How ActiveCampaign transformed leave administration strain into an employee experience gain

Challenge: A manual, in-house leave management process became unmanageable as ActiveCampaign rapidly expanded, causing administrative burdens for People Ops and a negative employee experience.

Solution: Implementing Cocoon's leave management platform streamlined the process, reducing administrative tasks and providing an intuitive, user-friendly experience for employees and managers.

Results:

• Significant reduction in time spent on leave admin work.
• Employees are empowered to plan their leave and understand pay, eligibility, and paperwork.
• Integrations and evolving software enhancements for continuous automation and scaling.
• Conversations about leave are more transparent and productive.
• Trusted partnership frees up time for strategic efforts like planning for open enrollment and global benefits expansion.

Keep reading for the whole story ↓

Meet Sarah Robillard, Senior Benefit Analyst @ ActiveCampaign

Though Sarah Robillard is just shy of rounding out her first year at ActiveCampaign—an intelligent marketing automation platform—it’s been a fast-paced year for her as a Senior Benefits Analyst. ActiveCampaign has grown to over 500 employees across the US alone, while also rapidly expanding their global operations—most recently in Krakow, Poland. To keep up with growth, Sarah and her team are always looking for ways to innovate and automate where they can. That way, they can focus on improving the employee experience and education around the full offering of benefits and total rewards. But before they had Cocoon, their in-house manual process for managing more leaves in more places was stopping them in their tracks.

ActiveCampaign’s in-house leave management becomes more complicated

“Before we had Cocoon, we actually administered leaves of absence entirely in-house,” explains Sarah. “And if you’re in the benefits space, you know how big of an undertaking that is.” With a small team tackling such a big endeavor for a rapidly-growing company, things became unmanageable. “On the People Ops side, we had colleagues tackling the day-to-day details of leave who really needed to be focused on larger, more strategic priorities. For employees, it wasn’t a great experience. There were a lot of confusing back and forth exchanges over FMLA paperwork. There was no straightforward way to plan, navigate, or get the right insights into managing a leave of absence.”

Why ActiveCampaign chose Cocoon for leave management

“Because we were used to handling leave administration from start to finish, even a small reduction in that would be a win for People Ops, so we really prioritized something that would offer a great experience for our employees, with an easy interface,” Sarah says. “One of our values is ‘Creating Wow’ and during the Cocoon demos, the team could really feel that. Sure, there are some ‘heavy hitters’ in the leave of absence vendor market, but Cocoon’s size and newness allow them to provide high-touch, excellent support for leave takers, and offer a fresh approach to managing leaves that bigger names simply aren’t. Onboarding Cocoon was the most seamless process I’ve seen with a leave management vendor.” 

“It’s not just about having Cocoon, it’s about really trusting Cocoon, its software and processes, to take care of our employees and give them more ownership over their leave. We’re still involved in the process, but in a much more meaningful way. Overall, the experience with Cocoon has been overwhelmingly positive across the business.”

The biggest benefits of using Cocoon

In their first six months with Cocoon, ActiveCampaign managed 20 leaves. “Every single leave taker has said it was so straightforward and intuitive. They love the support from Cocoon’s team, as well as their support guides that explain things like managing pay and what’s next,” Sarah says, smiling. “For managers, they love getting reminders about employee dates and plans so they can prepare accordingly.”

“For us on the internal Benefits team, there’s been a significant reduction in the administrative burden related to leave management. Cocoon can automatically calculate and display certain information that we simply couldn’t. It’s a relief to know that pay and entitlements are correct in the portal, and we don’t have to manually update that anywhere, because Cocoon also integrates with Workday.”

“We also used to spend a lot of time explaining how leave pay and eligibility requirements worked. These can be difficult and confusing conversations, but with the way Cocoon visualizes and explains the information to leave takers, we get these questions far less, and the conversations that we do have are much more productive. They don’t feel like HR is just telling them something—they can interact with the information these decisions are based on.”

Why ActiveCampaign plans on sticking with Cocoon to manage leaves

While a smooth implementation is important, experiencing true ROI requires active, ongoing partnership—and that’s exactly what ActiveCampaign has with Cocoon. Sarah raves that, “Cocoon is committed to meeting our evolving needs, with a responsive approach showing they listen to feedback, make continuous enhancements, and update us about it.”

For example, “this might seem small,” Sarah laughs, “but we had a fitness for duty form for anyone taking a leave over a certain number of days. Cocoon didn’t yet have a feature to manage it. I sat down with our account manager to see if there was a way we could add it, only to find out that this feature was already in development, based on feedback from other customers, too! A few weeks later, Cocoon launched it and showed us how it worked.”

This trust and responsiveness is key for ActiveCampaign during the busy push leading up to open enrollment and renewals. “It’s not just about having Cocoon, it’s about really trusting Cocoon, its software and processes, to take care of our employees and give them more ownership over their leave. We’re still involved in the process, but in a much more meaningful way. Overall, the experience with Cocoon has been overwhelmingly positive across the business.”

About ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign helps small teams power big businesses with the must-have platform for intelligent marketing automation. Customers from over 170 countries depend on ActiveCampaign’s mix of pre-built automations and integrations (including Facebook, Google, WordPress, Salesforce, Shopify, and Square) to power personalized marketing, transactional emails, and one-to-one CRM interactions throughout the customer lifecycle. Learn more and start your free trial at ActiveCampaign.com.