How Carrot Scaled Stipends to 92% Utilization for its Distributed Team

Meet: Leslie Neitzel

Carrot Fertility, headquartered in Menlo Park, California, with over 300 employees, is a leading global fertility healthcare company. The company helps employers and health plans offer equitable access to fertility care. Leslie Neitzel, the Chief Human Resources Officer at Carrot, was dedicated to creating a supportive and engaging environment for Carrot’s fully remote team, spread across 40 states in the US.

Challenge: balancing expansion with employee satisfaction

Growing rapidly, Carrot wanted to attract talent in the middle of a tight labor market coming out of the pandemic when talent was at a premium. “We wanted to make sure we could be as competitive as possible,” says Leslie. 

New employees would purchase laptops and submit expense reports. Neitzel says, ”it was getting unmanageable for how fast we were hiring.” Instead of using a more traditional expense management system, Carrot wanted a stipend management tool. 

And because Carrot’s team was fully remote, HR couldn’t offer in-office perks like breakfast or coffee. Carrot wanted to give employees flexibility instead of offering a gift card to Grubhub on a monthly basis. ”What if someone didn’t want that?”, explains Neitzel.

What next: exploring solutions

Solution: the breakthrough

Now with Compt, Carrot offers its remote team benefits that help them be more productive including:

• New hire tech stipend to purchase an ergonomic chair or create a functional workspace.
• Productivity stipend for a morning coffee, dog walker, or fitness membership.
• Spot bonuses of $50 for holiday dinners so employees can take families out.

In two weeks, Carrot was able to roll out the platform to the team and keep communication open with Confluence articles explaining benefits to employees.

While launching employee stipends, Carrot sent various drip campaigns and reminders. They also use a Slack channel How I Compt, which is a great way to give people ideas on how to use their stipends.

Results: impact in action

Carrot boosted team engagement with a remarkable 97% of employees enjoying the platform and feeling connected while working remotely across teams.

Carrot perks were a hit. A strong 92% of Carrot team members took advantage of stipends for productivity, onboarding, and holiday bonuses.

Carrot launched fast! The platform was up and running in just two weeks, with employees sharing stipend ideas on Slack and Confluence.

Carrot can now access data on which stipends are liked and used by employees to make better decisions when budgeting for benefits. Neitzel says, “the utilization [data] has been very helpful. I can see if a stipend is something that’s well received. Are people taking advantage of it? What’s the timing of when they use it vs when it’s offered? It helps us decide monthly and quarterly budgets”.

Neitzel also has visibility in popular stipend categories and if they’re using it for internet or phone bills or lunches.

It’s been a really easy and fun way to offer perks to our employees, which has added to the experience our employees are having. It’s low lift on the HR side which goes a long way with employees.

Leslie Neitzel. Chief Human Resources Officer at Carrot