How Curology saves time and creates a values-aligned employee experience with Cocoon

When Cassandra Colten joined Curology, a 400-person company in the skincare space, her team conducted an analysis to see where her team (Total Rewards) was spending its time, as well as the current state of the employee experience. Cassandra and her team realized that Curology’s leave management was highly manual—a full-time headcount—and that the leave experience could be improved.

With employees across three time zones and rapid growth projected, Cassandra and Andrew turned to Cocoon to help them scale their leave management efforts and stay compliant all while providing an overall better employee experience.

“I’ve had several employees express gratitude for how Cocoon has helped them and the ease of collecting paperwork. Cocoon is a better experience for our employees and it saves us time.”
_{- Cassandra Colten, Benefits Manager @ Curology}

Changing company demographics made leave management a full-time role

“[Curology] is proud to be 70% women, many of whom are in their late twenties to mid thirties. A lot of them are in the process of growing their families and there is always someone out who is pregnant,” Cassandra explained. 

With 50 new team members, Cassandra was spending one full day per week on leaves. “Pregnancy leaves are so involved,” she said. “I’d be on calls after Zoom meetings going through the parental program, explaining it to employees, providing support on claims and payroll calculations. It was so time consuming.” 

Why Curology chose Cocoon

When evaluating other leave management solutions, Cassandra said she noticed some “big compliance red flags.” She continued, “I’d ask how they were complying with San Francisco paid parental leave ordinance (PPLO) which requires employers to top off EDD [Employee Development Department] benefits and they wouldn’t know what the ordinance was or have a plan to address it.”

She felt more confident with Cocoon’s partnership and attention to detail, as well as the experience it provides Curology employees.

“I really appreciate how employees can see in the Dashboard their projected payment while on leave and where it’s coming from and when. And on the employer side, we see how those calculations are built out. I used to spend hours with the payroll team puzzling this equation.”

Implementing Cocoon: “Really streamlined and easy.”

Cassandra said her team implemented Cocoon in October and went live on November 1st. “Implementation and onboarding were honestly painless, I was really impressed. I shared our team member handbook with our parental leave policies with [our Customer Success Manager] Madeline and she crafted that into what became the dashboard and then I approved the copy. It was so great and easy that they took that lift instead of us having to reformat it for Cocoon.”

Cassandra continued, “I worked really closely with Payroll to get [everything we needed] uploaded into Cocoon. I really appreciate how customized it is; Cocoon really wanted to work with us. It was really streamlined and easy.”

Benefits Curology saw once they switched to Cocoon

People team’s time on leave management cut in half

Pre-Cocoon, Cassandra was spending one day per week on leave. Now, she explained, “It’s a few hours and it’s handled by our benefits associate because it doesn’t need high level expertise. With our associate handling day-to-day work, I can focus on strategic planning and projects.”

Improving the employee experience with Cocoon

Cassandra also talked about how she noticed many leave solutions focus on solving HR pain points, but Cocoon also focuses on her customers—Curology’s employees.

“I’ve had several employees express gratitude for how Cocoon has helped them and the ease of collecting paperwork,” Cassandra said. “I’ve also had great feedback from managers. With Cocoon’s Life and Work Success Program, managers get really great emails with actionable advice. Cocoon is a better experience for our employees and it saves us time.”

About Curology

Curology is a skincare company founded by a mother-son team of dermatologists providing custom prescription skincare for each customer’s skin, delivered right to their door. It makes prescription skin care affordable and accessible online, offering virtual consultations and custom formulas for acne and anti-aging.