How Bennie Cut Costs While Enhancing the Superhuman Employee Experience
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Industry
Technology
Employees
94
Headquarters
San Francisco
HR Leader
Kristen Hayward
HR Challenge
Improve the Overall Benefits Experience
Results
Competitive Offerings, & Saving $5,000/month
About Superhuman
Inbox, Optimized
Superhuman has created the fastest email experience in the world, while also providing advanced features to make users feel brilliant. According to Superhuman, if the average user spends 3 hours per day in email, not only should their inbox be optimized, but the design should be subtly gorgeous.
Meet Kristen, Head of People
Kristen started her career managing top performing teams at F500 retailers. After bringing on thousands of amazing employees, she started helping smaller, fast scaling companies build an employee lifecycle from the ground up. Her role at Superhuman involves driving a high impact culture, building a remarkable team, and creating the employee experience.
In terms of measuring her success, Kristen is intrinsically motivated by the impact she makes on others. “I care about how employees will experience the journey of Superhuman, and for me, this is where Bennie comes in.
HR Challenges
Kristen Needed to Improve the Overall Benefits Experience for Employees
Improving a Disorganized Benefits Offering
When Kristen joined Superhuman as a one-person HR team, she inherited a disorganized benefits offering. The plan prices were going up, and employees were exhausting their out-of-pocket maximums.
Helping Employees Select & Manage Their Benefits
Her current broker intended to run the entire open enrollment process via email. On top of that, she would be responsible for helping employees understand, select, and manage their plans with no consultative support from the broker.
“Knowing how lucrative being a benefits broker is, I immediately wondered how I’m paying my broker $10,000 a year, and they won’t help our employees understand their plans.”
Kristen quickly recognized that a lack of broker support would negatively impact the employee experience at Superhuman. She made a 90-day plan to evaluate a new broker and HRIS system.
Bennie’s Opportunity for Change
Organize the Offering
“Bennie recognized my disorganized benefit plan before I even had to explain the challenge.”
Educate Employees
“Many of our team members were maxing out their out of pocket expenses, so we wondered if a more premium plan was necessary.”
HRIS Consulting
“When we first came to Bennie, we had one partner who was our benefits broker and HRIS. We didn’t have the best experience, so my first initiative was to change systems.”
Organize the Offering
“Bennie recognized my disorganized benefit plan before I even had to explain the challenge.”
Two Things Were Important to Kristen:
“I want to offer affordable healthcare, and I don’t want employees to change doctors.”
She got both of these, and more. Bennie broke down every line-item cost for doctor visits and out-of-pocket expenses. The plan became more affordable without changing the coverage provided, and Bennie even introduced comprehensive plan options that also better covered mental health care with low out of pocket costs.
Bennie’s Benefits Marketplace
The Bennie technology also brings employees a voluntary marketplace for discounted rates on pet insurance, family planning, student loan repayments and more.
Educate Employees
“Many of our team members were maxing out their out of pocket expenses, so we wondered if a more premium plan was necessary.”
Educate Superhuman’s Employees
Healthcare billing is complicated to navigate, and no employee should have to become an expert. Bennie educated employees on strategies to identify medical necessity for appointments, allowing certain expenses to be covered, and saving employees a third of the costs on follow-up visits, which is something they could have been doing all along.
“Employees were paying $10,000 out of pocket for medical expenses they could have paid $3,000 for, and Bennie helped us figure that out.”
Kristen’s employees can contact Bennie via the app, request help with a medical bill, and Bennie can negotiate the bill on their behalf. “None of our past brokers helped us on that level.”
HRIS Consulting
“When we first came to Bennie, we had one partner who was our benefits broker and HRIS. We didn’t have the best experience, so my first initiative was to change systems.”
Understanding Superhuman’s HR Tech Stack
Bennie made a commitment to understand Kristen’s HR tech stack and how these systems would interact with the carriers. Recommendations took into account company size, budget, goals, and values.
“Bennie helped me understand that Rippling was a better option for onboarding and payroll than other HRIS systems I was evaluating. As a small HR team, I would need the onboarding support and hands-off payroll approach that Rippling offered.”
Superhuman's Transformation to Success
Employee Benefits, Optimized
Kristen is held accountable by her board to make good, cost-effective decisions for the company, but she also holds herself accountable by the level of happiness in her employees.
“I was able to provide an update to our board members that not only did we make our benefits offering more competitive, but we’re now saving $5,000 a month.”
Kristen offered measurable results, while also caring for her people.
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