Brightwheel changed a lot since Lauren Anderson, now its Head of People Operations, joined in 2021. Since then, the childcare management software company grew its headcount, went fully remote, and hired team members in over 10 states. And since Brightwheel always strives to offer robust, supportive benefits for every employee, its coverage offerings need to change alongside its evolving workforce—while staying competitive with industry norms.

“We didn’t have access to the benchmarking data we wanted,” Lauren said. “We needed advisory services; someone telling us, ‘hey, this is what everybody else at your size and stage is doing.’ We didn’t have that expertise in-house.”

All the while, Lauren was wary of what she called, “portal fatigue,” where employees have to juggle a bunch of different logins and systems to enroll in benefits, look at pay stubs, and request time off. “We're a tech company that uses a lot of tech stacks and it's confusing when things happen in disparate spaces,” she said.

Brightwheel already used and loved Rippling for its HCM, which it recently paired with Sequoia for benefits. Now, the company leverages Rippling and Sequoia’s integration to offer better, more competitive perks while managing all of its distributed employees through a single platform.

Brightwheel left its prior HRIS in 2020 after it hit a headcount threshold and joined Rippling. The all-in-one childcare management system uses Rippling, the all-in-one workforce management system for payroll, time-tracking, enrolling employees in benefits, onboarding, reporting, and steering the employee experience. “It’s the answer for everything,” Lauren said. “Whatever the issue, I always start with Rippling.”

Brightwheel set up Rippling workflows to automatically handle tasks like ramping up new managers, celebrating employees’ work anniversaries, and sending new hires t-shirts. Lauren also uses its Learning Management System (LMS) to administer training courses that uphold compliance throughout the states where Brightwheel employees live. 

“I’ve had a lot of new stakeholders join recently who want to understand Rippling,” Lauren said. “I use the octopus emoji [🐙] to explain. The head of the octopus is Rippling and the legs are payroll, time-tracking, benefits, and everything else it does for us.”

It’s the answer for everything… Whatever the issue, I always start with Rippling.

Lauren Anderson

Head of People Operations at Brightwheel

At the end of 2024, Brightwheel shopped around for a new benefits broker to support its evolving business. Sequoia stood out with its “deep knowledge of Brightwheel-esque companies,” Lauren said. “It gave us a niche focus on PE-backed tech firms that made us feel very understood as a business.”

Brightwheel can rely on Sequoia for a trove of benchmarking data to stay up-to-date on industry trends and tap into expert advice on how to action the data, which helps the company refine its benefits philosophy. “Sequoia’s uniquely poised to get us data and answers,” Lauren said, adding that its in-house analytics team “has been able to answer any question I’ve ever had, like ‘what are companies at this size and stage doing for retirement benefits? And can you filter that data and show me fully remote companies?’”

With Sequoia, Lauren doesn’t need to shop around for different benefits vendors from scratch. “It’s a huge time-saver for me,” she said. “I feel very confident I can put Sequoia out first to filter all the options. Its experts have access to all our demographics, like average age and gender breakdowns, and they really understand our workforce. They do the initial screening and I can evaluate the two or three best fits.”

Overall, Sequoia’s benchmarking prowess helps Lauren make smarter benefits decisions. “I do this broad pull-up every year ahead of annual planning to ask, ‘what is Brightwheel’s current benefits package? Does it still fit within our benefits philosophy?’ This year, more than ever, I had access to much richer benchmarking data.”

Sequoia is uniquely poised to get us data and answers when we're trying to understand our benefits like benchmarked against other tech companies.

Lauren Anderson

Head of People Operations at Brightwheel

Brightwheel’s people team uses Sequoia to find best-fit benefits plans, then its employees use Rippling to enroll in their individual plans. Thanks to a powerful integration, data from Sequoia flows straight into Rippling’s system, which Lauren said helps admins and employees alike. 

“From an administrative standpoint, we rely heavily on Rippling to get a vantage point of open enrollment progress and individual plan elections,” Lauren said. which helps the company target reminders to employees who haven’t picked plans to do so before the deadline, instead of bulk-messaging the entire company. At the same time: “Employees get a single place to self-serve their resources. Rippling is where they enroll in benefits, access their paycheck, and do anything else related to their employee experience,” 

Lauren can also lean on Rippling and Sequoia’s partnership to address any support issues employees have with their plan carriers. Instead of burning her own time, she’ll take a screenshot of Rippling showing the issue, and “kick it over to Sequoia who gets involved and figures it out faster than I ever could,” she said.

• Richer data: Sequoia gives Brightwheel access to vast benchmarking data, so it can choose benefits vendors best-fit for its size, industry, demographic makeup, and growth stage.
• Smarter benefits administration: Brightwheel can track open enrollment progress and send personalized communications to help employees choose plans—all while delegating support issues to Rippling or Sequoia. 
• Better employee experience: Employees have a single all-inclusive platform—Rippling—to manage their entire Brightwheel experience.