Bennie’s consulting team worked with ON’s People team to enhance the benefit plans that GameOn offered. Now, ON offers the same providers to employees, however, the employer contribution has increased from covering 80% for employees and 60% for their dependents to now covering 90% for employees and 70% for their dependents. ON also added some flex benefits that they didn’t offer before, like commuter benefits and an FSA plan.
How Bennie Helped ON Reduce Manual HR Work & Boost Benefit Plan Offerings
Case Study Fixed Navigation
Industry
Software Development
Employees
35
Headquarters
San Francisco, CA
HR Leader
Manager of People Ops
HR Challenge
Large Administrative Load, A Desire to Improve Benefit Offerings
Results
Better Employee Benefits, Enhanced Experience, Less Manual Work for HR
About ON
Connecting Sports Teams With Their Fan Base
Headquartered in San Francisco, ON is a conversational A.I. chat platform that connects brands to their fans. The organization partners with various big leagues like the NBA and NFL, allowing teams’ customer bases to use GameOn’s chat platform to engage with their favorite teams, ask questions, find out information about game schedules, and purchase tickets or merchandise. ON is a people-first company with a remote, distributed team and has employees in Nevada, Colorado, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and Hawaii.
HR Challenges
While ON's previous HRIS platform and benefits broker was suitable and got the job done, it wasn’t intuitive, interactive, or necessarily beneficial for the team.
What HR wanted was a benefits management system that added value to the organization and provided employees with an excellent experience. The solution had to be something user-friendly and clean.
Upgrading Benefit Plan Offerings
The HR team knew that there was room to improve the plans offered to employees. Though their current broker could have facilitated that change, the team wasn’t confident they could truly guide them throughout the process and be involved every step of the way. There wasn’t a dedicated point of contact that they could go to when they needed help.
Having a True Partnership with a Broker
The HR team knew that the right benefits broker would need to be a true partner with ON. This broker would need to be proactive, not reactive, and look out for the best interests of the organization and take initiatives to improve their offerings and benefits experience.
Creating a Better Experience for Employees
HR needed a well-rounded partner and platform that made things simpler, more straightforward and required less manual work - all while providing the optimal user experience for employees. The idea was that employees would be able to find what they needed in a single place.
“I wanted to make sure that whatever system we had in place was not going to be so much of a heavy lift on my end and was going to be an actual partnership or extension of a benefits team you’d typically like to have in place, but that we don’t have the resources to support at this stage in the game.”
Bennie’s Job Duties
Full-Service Benefits Strategy & Consulting
“Bennie actually comes in and they do the heavy lifting.”
Bennie App & On-Demand Healthcare Concierge
“The turnaround time for receiving answers to any of your questions is very quick.”
Full-Service Benefits Strategy & Consulting
“Bennie actually comes in and they do the heavy lifting.”
A Broker That Looks At the Entire Picture & Provides Reliable Support
As Bennie integrates with a variety of HRIS systems, including Rippling, a lot of manual work was alleviated for HR, making for a smooth process whenever information needed to be updated in the system.
“For me, it’s always about consolidation and having a seamless process, a one-stop-shop for myself and the team. So, Bennie’s ability to log into Rippling, access, and upload all the information and then also have an app - it’s very helpful, and our team has absolutely loved it. It has taken a lot off my plate. From having so many questions from employees - that’s been mitigated because of the ease of the technology and Bennie being able to work closely with Rippling to make sure that it’s a seamless process.”
Open enrollment is also now a smooth experience with Bennie’s support and guidance. Rather than just handing the People team cookie-cutter documents to share with employees, the Bennie team took the lead in making sure that ON’s employees knew what their options were, how they could enroll in benefits, and what they could expect after submitting their elections.
“The open enrollment process was one of the smoothest that I’ve experienced from the back end, at least as an admin, and then going through it as an employee was also as easy as could be. We had 100% active participation in our open enrollment. There were no passive enrollments, which just goes to show the benefit of having Bennie come on and do a presentation, walk people through open enrollment, and all of that. I would definitely say that was a huge win and upside, and allowed for that greater employee appreciation for what we were doing on the back end.”
Bennie App & On-Demand Healthcare Concierge
“The turnaround time for receiving answers to any of your questions is very quick.”
An App for Employees & HR to Get Benefits Information & Support
As a small but mighty HR team, the People department has a long to-do list each day, and having the Bennie App available to direct their team to has been a time-saver. Not only does this administrative support free up HR’s time to focus on more strategy-focused tasks, but there’s peace of mind knowing that employees will actually get reliable answers from experts.
Ask Bennie
Ask Bennie, the live healthcare concierge available on the Bennie App, is available for employees whenever they have questions about their plans, billing issues, finding providers, and more. This eliminates a lot of the heavy lifting that HR used to do on its own.
“When employees come to me and ask me about a bill or whatever it is, I send them straight to Bennie and Bennie resolves that issue, freeing up my time by eliminating the back and forth.”
Getting Broker Expertise With a Tech-Forward Approach
A Dedicated Support System That Does the Heavy Lifting
“Benefits is just one aspect of what an HR team typically handles. So, to eliminate the manual labor that your HR team is putting into providing benefits to your team, that is key.”
Being a tech startup, ON is able to work with a benefits broker that takes a modern approach to a normally traditional service. HR is able to get dedicated support and strategic consulting while also having a user-friendly platform at hand to provide employees with the optimal benefits experience. This results in less confusion, manual work, and back-and-forth just to get answers to benefits-related questions.
The HR team wanted to ensure that any service they provided to the team would be something that they loved and would actually use. And that’s what they found with Bennie. Not only has it relieved HR of tedious administrative work related to benefits, but they’ve gotten great feedback from the team.
“I have heard nothing but great feedback from the team about not only the upgraded benefits offerings but also just the ease of going into Rippling and seeing benefits or logging into Bennie and seeing plan information. To see the reaction from the team and the appreciation and everyone just really getting on with the technology is great.”
“I’m by no means a benefits expert, so to have Bennie come in and provide this app, this technology, and the ease for which our employees can go and have their questions answered by experts in the industry, that has been the biggest help.”