Prioritizing expertise and attentive service: How Armhr makes clients’ lives easier during leave management

Armhr is the PEO platform for fast-moving businesses. The company is on a mission to give business leaders more freedom to focus on people and strategy instead of playing perpetual admin catch-up.

To fulfill their mission, Armhr marries best-in-class HR services with technology that complements the tools companies already rely on. Armhr’s clients can take advantage of full-service payroll, employee benefits management, time and attendance tracking, hiring and onboarding, talent management, and insights and reporting.

When Armhr wanted to enhance one of their client services—employee leave management—they turned to Sparrow.

The challenge: Managing employee leaves without a unified system

Before Sparrow, Armhr managed leaves for their clients’ employees internally, with documents and records spread across their CRM and email threads.

“It was pretty disorganized—we didn’t have a repository for everything we needed,” said Jenifer Duggan, Director of Client Services at Armhr. “We couldn’t easily pull up information on leave dates or payroll, or see which documents had been submitted.”

Keeping up with evolving state leave laws was another challenge. “Our internal leaves team had to research state leave laws on their own,” said Duggan. “And because we have clients in almost every state, it took a lot of time.”

When Armhr started taking on more clients, the current employee leave management setup became sustainable. “We were scrambling to piece together what we needed to do, and our clients’ employees were losing patience,” Duggan explained.

Armhr needed more support on the backend to ensure their clients—and their clients’ employees—were getting a seamless experience with leave.

“Armhr’s approach is to provide a first-in-class experience for our clients, for their payroll, their HR, their leaves of absence,” said Duggan. “That’s why we ultimately came to Sparrow: to give our clients a true partner in leave management.”

Duggan didn’t want Armhr’s clients to bear the burden of organizing leave paperwork or learning in-depth state laws. “Now, Armhr—via Sparrow—is taking on that work for them,” she explained.

“We came to Sparrow to give our clients a true partner in leave management.”

The solution: Partner with Sparrow to streamline leave

Sparrow’s full-service employee leave management solution was the answer to Armhr’s leave-related issues. “Sparrow is our one-stop shop for leave management,” said Duggan.

Along with tracking leaves, Sparrow completes and submits state benefits paperwork on behalf of Armhr’s clients, and ensures their clients comply with state leave laws.

At every stage of the leave process, Duggan and her team can hop onto Sparrow’s admin dashboard to see both high-level and granular information about their clients’ employee leave cases.

“Sparrow is our one-stop shop for leave management.”

“It’s been huge for us to have employees’ leave information right at our fingertips,” she explained. “What are the dates of this individual’s leave? Have they returned to work? Have they requested any changes? What money have they gotten from the state? What information is still needed? Now, we can see everything and answer our clients’ questions quicker and with more confidence.”

Maintaining compliance is also more efficient. “Because Sparrow handles compliance now, we’re confident that our clients are getting the right paperwork, and we feel comfortable that it reduces our liability as well,” she added.

Plus, it means Duggan and her team don’t have to scour state websites to find the right forms. It’s just one of many ways Sparrow saves Armhr time.

“It’s been huge to have employees’ leave information right at our fingertips. We can see everything and answer our clients’ questions faster and with more confidence.”

“We can ‘set it and forget it’ with most of our leaves,” explained Duggan. The process is simple: One of Armhr’s HR business partners adds a new leave onto the Sparrow dashboard, then a Sparrow Leave Specialist reaches out to the employee going on leave to walk them through the steps of applying for state benefits.

“We’re able to remove ourselves from the administrative burden of the process,” Duggan added. “And it’s made our clients feel more comfortable, too. They know they’re not just dealing with someone processing their paperwork, but that we’re complementing the Sparrow relationship.”

The result: Armhr’s clients get maximum logistical and emotional support throughout the leave process, which in turn benefits Armhr. “Because of Sparrow, our internal leaves team has more time to focus on relationship-building with our clients,” she said, “which is crucial for client retention.”

“Because Sparrow handles compliance, we’re confident our clients are getting the right paperwork and reducing our liability.”

Operating with the same values

One of the best parts about partnering with Sparrow, according to Duggan, is the collaborative, communicative relationship with the Sparrow team.

“Our experience with our account managers has been excellent,” she said. “We’ve worked with great people from start to finish. If one of our clients is unhappy or needs extra hand-holding, Sparrow is right there to jump in.”

She’s especially grateful for Sparrow’s willingness to problem-solve. “The ability to brainstorm with the team has been invaluable, even if we’re discussing things outside the scope of what Sparrow would normally do.”

Duggan appreciates the ways Armhr and Sparrow overlap in client service. “Armhr always strives to provide first-in-class service, and I see Sparrow doing the same thing,” she explained.

“It’s nice to align with a vendor that has the same goals. At the end of the day, it’s about making the client’s life easier, as well as the employee who’s taking leave.”

“Because of Sparrow, our team has more time to focus on building client relationships, which is crucial for retention.”

Going full speed toward the future

By partnering with Sparrow, Armhr has reduced their leave admin workload and compliance risk, while strengthening client care.

“We are growing at an insanely rapid rate,” Duggan said. “As we acquire clients in more and more states, Sparrow gives us the ability to focus on scaling quickly and hitting our big goals.”

Sparrow keeps leave running smoothly, giving companies more resources and time for growth. Explore our solutions or schedule  a demo today.