Steno at a glance

• Industry: Court Reporting & Legal Technology
• Leave volume: 65.9% utilization
• Why they switched: Manual processes, slow support response, incorrect payroll files
• Hours saved: 150 since implementing Cocoon 1 year ago

Challenge:

Steno’s previous leave management vendor was manual and had longer response times, leaving them to: 

• Fill out forms and paperwork by hand with little guidance
• Correct payroll files that still contained errors
• Wait days to weeks for answers to urgent leave questions
• Struggle to scale the system as their team grew

Solution:

Steno now runs leave through a modern, scalable leave management system that handles compliance across 40+ states, automates payroll breakdowns, tackles even the trickiest claims forms, and actually responds when employees need help.

Results:

Significant time savings for People Ops
Administrative burden lifted, allowing the team to focus on scaling initiatives, onboarding improvements, and meaningful employee support.

Fast and confident employee support
Quick support response times and clear in-system education reduced back-and-forth and empowered employees to self-serve.

Automated compliance across 40+ states
From California EDD to short term disability claims—and how they reconcile with Steno’s policies—the team can trust Cocoon’s guidance.

Accurate, instant payroll
Automated, accurate pay breakdowns give employees a clear idea from day one of when and how they’re paid on leave.

Meet Alanah Bradshaw, People Operations Manager at Steno

Like many People Ops Managers, Alanah Bradshaw wears a lot of hats. “My day-to-day has me wearing many hats,” she says. “I tackle all things leave admin, benefits, payroll, employee experience, and employee relations—which goes hand-in-hand with leave.”

With a relatively young workforce, and a parental leave program employees actually use, leave management isn’t an occasional one-off, but a part of daily operations—especially because Steno is growing. To scale and build a more technology-forward culture, the People Ops team focused on increasing self-service tools, improving onboarding and education, and using data to make better decisions. But one part of their infrastructure didn’t match those goals: their leave management system.

As much as I’d love to sit down with every employee every time something comes up, that’s just not realistic at this stage. We need to rely on technology to tackle certain pieces, so we can be strategic about our work and how we support employees.”

Why Steno needed to leave their leave management provider

Before Cocoon, Steno used another leave management software. Though it was more robust than a homegrown spreadsheet, it didn’t reduce the administrative burden, and often times, it created more:

• Claims and disability forms required manual completion
• Payroll calculations often needed corrections
• Different state and short-term disability workflows were a confusing burden
• Employees didn’t get timely answers, forcing People Ops to step in
• Account managers weren’t dialed in with Steno’s policies

“The level of service that I expected—that they’d be the experts on policies, paperwork, and state requirements—just wasn’t there,” Alanah explains. “That’s why we hire a leave management system in the first place.”

With more employees in more places, and leave usage increasing, it was clear their leave management solution was actually a problem. “I sat down and did the math one day and it was obvious. There was no way we could scale the business if every time someone files EDD or a STD form I’m filling it out for them. I needed a true partner.”

Why Steno chose Cocoon for leave management

When Steno went back into the market, their expectations had changed. Originally they chose their leave management software because of a payroll push integration, but that convenience was far outweighed by everything else it lacked.

Introduced through Sequoia, Cocoon quickly stood out—not just for its product, but for how it supported employees and People Ops alike, with:

• Clear response times and reliable support staff
• Built-in guidance for even the trickiest forms
• Employee confidentiality and self-service planning
• Automated, transparent payroll breakdowns
• Adaptability across each state
• A modern system that felt intuitively and intentionally designed

Steno’s easy Cocoon implementation

Steno began implementing Cocoon in February 2025, and hasn’t looked back.

“It’s rare to say this, but the implementation was so easy. It was a breeze. Cocoon’s team broke down exactly what they needed on a clear timeline. Our implementation partner worked her magic to make sure everything was built out correctly and that our policies were baked right into the planning system.”

“The first leave that I didn’t have to fill out EDD or STD forms for… that was a huge moment!”

