Best Places to Work Honoree 2022

Organization Name: Brabo Benefits
Address: 65 Cordage Park Circle, Plymouth, MA 02360
Website: https://www.braboinsurance.com/
Phone: 508-830-3800
Contact Email: shokanson@brabobenefits.com
Describe in detail the culture of the company and a recent experience supporting that.
We are a hardworking and fun group of people who are doing our best to build great careers, take care of clients and be great citizens of our community. We believe in doing the best we can each day for our clients and for each other. If we keep doing that, we will all succeed together.
Has the company/organization offered rewards or incentives for great customer service or a positive employee attitude?
We have a team meeting each Tuesday at 10AM and that is an opportunity to discuss our biggest accomplishments each week. Bonuses are given out twice a year and our commitment to local charities often comes with tickets to events enabling us to reward our team with interesting activities and a chance to meet outside the office and build better relationships internally. We do have some transactional bonuses for client referrals but but our positive culture comes first with paying a solid and competitive wage each week.
Does the organization offer training for levels of advancement? Is there room for growth?

We train every week.

We are very proud of the flexibility of career growth we have, but we also acknowledge that someday other opportunities may arise where their careers take them elsewhere. As a leader, my promise to each of my colleagues is to help them build their careers as best I can within Brabo, and hopefully they stay. If they choose to move on, it would be for the right reason for them and their families. Someone can always offer more money, but we try and offer the best combination of career growth, great pay, stress free environment and work life balance.

Does this organization promote from within, or hire outside when looking for employees?

We look everywhere!

We are very proud that each employee decides the hours they want to work. Many employee started at 10-20 hours per week and have chosen to add hours as their work life balance has allowed. Today we have most of our employees working remotely and a few on 4 day work weeks. We have also found incredible success hiring women in particular who have been out of the workforce fro a number of years. We get A+ talent understanding that as they transition to a full time work environment, they need flexibility.

Provide an example of how this organization has recently gone above and beyond for an employee, team or client/customer.

We help employers with their health insurance and provide concierge service to employees who need help navigating the healthcare system. Here is a great example of how we help!

We had a employee of a client whose 14 year old son was working on his mental health and had built a great relationship with his therapist. Six months after the employer renewed their health plan the office the therapist worked in decided to leave the insurance company's network. Jenn Deegan from Brabo contacted the therapist and the insurance company and single handedly negotiated a "one off" contract enabling the young man to continue his therapy. That success felt great for Jenn, the employee, the employer and most importantly the young man!

Communication is key, how effective is the organization at communication with their employees and/or client/customer? *

We do our best! We utilize a lot of technology combined with one, "mostly mandatory", team meeting.

We also communicate quarterly on the overall health of the company. As the owner I share our Profit and Loss statements quarterly and discuss positive and negative trends we are seeing . We talk about wins and losses at our Tuesday meeting and we use Zoom for quick internal meetings. We use SLACK and color coding to coordinate trackable tasks.

But most importantly we have respect for each other and we try and understand each others' strengths and find ways to utilize those strengths for the good of our clients and our company. Twice a year we do management reviews where the team can bring what they like and don't like about their jobs. I am very proud of the candor that comes in those meeting.

In what ways does the organization give back to their community? Please provide an example.

Relentlessly.

We budget for thousands of dollars a year in donations and we offer our time and resources constantly. Our office is used as a venue for events, we have our big events at creative places like the Pilgrim Hall Museum and Plymouth Art Guild, and we access our insurance company partners to contribute directly to the community as well. Scott Hokanson, our president, is on numerous charitable boards and was named the 2020 Plymouth Chamber Businessperson of the Year mostly due to his involvement in the community.

Our best example of helping the community came in the Spring of 2020. The world was changing and all of the Brabo companies learned quickly on how to navigate the PPP Loan system at the start of the pandemic. We did it for us and realized our clients and community needed help. We held a number of free, open online seminars that companies attended from all over the country. We were especially proud that many local bankers attended as they found our seminars easier to understand than some of the training they had received. We are confident a number of businesses stayed in business due to our help at that time.

Are you actively hiring/recruiting outside your organization?
Always!