Bennie’s consulting team worked with Natasha to enhance the benefit plans that GameOn offered. Now, GameOn 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. GameOn also added some flex benefits that they didn’t offer before, like commuter benefits and an FSA plan.
How Bennie Helped GameOn Reduce Manual HR Work & Boost Benefit Plan Offerings
Industry
Software Development
Employees
35
Headquarters
San Francisco, CA
HR Leader
Natasha Ubaldo,
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 GameOn
Our Customer
Connecting Sports Teams With Their Fan Base
Headquartered in San Francisco, GameOn 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. GameOn is a people-first company with a remote, distributed team and has employees in Nevada, Colorado, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and Hawaii.
Our HR Leader
Natasha Ubaldo, Manager of People Operations
While Natasha originally studied psychology and business intending to become a psychologist, she stumbled across the HR path and quickly realized that it was the perfect combination of her studies, interests, and skillset. Before she got into the tech space, she worked in HR roles in the healthcare and oil/gas industries. She was then convinced by her brother to move out to the Bay Area and break into the tech space - and well, the rest is history. Natasha is extremely passionate about what she does and describes being an HR leader in tech as the “perfect fit.” What she loves most about HR, which she prefers calling People Operations, is being able to make an impact by helping people find success and fulfillment within an organization.
HR Challenges
While GameOn’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 Natasha 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.
1. Competitive Benefits
Upgrading Benefit Plan Offerings
When Natasha joined GameOn, she knew that there was room to improve the plans offered to employees. Though her current broker could have facilitated that change, she wasn’t confident they could truly guide her throughout the process and be involved every step of the way. There wasn’t a dedicated point of contact that she could go to when she needed help.
2. Broker Relations
Having a True Partnership with a Broker
As a team of one, Natasha knew that the right benefits broker would need to be a true partner with GameOn. This broker would need to be proactive, not reactive, and look out for the best interests of her organization and take initiatives to improve their offerings and benefits experience.
3. Improve Experience
Creating a Better Experience for Employees
Natasha 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
Benefits Consulting
Full-Service Benefits Strategy & Consulting
“Bennie actually comes in and they do the heavy lifting.”
Service & Support
Bennie App & On-Demand Healthcare Concierge
“The turnaround time for receiving answers to any of your questions is very quick.”
Benefits Consulting
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 Natasha, 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 Natasha cookie-cutter documents to share with employees, the Bennie team took the lead in making sure that GameOn’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.”
Service & Support
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 team of one, Natasha has a long to-do list each day, and having the Bennie App available for her to direct her team to has been a time-saver. Not only does this administrative support free up her 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
Healthcare Concierge
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 Natasha used to do on her 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
The Results
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, GameOn is able to work with a benefits broker that takes a modern approach to a normally traditional service. Natasha’s 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.
Natasha wanted to ensure that any service she provided to the team would be something that they loved and would actually use. And that’s what she found with Bennie. Not only has it relieved her of tedious administrative work related to benefits, but she’s gotten great feedback from her 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.”