Leave Specialist

As a Leave Specialist, you will be the primary contact for employees of companies we service and will manage a leave of absence from start to finish. You will also play a critical role of supporting your peers and Sparrow team members.  

What your day to day will look like:

• Manage a portfolio of leave of absences, short-term and long-term leaves, from inception to completion for employees in the US and Canada across multiple companies using established Leave of Absence processes.
• Maintain ongoing knowledge of State, Federal, and an array of Company leave policies, including FMLA and ADA, short-term and long-term disability plans. You’ll be responsible for ensuring employees are aware of their responsibilities and reviewing eligibility, certification, and benefits.
• Communicate directly with third parties when necessary, preserving the confidentiality of employee medical documentation and files.
• Interface and collaborate comfortably with a variety of key stakeholders to maintain relationships, including employees, HR, payroll teams, managers, HR Business Partners, through various methods of communication (phone, email). 
• Maintain complete and accurate internal records of leave requests and documentation of best practices.
• Partner with our internal payroll teams to ensure employees are paid accurately and on time. Includes building, analyzing, and communicating clear payroll information to employees and HR teams.
• Partner with our internal claims management team to file and manage claim filings with states and private disability insurance providers.
• Use a combination of tools to manage, communicate and update all stages of a leave.
• Work with the Customer Experience department to ensure a consistent level of service, utilizing resources and adapting to process improvements to enhance employee and employer experiences. Maintain key metrics, including Service Level Agreements and Customer Satisfaction.
• Actively participate in team meetings providing feedback, solutions and suggestions.

Attributes of a successful candidate who will excel at supporting our customers:

• Strong collaboration and communication skills that allow you to interact comfortably with internal cross-functional teams, and customers. 
• You excel in active listening, empathy, and approachability. 
• Be comfortable moving between multiple tasks in a quick succession.
• Be adaptable to process and product improvements in a growing start-up
• Able to utilize resources to identify answers to common employee or employer questions about the leave process
• Maintains internal systems and processes. 
• Demonstrates strong customer service skills. Represents the company voice with customers, listens empathetically to understand customer needs and provides impactful solutions. 
• Understand and interpret basic payroll calculations with the ability to break down these calculations in an easy to understand manner.

In collaboration with the Sparrow team, build a better product:

• Collect and share product feedback that you receive during customer interactions.
• Evaluate our impact throughout the lifecycle of each leave.
• Implement process improvements to resolve inefficiencies and address customer pain points. 
• Provide and seek negative and positive specific feedback to your peers, supporting your team's growth and development. 

• Superior organization skills and detail-oriented. You're able to track various tasks from different leaves and ensure nothing gets lost. 
• Outstanding verbal and written communication skills. Clear, empathetic communicator able to balance rapport and problem solving. You are comfortable communicating through email, chat, and phone calls.
• People person. Remarkable degree of empathy and interpersonal intuition, and strong, active listening skills. More than 2 years of client-facing experience where relationship-building is valued.
• Learner's mindset. Highly self-directed, adaptable, and up for feedback and implementation in a fast paced, always changing environment. 
• Proactive. You're always anticipating what might come next and how better to support the Leave Specialist team. 
• Systems-oriented. Always thinking of how you can improve processes to make the team even more efficient. 
• Trustworthy. You act with discretion and can be trusted to handle confidential information appropriately.
• Relentlessly Optimistic. You believe in and work for the possibility of change and are unyielded by uncertainty and roadblocks. 
• Empathetic. You lead with empathy, and understand each situation from our customers perspective and approach with compassion.