Case Study

athenahealth: Inclusive care benefits for a diverse and dispersed workforce

The Challenge

Healthcare technology company athenahealth employs a diverse group of people — or, athenistas, as they call themselves. Athenistas work to create a thriving ecosystem that delivers accessible, high‐quality, and sustainable healthcare for all. They live and work in large, dense cities like Boston, Seattle, Atlanta, and Austin, and less populated areas like the Green Mountains of Vermont and the small seaside town of Belfast, Maine. And new athenistas are joining the team every day. Along with their talent, this diverse group brings with them diverse care needs. They’re parents caring for children while working from home. Pet parents caring for cats and dogs. And many are caring for their own aging parents, too. To help its employees care for all they love, athenahealth needed to find an inclusive care benefit solution that was flexible for all.

Our Solution

In partnership with Care For Business, athenahealth rolled out flexible care benefits that athenistas across the country need. We collaborated with athenahealth Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) to help spread the word across the company and ensure that every employee knows about and uses their care benefits. Employees now have subsidized Backup Care for children and adults, as well as a premium Care.com membership to find care for kids, adults, pets, and the home. Pet parents also can leverage Backup Care for their four‐legged family members. Employees who need personalized assistance planning and help caring for an aging parent or loved one can work one‐on‐one with Master’s‐level social workers through Care For Business Senior Care Solutions. And, parents can now tap into Personal Network Backup Care and use their go‐to caregiver or center for their children. This flexible benefit has been extremely helpful during the COVID‐19 pandemic when most day care centers were closed.

The Results

From coast to coast, athenistas love — and appreciate — their care benefits. The flexibility they provide helps them to be better employees, and better moms, dads, sons, daughters, and pet parents, too — even during the challenge of living and working amid the COVID‐19 pandemic. In just over two years, athenahealth has seen strong enrollment and utilization rates of its care benefit program. Backup Care in particular has been so popular that athenahealth added additional Backup Care days after year one, and employees have used more than 80% of them. Fran Lawler, Chief Human Resources Officer at athenahealth, sums up the success of the program best: “Our situations are unique. I appreciate that Care.com has a breadth of offerings, and we can be flexible to meet employee needs where they are.”