What changed after switching leave management systems

An easy implementation was just the beginning. Once it was clear that Cocoon wasn’t just filling the gaps left by their old provider, but actually going above and beyond as an extension of their team, Cocoon is sticking around a year later, and beyond for:

1. Leveled up strategy and support across People Ops

“I’ve saved so much time not filling out EDD, Guardian, New York State or whatever forms they might be. Getting that administrative burden off my shoulders, I can be more strategic in my day-to-day. I can now focus more emotional energy on what matters, to be truly present in these big personal moments with employees, instead of worried about the mountain of paperwork it’s going to take to help them through it.”

2. Self-serve and hands-on options for employees

“Employees being able to pre-plan their leave privately, and knowing exactly what their timeline and pay look like without having to discuss it with People Ops first or calculating anything manually—that’s exactly the self-serve option that helps us scale and offer a great employee experience… but when they need answers, Cocoon gets back to employees so quickly. They’re an extension of our team.”

3. Instant and accurate payroll

“Seeing that payroll breakdown right in Cocoon without having to calculate it or worry about it is a huge relief. Knowing that an employee sees exactly what they’re getting paid, when, by whom—which is always a major question about leave—that confidence and accuracy is worth every penny.”

4. A simpler system to handle multi-state, real-world complexity

“We don’t have complicated policies, but it’s one thing how it works on paper and another how it works in real life, across 40 different states and different situations. But even complex scenarios—like factoring California state disability pay with our internal policies or how holidays get handled—are all taken into account. I don’t have to keep up with every new leave law or worry that something will break.”

If your leave management solution is the problem like Steno’s was…

After working with two leave vendors, Alanah’s advice is clear:

“Ask the hard questions. Ask about response rates. Ask who handles employee questions and how. Make sure the provider feels like an extension of your team, because for something as delicate and important as leave, they basically need to be.”

If you’re still filling out paperwork manually, running through payroll files with a fine-tooth comb, or waiting for a leave rep to “call you back,” that’s not a leave problem, not a solution. If your team is still compensating for a system that doesn’t support you, Steno’s story proves you don’t have to settle. Explore how Cocoon can be the real leave management solution for you.

Angi at a glance

• Industry: Home services & marketplaces
• Employees supported: ~1,200 across 47 states
• Leave volume: ~25% utilization
• Previous system: AbsenceSoft
• Why they switched: Manual work, inconsistent experiences, lack of support
• Implementation timeline: 2 months

Challenge:

Managing leave in an overly manual and unsupportive vendor’s system left Angi’s team to: 

• Hand-track state compliance and disability pay
• Create their own leave of absence education
• Deliver an inconsistent employee experience for leave takers and managers
• Quickly implement a new system when their old contract ran out

Solution:

After a fast implementation, Cocoon now automates leave compliance and payroll while providing a stronger educational base for leave takers and managers. The HR team is freed up to provide more personalized leave support and work on other strategic initiatives.

Results:

Self-serve leave experiences for employee clarity
Clear guidance helps employees take initiative, understand their responsibilities, and navigate leave, making Angi’s piece in the process clearer.

Greater visibility and confidence for managers and HR partners
Real-time insights into leave timelines, approvals, and return dates gives managers and People teams confidence to plan, approve schedules, and support teams consistently.

Automated compliance and payroll clarity across 47 states
Automated compliance eliminated separate tracking systems and manual payroll calculations, making pay breakdowns easy to explain and trust.

Time and budget redirected to more strategic work
Spending less time on manual work, Angi didn’t need to backfill a LOA team role and shifted it to a more urgent Benefits team hire to save money and strengthen the HR team.

Meet Lauren Wedow, Senior Manager of HR Operations at Angi

Overseeing the Benefits, Leave of Absence (LOA), and Operations teams at Angi, Lauren Wedow isn’t joking that she keeps the lights on. In turn, her teams support roughly 1200 employees across 47 states. Joining Angi in May of 2024 as the company was navigating a spin off from its parent company, Lauren and her team needed to stand up a totally new benefits plan, and get more consistency around employee education and internal processes. 

As Lauren's data-driven and iterative team looked around, they saw their leave management tool was ripe for improvement. It had little to no automation, only worked for certain pieces of the leave process, and left them spinning up leave education resources, and manually calculating state leave compliance and disability pay.

A leave management provider they wanted to leave behind

Before Cocoon, Lauren’s two-person LOA team managed leave in-house using AbsenceSoft: 

Working in their tool felt more like using an upgraded spreadsheet. It didn’t automate anything, it didn’t educate leave takers, and all the rules and keeping it updated was something we had to manually do ourselves. The guardrails weren’t really there, so the output and the employee experience varied with each leave.”

