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Along with the obvious impact that saving time and money had on Eoin, the final piece of the puzzle was ensuring his people were happy with it.
Article written by
Aine Kavanagh
Swan is an AI Virtual Fitting Room for fashion eCommerce. It allows shoppers can get the right size and enables brands can sell efficiently online. Swan wants to allow people to look great in the clothes that they buy online without any of the hassle.
On a wider level, a product like Swan has a direct effect on the environmental impact made by online shoppers too. More accurate sizing means less returns, less returns means less clothing being sent unnecessarily to landfills. Lovely.
I think we have an interesting mission, something that kind of touches many people, something that is difficult and yet they can see the direct benefit of.
Swan is a true success story, having started as a research team and transitioned into a company in 2022 to help customers sell efficiently online. So at this early stage, why were benefits so important to Swan? They needed the right people, with the right skill, in order to grow.
Eoin was looking to make some key early hires at Swan, and as a startup, getting the right people in is pivotal to success. Eoin saw benefits as an effective way to extend great employment offers to top talent - something past a transactional salary that proves the company cares about you. Creating the right culture around the team and giving them an environment where they can show up and do their best was front of mind.
"We have a lot of highly specialised people on the computer vision side of the company, all with PhDs who are very hard to recruit, and it's a very competitive market. They could easily go to Google or something like that. And for us to compete with those, we need to offer the right benefits like proper health care plans, that they know that they're trusted and valued in the company."
When you're building a startup, two things that are monitored closely are time and money. Eoin wanted to make the best decisions for his staff members with these factors in mind for the sake of the business.
"It became a priority when we realised that it was crucial for hiring, so we weren't initially going to do it because we felt it would be too difficult. It was going to be too time-consuming. And in a startup, you’re really strained for resources."
So when Eoin realised that Kota could save him a lot of time and he could offer his staff excellent benefits for far less money than a traditional route - his head was turned.
"Kota saves us a lot of money. If you go to a traditional broker, it's simply much more time-consuming, much more costly. But the benefit of Kota is you can choose exactly the plan you want, and then they just charge a small fee on top."
Along with the obvious impact that saving time and money had on Eoin, the final piece of the puzzle was ensuring his people were happy with it.
Swan’s team have had some key highlights:
Financial autonomy
With Kota, your people choose the plan that suits their individual needs. Eoin set a healthcare contribution, and the team at Swan used the mobile app to choose what policy worked for them. After all, the healthcare plan you want should be your decision.
Ease of use
As an employee, you use the Kota mobile app to set up your healthcare and pension in minutes. No phone calls or confusing documents to read. There’s also in-app support, so you'll never be short of help when needed.
I think the general feedback from the team is the ease of use the ease of onboarding and how simple it was to get set up on Kota. It's a case of you just jump on an app, you go through a couple of selections, you never really feel like you're filling in a form. It doesn't feel like the laborious and onerous process that typical insurance has and it's super simple.
We've now been working with the team at Swan for almost a year, and we're excited to support them as they scale from strength to strength.
Just like how we work with Swan, we want to provide our customers with a service that just isn't out there right now. We want you to feel like you can provide healthcare and retirement products to your team at a fraction of the usual cost. We want you to feel like you can understand exactly what you're buying, and what you're being charged, so you can make the best decisions for your team. And finally, we want you to feel like you have us to talk to at every step of the way - we're here to help and guide you through. Want to chat? Get in touch with us here.
Article written by
Aine Kavanagh
👋🏻 Hi I'm Aine, Head of Customer Success at Kota. Whether you're a Kota customer, a Kota user, or you're just browsing, I hope to help educate and empower those who want to know more about owning their own benefits, and building financial autonomy 📚
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