Chris and Karen were swamped with administrative work, manually handling employee onboarding, offboarding, payroll, taxes, and benefits. “I was doing all that by paper,” Chris said. “In the service industry, we can expect a fair amount of turnover among young employees just starting their work lives.  We typically hire around 25 people every year, and it was a ton of paperwork.” 

They eventually digitized some of their processes, but the co-owners also wanted to add a 401(k) offering for their workforce. While this isn’t a pet-services industry standard, Chris and Karen thought about how much their retirement savings from their prior careers helped them later on and wanted to support and encourage their employees to plan for their futures. 

The co-owners began piecing together solutions that were accessible to a small business. Through their bank, they were able to automate some of their payroll and offer a 401(k). But the system was clunky; offboarding employees struggled to manage their funds. Pampered Pets Inn wanted a more robust HR solution with automations to take extra admin work off their plate. 

The business turned to Rippling, which integrates with Human Interest for 401(k) services. As a result, Chris and Karen bolstered 401(k) enrollment, offloaded cumbersome manual work, and addressed the shortcomings of their previous system.

According to Chris, the integration between Rippling and Human Interest is as smooth as can be, with a user-friendly interface for both administrators and employees to quickly find all the information they need. Chris appreciates how easy Rippling makes it to pull reports and check 401(k) enrollment.

The integrated solution automated paperwork, offering an all-in-one platform for payroll, onboarding, offboarding, and benefits elections. Rippling also integrates with another tool that Chris uses for shift scheduling and timekeeping, eliminating any manual entry of work hours for payroll.

Rippling and Human Interest transformed our workforce management—from streamlining HR processes to offering a competitive benefits package. It just works.

Chris Braund

Co-owner, Pampered Pets Inn

Despite a marginally higher initial cost, the streamlined processes and tax incentives for providing the 401(k) program saved operational costs later on. 

By including 401(k) offerings through Rippling and Human Interest, Chris and Karen were able to better compete for talent with other service-industry employers while  creating a more supportive company culture and investing in their workforce’s future. 

“Most of our team doesn’t have a college degree,” Chris said. “In our own careers, we benefited from early exposure in large companies with matched deferred retirement programs that put us in a great position. It’s an opportunity we wanted to bring to the people we’re developing and coaching.”

• Growing 401(k) enrollment: According to Chris, about 45% of employees are enrolled in the 401(k) program, in part because of Human Interest’s easy-to-use 401(k) platform
• Simplified processes: Rippling’s interface makes it easy for Chris to see everyone’s enrollment status and helps Chris and Karen manage contributions. Chris can even include Human Interest insights in his monthly team newsletters.
• Automation galore: Pampered Pets Inn now has a unified solution that handles busywork involved with onboarding, tax registration, and benefits enrollment—so they can focus on, well, pampering your pets. 

Human Interest Inc. is an affordable, full-service 401(k) and 403(b) provider that seeks to make it easy for small and medium-sized businesses to assist their employees with investing for retirement. For more information, please visit humaninterest.com.

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