With employees across 47 different states, and a leave utilization rate hovering around 25%, the Angi team was hampered by the lack of any kind of state-by-state solution and education. “We had what we monitored in their tool, then a whole separate tracking system outside of it depending on the state, which caused a lot of inconsistencies and frustrations.”

The cherry on top was the general lack of technical and customer support they received. “At one point they launched a reporting upgrade, and it was a 12-week wait before we even got a team assigned to implement it. Anything we asked about they just said, ‘oh, we can’t do that’ instead of trying to bring a creative solution.” This became clear in a lackluster contract renewal meeting that cemented Lauren’s decision to not renew. But that meant she needed a back up plan, and fast.

“It started to feel like we didn’t matter. The lack of support, the inability to iterate, the hesitation to find solutions. It was clear that this wasn’t a partnership.”

Why Angi chose Cocoon for as their leave management system

Angi’s search for a new leave management system was brief and simple, because Cocoon was already the top solution on their radar. “My teammate was getting their emails, and they even invited us to a dinner event in Denver right when our contract was ending.”

Their criteria for a new tool were clear:

• Built-in education for leave takers so they would feel confident taking initiative, and for managers to better support leave takers—without having to manually update their employee guidance.
• State-by-state compliance to eliminate the need for separate manual tracking.
• A fast implementation for no lapse in leave support between tools.
• Automation to reduce manual work, without losing visibility or control.
• More frequent product updates, backed by a strong support team.

A lot of vendors say, ‘well this is the way we've always done it. It has to take six to eight months, because that’s how it is,’ and Cocoon is changing that narrative, that they can do it in 2 months. And between all the reassurance and demos, and holding our hands through it, that really showed me that it could happen.”

A two month implementation goes live on day one

Once Angi chose Cocoon, the next two months flew by to get it implemented just in time as the contract with their former provider ended, so no leave takers would be caught in the middle.

“Admittedly, I was the panicked one,” Lauren laughs. “I was used to things taking several months and completing intense checklists to hand off to a provider. Once we sent them the census data file, I kept asking what I needed to do, and the Cocoon team just kept saying, ‘we’ve got it!’”

While Cocoon was busy with implementation, Lauren and her team were freed up to update internal comms and education around leave—but now just focusing on Angi’s policies and guidance. “We took certain resources from multiple pages to half of that, and focused on Angi’s messaging and unique policies or stance, rather than worrying about what the entire FMLA or one particular state says. It saved so much time and effort.”

Leave management at Angi looks and feels different—for the better

Though the solution was live on day one, Lauren and her team still had to notify the team and get everyone on board to the change. But once they realized what had changed, they saw great results.

As gray as the leave world is, Cocoon makes things a lot more black and white that we can provide to employees.”

1. Employee initiative and clarity around leave

“We’re seeing employees taking more initiative to start the process on their own, with a clear and accurate list of to-dos. Not only do they see what they need to do, but now they also understand why because Cocoon’s education is so clear. We can focus the conversation on Angi’s support, instead of a tense discussion about state policies we don’t control. Beyond that, my team now doesn’t have to spend time constantly updating our resources. We can focus on Angi’s specific role in the process and how best to support them.”

2. Visibility brings more confident managers and HR business partners

Managers and HR business partners are seemingly the most excited, as now they have the right insights into each leave, and the confidence that they’re doing the right thing—whether it’s reviewing a leave schedule or knowing when a leave taker will return. They can then use that to plan accordingly and support leave takers and the teams they’re on.

3. Automated compliance and payroll breakdowns eliminate tension and manual work

The pay breakdown always used to take so much work to figure out and were the main source of questions. Being able to show them in one click when they’ll get paid, and by whom, and know that it’s automated and correct is huge for everybody, from employees to the Payroll team.”

There are also no separate state-by-state compliance systems they have to manually keep track of on the side. “I can help any employee without needing to know all the ins and outs of each state. Cocoon will automatically update as the laws inevitably change.”

