When hiring top talent, employers know that candidates expect fair compensation, but many businesses fail to consider all components of compensation in today’s market. It’s not just about base pay and vacation days; employees want competitive benefit packages that include health care coverage, retirement savings, and wellness resources.
At the same time that employees are demanding better pay and benefits, employers are facing skyrocketing health care costs and other roadblocks, making it hard to know how to craft a benefits package that is both affordable for employers and competitive in the job market. On the employer side, health care costs alone are expected to rise by 9%–10% by the end of 2026, leaving benefit-package details in flux.
What can businesses afford? How can they reduce costs while maintaining quality coverage and offerings? This song and dance isn’t new, and Matt Taylor, president of Guardian HR, certainly isn’t a stranger to it.
“We saw this trend where the cost of benefits was escalating so fast,” Taylor says. “It was going up 10%, 20%, sometimes even 30% every year.” As business owners tried to absorb this growing line item on their P&L, Taylor was in the background, matching businesses to plans that were competitive and affordable. But he didn’t stop there.
As a longtime partner at CorpStrat, Taylor worked closely with hundreds of businesses, helping them answer the tough questions around payroll, HR automation, and employee benefits. Recently, he stepped into a new role as president of Guardian HR and shifted his focus to the employer-compliance space.
“This is a new opportunity for me to help business leaders work through complex legal considerations so that they can focus on what they’re passionate about—their businesses,” Taylor says.
FAILURE TURNED VENTURE
When Taylor graduated from California State University, Northridge, he didn’t have a career path in mind. “Someone I played basketball with growing up recruited me into the insurance business to write employee benefits and partner with employers,” he says. “Full transparency, I hated it.” Within six months, Taylor left the job feeling frustrated, defeated, and ready to never look at another benefits package.
With some space from the day-to-day grind and a new perspective, Taylor realized he had a natural understanding of the industry and a deep passion for helping business owners. “My mentor convinced me to give it another shot and something about the second time around just clicked,” he says.
Unlike many other seasoned professionals who shy away from failure, Taylor’s first career lesson was that failure isn’t actually failing; it’s learning, growing, and figuring out what does and doesn’t work.
Along with the mentor who convinced him to give insurance a second try, Taylor founded CorpStrat, an employee benefits/payroll/ HR consulting firm known for being multifaceted enough to handle the complexities of their clients while offering personalized advisory support. With a dedicated team at the helm, CorpStrat saw multiple years of 40% growth, 10x more revenue, and 5x more employees. But none of it would have happened if Taylor had let failure win.
The Guardian HR team
THE FOUNDING OF GUARDIAN HR
No matter the industry, businesses have to juggle changing laws, complex compliance issues, and HR training. The problem? It’s tough to spend time and energy on it. “Most HR people didn’t get into HR because they love compliance,” Taylor says. “They want to do leadership development, succession planning, and culture building—they love the people.” Giving HR professionals the space to focus on what they love, Guardian HR takes on all things compliance.
At Guardian HR, every new client gets an audit of their HR infrastructure. This helps Taylor and his team figure out what’s going well and what needs improvement within that specific organization’s HR function. Then, while developing a long-term plan for each client, Guardian HR absorbs day-to-day stuff that comes up, alleviating the pressure that builds up when HR teams are stretched too thin. “We’ve helped clients write job descriptions. It seems basic, but it helps them get clear on what their employees are doing, which leads to optimized performance reviews, clear handbooks, and so many other compliance priorities,” Taylor says.
For nearly a decade, CorpStrat was an affiliate of Guardian HR, meaning Guardian HR would service the compliance needs of CorpStrat’s clients. “Guardian HR was phenomenal to work with; the clients they serviced had a 98% retention rate at CorpStrat,” Taylor says.
Knowing just how quality its offerings were, Taylor reached out to the owner to talk about his vision for the company. One thing led to another, and in January 2024, he stepped into a leadership role at Guardian HR.
THE LEAP FROM AFFILIATE TO RETAIL
Since its inception, Guardian HR has relied on an affiliate model for growth. It would partner with affiliate companies, like CorpStrat, and provide compliance support to the affiliate’s clients. But now, the company is developing a retail product, shifting from an affiliate business to a direct B2B business. Not many businesses take this dual approach because it can feel like a conflicting business model, and Taylor is very aware of those challenges.
“We have to be careful not to upset the affiliate relationships we have market with how we approach the retail market,” he says. “If we deliver our offerings at a price point of X on the affiliate side, we have to figure out what makes sense on the retail side.
Despite the complex nature of this shift, Taylor sees clear benefits for Guardian HR’s affiliate partners. By marketing directly to consumers, Guardian HR will become more of a household name. Business leaders will know the company, its offerings, and its reputation, creating a selling point for affiliates.
“We’re going to be transparent about our retail price point and we’ll allow affiliates to use that as a lever when talking to prospective clients,” Taylor says. “They can basically say, ‘Look, you’ll be getting Guardian HR as part of our solution, which costs X on the retail market, saving you that cost.’”
TECH AND THE FUTURE OF HR
The HR space is inundated with advanced technologies like AI, automation, and machine learning, all promising to make the function easier. But for Taylor, the overreliance on technology that’s permeating industry is a cause for concern. “A lot of companies are just Googling their problems—if an employee didn’t show up or if they’re not sure what a paycheck needs to contain from a legal perspective, they’re Googling and going with what they find,” he says.
Although attempting to solve problems through research is resourceful, the constant changes in the compliance space make it nearly impossible to know whether the search engine results are accurate. Is the timeframe right? Have the laws changed? Are you getting results for the state your business operates within? Only experts who spend every day deep in the legalities of HR can answer your questions with confidence.
“Our aim is to be people first,” Taylor says. “AI has its place, but nothing replaces a human being. Our customers don’t want to talk to a computer for 45 minutes before getting a real person on the phone to help, and we’d never ask them to do so.”
LOOKING AHEAD: EMPLOYMENT TRENDS TO WATCH
Throughout his career, Taylor has seen firsthand just how many things impact employment trends. He worked with clients navigating the fallout from the financial crisis in 2008; he partnered with businesses who weren’t sure how to adapt to new employment laws; most recently, he supported businesses through the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, as employer demands like a return to office conflict with employee desires to work from home, Taylor is hard at work, reshaping what their organizational futures will look like.
“The cool thing is, there’s no right or wrong; it’s a blank canvas,” he says. “Employers get to create the environment that’s best for them and best for their team. My job is to meet the employer where they are.”
As the future of work faces an uncertain future due to outsourcing, remote work, technology, and more, Taylor offers a different perspective—maybe the future isn’t so much “uncertain” as “undefined.” He’s eager to help businesses prioritize compliance while defining their futures as they see fit, just as he’s done for the last 22 years.
