Founded in 2017 by Academy Award®-winning manager-producer Michael Sugar, Sugar23, Inc., is a multimedia production and talent management organization with a mission to impact culture through entertainment. The company is known for award-winning hits like Spotlight, The OA, and Maniac, but Sugar23 also supports corporate brand marketing campaigns with its expertise in storytelling.

Sugar 23’s Director of People Operations Jin Lee supports a growing company and wears all the HR hats. Growth is the goal, but from an HR perspective, it means ongoing new hire onboarding, especially with a series of manual processes. Lee was doing benefits calculations and cost breakdowns herself and wanted to move employees into a benefits platform that allows them to enroll directly.

The move to a modern benefits brokerage just in time for open enrollment

Lee had a benefits broker but still found herself doing most of the labor, as well as employee communication and education. “Doing everything manually took up a big chunk of my time and made the new hire process very clunky,” she shared. “I wanted to provide a better experience to streamline the process and make it as efficient and intuitive as possible. Benefits are hard even for HR professionals. I wanted something that our employees could look at and understand instantly.”

Lee was open to change, so when Nava Benefits reached out to her, she said yes to a conversation. “He was just so welcoming and answered every question I had. It made me want to learn more,” she said of her now-benefits partner at Nava. “I wanted to have another conversation to see, okay, what else? What’s next? From there, the relationship continued to grow organically.”

At the time, it was early January. Open enrollment was in March and her previous broker had yet to send rates for the new plan year. “I was worried,” she said, “and my Nava partner said, ‘Let me see if I can get those rates for you.’ He did, in just a few days, and we hadn’t even officially signed with Nava yet.”

Ensuring ease and accuracy with new systems and processes, resulting in 20% time savings

Lee leaned on Nava to build out open enrollment on the Ease platform, which integrates with Paychex for payroll. Lee wanted the open enrollment process to be simple and mobile-friendly, as many Sugar23 employees are regularly on the go. “The implementation process was “all hands on deck,” Lee said. “It was a really good experience. I’ve never had an implementation as smooth as it was with Nava. You all went above and beyond.”

She credits open lines of communication, with step-by-step updates from the beginning to the end of the implementation, as key to their success. The team worked on a tight timeline to ensure everything was ready for open enrollment. Then, when it opened, it was quiet.

“I didn’t hear much noise, which I usually take as a good sign,” she said. “But it made me wonder how employees were finding the experience. Then I heard feedback from an employee navigating the U.S. healthcare system for the first time. She told me the process was easy. She went into the platform and everything was broken down in a way that was easy to understand and she was able to enroll in less than five minutes. I think that says a lot.”

Today Lee no longer has to calculate individual rates and communicate or explain coverage options for new hires. There’s also no longer manual form-filling and input into systems. This saves her as much as 20% of her time as employees join or leave Sugar23; everything is automated through the new platform. “This is something we did not have for more than a year. It’s huge progress,” she said.

“I realize benefits are a sensitive space for our employees — they are very important,” Lee said. “I’m only human at the end of the day, so I felt the pressure of being accurate. It’s been incredible that Nava has alleviated that pressure since we joined.”

Why a strong broker relationship is game-changing

Lee returns to the strong power of a good broker relationship and the support it can offer to HR professionals. “I don’t feel like we’re a broker/client relationship. I feel like we’re friends, and like the team genuinely cares,” she said. “I’ve met a lot of brokers and I’m just one client out of a lot. With Nava, it wasn’t like that. It feels personable and like a relationship. The team clearly knows the work and the follow-up is amazing. I’ve never had to be the one to follow up.”

Another way she’s benefitted from the partnership is through the expertise of her broker, who brings her recommendations aligned with current market trends and with what other companies of Sugar23’s size and industry offer. “With the team’s suggestions, we landed in a really good place,” she said, sharing how the team hopped on a call to walk her through the options.

That support also saves Lee time because it extends to employees, who now have access to the Nava Benefits App. “Before it was just me doing everything. Now that I’m with Nava, I can refer our employees to Nava’s support advocates and Nava handles the questions for me. It’s a game-changer. I’m no longer the middle person.”

In some ways, it’s hard to let go when you’ve been doing everything yourself and have been underwhelmed by past support. “At the end of the day, this is my baby,” she said. “It’s not easy to relinquish trust to a broker, but I have 100% trust in Nava.”