4. Enhancing team resources while saving money 

Before implementing Cocoon, the team was trying to backfill a role on the LOA team. Once they realized how Cocoon worked for them, they shifted that into a new role that was more urgent for their benefits management. “We filled a role that was more strategic for us, and saved money in the process.”

If you’re ready to leave your leave management provider like Angi…

Lauren is candid about what she’d tell other HR leaders in a similar spot, with overly-manual processes or a provider that isn’t delivering:

“Explore your options. Don’t accept ‘this is how it’s always been done’ as an answer. One of the most valuable resources a provider can offer is support, and if you’re not getting that, that’s not okay. You can put as many processes in place as you want to make the best of a faulty system—but they’re just band-aids.”

For Angi, switching to Cocoon wasn’t just about making an improvement—it was about implementing a true solution, built for them. Customers like Collegewise, Baggu, and now Angi have made the shift. Explore how Cocoon can help you automate leave management, so you can focus on your people. 

Challenge: Managing leave in spreadsheets left Collegewise juggling high-stakes calculations, state-by-state complexities, and dwindling trust—all while feeling unsure they were even getting it right.

Solution: Automated compliance, accurate payroll, and a great user experience for employees and across HR tools gave Collegewise confidence, consistency, and time to focus on people again.

Results:

• Hundreds of hours of manual work eliminated thanks to automated payroll calculations, compliant leave guidance, and zero need for state-by-state handbook rewrites.
• Over $50,000 of benefits recovered by accessing public and private benefits, and no more awkward clawbacks.
• Compliant guidance for any employee across any state, and for full-time and variable hourly employees—including for tricky policies and scenarios that historically tripped them up.
• Two-week implementation that met an urgent real-world deadline (an employee’s upcoming parental leave) with time to spare and a seamless transition for the team.
• A dramatically improved employee experience, turning stressful leave conversations about paperwork into people-centric moments of support.
• A morale boost for the People team as they shifted from spreadsheet calculus to meaningful strategic work and employee support to improve their perception around the company.

Meet Allison Lopour, Chief People Officer at Collegewise

Originally starting with Collegewise as a counselor with just five other employees, 18 years later, Allison Lopour now leads the People team, serving almost 200 employees across the US. She jokes that her career in college counseling is itself ready to go to college. She simultaneously brings the energy and enthusiasm of a freshman, with the confidence and prowess of a professor to her work. It’s just what’s needed to lead her lean team of three to tackle any and everything that comes their way. 

"Working in college admissions is like standing on quicksand, and supporting constant change means sometimes things feel like they’re held together with toothpicks and duct tape.”

How Collegewise managed leave before Cocoon 

Spoiler alert: it’s spreadsheets.

To keep up with a growing, distributed team, and in preparation for a big employee handbook update, Allison and her People team knew they’d need to refresh their leave policy and improve how they managed the leave process. The in-house leave management process before Cocoon meant lots of spreadsheets and long, high-pressure meetings that were starting to diminish trust and morale. 

Working in these giant spreadsheets made us feel like we were chiseling the leave process out of stone… It’s frustrating to spend so much time and still end up completely unsure about what to tell your Finance team and someone about to go on leave.”

With an employee weeks away from maternity leave, Allison knew it was time for a change. And fast.

Why Collegewise chose Cocoon’s leave management solution

Allison turned to her trusted HR broker, Bennie, which pointed her to Cocoon. 

"There are a lot of HR tools out there, but the way Cocoon talks about and humanizes leave, that just feeds me as an HR person. How they translate that into everything they do, not just what they say, made me a huge fan right off the bat.”

A few deciding factors stood out:

• Ease of use: “We needed something where an employee looking at it for the first time would know exactly what to do. And no bloated enterprise software.”
• Automated multi-state compliance + accurate payroll: “I need to know that when a leave plan or payroll report comes in, it’s right when I need it, that it’s going to be right, and that I don’t have to go back and forth with anyone about it.”
• Support for variable hourly employees: “Cocoon was one of the only solutions that worked for our variable hourly employees, which we have many of.”
• Integration-friendly: “A system that goes where we go, and integrates with our current tools and possible future ones as we scale and grow.”
• Fast implementation: “Our employee was weeks away from having a baby, and I needed it live before that.”
• Demonstrable cost-savings: Executive and Finance approval was fast. “I could show money we’d save, the clawbacks we wouldn’t have to do, and the hours of time we wouldn’t be doing this in spreadsheets anymore”

The moment of truth came when the Cocoon team didn’t shy away about a fast implementation deadline right before the holidays. “Cocoon gave us an easy checklist, we did it, and two weeks later I sent the link to log into Cocoon for my employee to submit her parental leave and boom! It was done. I really wish everything worked like that!”

