it to Slack. Most small teams using Gusto go live without hiring outside help.