When Joua Thao joined Radish as Director of HR last year, the small serialized fiction app company was beginning to plan for growth – even during a global pandemic – hiring and conducting virtual onboarding for the company’s employees from New York to Seoul, South Korea.

With such a small corporate team – and only Joua herself handling HR – she knew she needed the services of a professional employer organization (PEO) to help shoulder some of the growing HR responsibilities and provide Radish the excellent benefits needed to attract and retain employees. Joua had worked with Sequoia One at her previous company and brought them over to Radish for HR, benefits, payroll, and tax services.

“I needed more support and it made sense for us to work with a PEO,” Joua said. “With Sequoia One, we get really amazing benefits for really affordable rates.” In addition to healthcare benefits, Radish’s package includes a full complement of mental health resources needed to support employee wellbeing during the isolation of lockdown.

Providing support to employees

As a people-driven company, it was important to Joua that employees be able to get quick and efficient answers to their health plan questions. With a dedicated employee advocate, she said, employees can get help choosing the best health plan for their situation, get quick answers on coverage, or find out more about their flexible spending account (FSA).

“Without Sequoia, I would have to take time to do the research of some of the more nuanced questions and put other responsibilities aside,” Joua said. With Sequoia however, employees just copy her on their questions to their dedicated employee advocate. “Our advocate has been great about answering questions so well that I don’t have to follow up.”

Moreover, Joua said, employees can also easily find most of what they need on Sequoia’s PX mobile app, from finding providers to sending their dependents a digital copy of their insurance card. Employees’ payroll information also shows up on the app, so they can see when checks are deposited. With this convenience, 90 percent of Radish’s employees are now using the app.

Sequoia has been fantastic about offering clear instructions on ‘Here’s what you need to do, and these are the things you need to be mindful of.’ I can easily email my Sequoia team and ask for clarification or get on a phone call. It’s like having someone working with you at the company.

Providing support for HR policy decisions

For Joua, it was not just the day-to-day fielding of benefits questions that sold her on Sequoia, but the importance of having a business partner that could provide insight on broader issues of policy and growth, whether it was new COVID-related regulation from OSHA, best pandemic practices for gradually returning to the office, or the best ways to handle parental leave and the company’s unlimited discretionary time off policy.

“Having someone I could brainstorm with and use as a sounding board was really important to me,” Joua said. “Our Human Resource Business Partner has been great at running through solutions with me and explaining variations on policies as a whole and per state.”

Joua explained her partnership with Sequoia One has been especially important as employees have moved to different states with new compliance requirements.

“Every state does things a little differently,” Joua said. “Sequoia has been fantastic about offering clear instructions on ‘Here’s what you need to do, and these are the things you need to be mindful of.’ I can easily email my Sequoia team and ask for clarification or get on a phone call. It’s like having someone working with you at the company. It’s this partnership that really sold me on Sequoia.”