Putting the “people” back in People Ops: results after implementing a modern leave management system

The results after implementing Cocoon kept blowing Allison away. Her enthusiasm doesn’t just come down to features, pretty payroll files, or our zesty email newsletters—it’s ultimately because Cocoon helps her create the space to truly support people how she’s always wanted to in her career. 

1. A better employee experience

"HR processes and leave policies can get so dry, but taking leave is life-altering. To offload this administrative, legal part to Cocoon and know that it’s accurate and shows people their options, that means you can create the space to truly show up for people. The first meeting to talk about their parental leave is about them, how they’re feeling—not paperwork. Those moments are the reason you go into a career in HR.” 

2. Automated multi-state compliance saved her from writing a massive employee handbook

"Our lawyer wanted to test Cocoon with a bunch of ‘gotchas’—like a policy that always gets messed up for New York—and Cocoon handled all of them, no problem. So not only are we compliant across any number of scenarios in any given state, but also I didn’t end up having to work on a 200-page employee handbook attempting to cover all those scenarios, which would go out of date as soon as I shared it anyway.” 

3. Accurate payroll every single time

I opened the first payroll report like, ‘I’m gonna scrub this to find those two pennies in the wrong place’ but everything was perfect. And so was the next report, and the next one, and the next one. That spreadsheet stress is gone.” 

Cocoon has even helped the Collegewise team access leave benefits and funding in places where they didn’t know such programs existed to recover more than $50,000 in benefits. 

4. A more strategic and confident People team

Now Allison’s team can truly level up their careers by doing more meaningful work. 

Before it was kind of embarrassing, like ‘Hey I know I hired you to build a career and instead you're gonna do high-stakes California state leave law calculus.’ Now we can focus on problems that are still hard, but much more impactful to work through and make our team look put together.”

If you’re ready to transform your leave management process like Collegewise…

Though there are probably few customers more enthusiastic than Allison (who joked that she should tone it down because, “nobody would believe how much I love Cocoon!”), her enthusiasm is a reminder of why Cocoon exists: to make planning and managing leave clear, fair, and human for everyone in some of life’s biggest moments.

If your People team is stretched thin across spreadsheets, you’re not alone, but you don’t have to keep doing it the hard way. Give your employees a leave experience grounded in confidence rather than confusion—explore how Cocoon could work for your organization.

This month’s updates are ones both HR admins and employees will love, driven directly by your feedback (thank you!) We’re always listening and always iterating to make leave management simpler, more transparent, and more human. These latest improvements are all about helping you see what matters, more easily than ever before—whether across custom emails, intermittent leave details, or leave documents—so everyone touching a leave can not only find what they need, but also see it exactly how they want to.

TL;DR On our latest updates

• Custom email creator
• Intermittent leave UX/UI updates
• My Tasks dashboard on mobile
• Holidays showing in leave timeline
• Documents tab for each leave

Send the right message at the right time with custom automated emails

What it is: Custom email creator

Who it’s for: HR Admins

What it does: Automated emails provide just-in-time information or confirmation as soon as someone triggers them. But when they sound automated or don’t come at the right time, things get lost in translation. Enter our new custom email creator.

HR admins can create and customize their own automated emails that go straight to leave-takers from Cocoon, based on what type of leave they are taking and where they are in the process.

For now, you can trigger messages when a leave is submitted, and soon we hope to expand to more moments—like the first day of leave or an employee’s return to work.

💡 This feature is in beta—we’d love your feedback to shape what comes next!

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Smoother and smarter intermittent leave interactions

What it is: Improved UX/UI for intermittent leave details and decisions

Who it’s for: HR Admins and Leave Takers

What it does: With each intermittent leave following a completely different schedule and strategy, we took your feedback to make information easier to see, download, and make decisions about. 

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‍Download leave details with one click. 

