Finding a vendor with shared values: Why Aspen HR chose Sparrow for full-service employee leave management

Aspen HR provides a modern PEO experience for their clients, combining white glove service with automated workflows. Aspen HR is a complete HR solution for companies at the tops of their industries, from private equity firms and fintech institutions to life sciences startups and real estate groups.

With a 97% client retention rate and 9.8/10 client satisfaction rate, Aspen HR delivers on their promise of personalized service. Along with handling payroll and tax processing, benefit plan administration, and 401(k) administration for their clients, Aspen HR also advises on compliance, employee relations, employee engagement, and remote work.

When the company started scaling, they realized they needed a white glove service of their own for employee leave management.

The challenge: Finding a scalable leave management system

Aspen HR invests in their clients’ happiness. “We have a concierge model,” said Jeanine Schottler, Managing Director of HR and Client Services. “Our goal is to simplify everything not just for our clients running their businesses, but for their employees too.”

Before Sparrow, Aspen HR didn’t have a particular system for managing their clients’ employee leaves—mostly because they didn’t have to.

“The majority of our clients were very small employers, so the frequency of employee leaves wasn’t high,” Schottler explained. “But as we started attracting larger clients and our existing clients began growing too, we knew we needed a more scalable solution.”

Schottler and her team explored a variety of leave management vendors, paying particular attention to how each one incorporated state leave benefits with company leave policies.

“Leave is extremely complex,” she added, “especially because the majority of our clients are multi-state, so they might have employees in states with leave laws they’re not as familiar with.”

Sparrow’s expertise with state leave laws, flexibility, and service stood out to Schottler and her team. “We chose to partner with Sparrow because they ticked all our boxes—and we didn’t want to build leave management capability in-house,” she explained.

“Our clients have been able to recoup more of those wage costs from state payments. They save more money because Sparrow removed the burden of applying for benefits.”

The solution: Teaming up with Sparrow to support leaves

Partnering with Sparrow gave Aspen HR a more efficient, scalable way to manage leaves for their clients. Sparrow’s depth of knowledge with state leave laws makes it easy for Aspen HR’s clients to maintain compliance and reap the full benefits of state leave programs.

Because it can be so complex and time-consuming to apply for state benefits, most of Aspen HR’s clients paid their employees completely out of pocket for leave, “instead of jumping through the state’s hoops,” Schottler explained.

With Sparrow, they don’t have to. The Sparrow team stays up to date on the details of each state’s paid leave programs, and completes and submits benefits paperwork on behalf of Aspen HR’s clients and their employees taking leave.

“We have visibility into leaves—we can run reports from the dashboard, access information easily, and make sure everything is running smoothly.”

“Now, our clients have been able to recoup more of those wage costs from state payments,” Schottler said. “They save more money because Sparrow removed the burden of applying for benefits.”

Sparrow Leave Specialists also work directly with employees taking leave to review which benefits they’re entitled to, fill out forms, and follow up with insurance providers or state agency representatives for information.

“Sparrow has been really valuable to our clients on the employee experience front,” said Schottler. “Having somebody who can educate, guide, and support employees through the process of applying for state benefits has probably been the biggest win.”

“We’re able to adjust pay schedules and benefits based on early calculations that Sparrow does, which we weren’t able to do before. It’s cleaned things up from a process standpoint.”

From a time-savings perspective, Schottler and her team appreciate Sparrow’s dashboard, which is the ultimate source of truth for their clients’ leave cases.

“It’s nice to have visibility into leaves,” she explained. “We can run reports from the dashboard, access information easily, and check to make sure everything is running smoothly.”

Sparrow also supports Aspen HR with their clients’ payroll by setting up automatic payroll calculations and generating custom reports.

“We’re able to adjust pay schedules and benefits based on early calculations that Sparrow does, which we weren’t able to do in the past,” Schottler said. “That has really cleaned things up from a process standpoint.”

“We chose Sparrow because they share our white-glove service mindset and ensure our clients and their employees are well taken care of.”

A shared commitment to exceptional care

Bringing Sparrow into the fold has streamlined employee leave management for Aspen HR’s clients, plus given employees more peace of mind during the process of taking leave.

Schottler said working with Sparrow is excellent, and that the two teams’ shared values have given them a solid foundation to build upon.

“One of the reasons we chose Sparrow is because they have the same white glove service mindset we do,” explained Schottler. “We’re all working towards the same thing: making sure our clients and their employees are very well taken care of.”

Sparrow simplifies leave management on the backend and gives employees a smoother leave experience See how we can help or book a demo today.