Need to run your own analysis or condense intermittent leave details like date, hours, and approval status into one file? One click and they’re exported as a .csv so you can customize the data and use it in the format you need.

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One consolidated pay file.  

Instead of multiple adjustment files when changes occur, you’ll now receive one consolidated pay file—making reconciliation easier and faster without needing to call in payroll support.

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Spot overages and deficiencies 

Admins now get a better preview of potential overages and a new option to decide what happens if an employee doesn’t resolve an issue with their leave request or SHC form.

Better visibility and planning for leave-takers across mobile devices and holidays

These improvements were made based on feedback directly from leave-takers to make key tasks and documents easily accessible, and showing them holidays to take into account for leave planning. 

What it is: My Tasks dashboard on mobile

Who it’s for: Leave Takers

What it does: 

Check and update tasks on the go.

During leave, many employees spend less time at a computer and need things more accessible from their phone. Now they can check any pending to-dos for leave, and easily access and upload documents on the go.

What it is: Holiday visibility in leave timeline

Who it’s for: Leave Takers

What it does: 

See how holidays play into leave plans.

Leave-takers were unsure about how holidays interacted with their leave time and pay, so now they’re clearer to see and understand on the timeline.

Stay tuned for more

From industry-leading product launches and feedback-driven tweaks, we’re committed to making Cocoon the easiest and most intuitive way to manage any kind of leave. That’s why we’re always listening to your feedback and taking into account the different nuances and complexities each leave can bring. Keep an eye out for more updates by subscribing to our blog or following us on LinkedIn for announcements and opportunities to share your feedback. 

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Imagine this: You terminate an employee who you believe has exhausted their FMLA balance, only to face a lawsuit six months later because you miscalculated their workweeks. The employee had a variable schedule—sometimes they worked 25 hours a week, sometimes 40—and you (or your leave vendor) treated every week the same. Now you’re facing legal liability and trying to reconstruct months of leave calculations.

This isn’t a hypothetical situation. FMLA violations due to wrongful terminations have increased by 53% since 2023, and last year more than one in four FMLA violation cases investigated by the Department of Labor was about a wrongful termination. For HR teams managing employee populations with variable schedules in systems that weren’t built to handle complexity of FMLA workweek calculations, these numbers represent a growing risk that shouldn’t be ignored. Teams know that managing leave can be complicated, but variable schedules introduce a level of nuance that most traditional solutions aren’t equipped to handle.

Why employees with variable schedules pose a unique challenge

The fundamental challenge is that FMLA’s 12 workweeks are not the same as 12 calendar weeks. Under FMLA, eligible employees are entitled to a total 12 workweeks during any 12-month period, but the total number of hours that make up those workweeks are dependent on the specific hours the employee would have worked if they weren’t on leave (29 CFR 825.205(b)(1)). 

TL;DR: When an employee’s weekly hours change, so do their FMLA usage calculations, and you can’t treat each week the same.

FMLA’s guidance for employers with variable populations

The FMLA’s guidance for variable schedules comes down to a single question: Can you determine with certainty how many hours an employee would have worked during a week when they take FMLA leave?

If the answer is yes, meaning the employer communicates a work schedule to employees and can identify the actual workweek, then the FMLA requires you to use those specific hours as the employee’s workweek. During each week that a variable employee takes intermittent leave, employers need to take the total number of hours they would have worked that week and then calculate the fraction of the FMLA workweek used. 

Let’s look at an example: 

• An employee is scheduled for 30 hours but only works 20 hours, taking 10 hours of intermittent FMLA leave. They worked two-thirds of their scheduled workweek and used one-third of an FMLA workweek.
• The next week, they’re scheduled to work 40 hours and again only work 20 hours. That means they worked 1/2 of their scheduled workweek and used 1/2 of an FMLA workweek. 

In most cases, even when an employee’s schedule is subject to seasonal variations, the Department of Labor has made it clear that these employees have established schedules and verifiable work histories that can be used to determine their expected work days and hours (DOL Fact Sheet #28I). 

What if you can’t answer that question?

When an employee’s work schedule varies so much that you genuinely cannot determine with certainty how many hours they would have worked in a typical week, you can use a 12-month lookback calculation. In these cases, the FMLA allows employers to calculate the workweek by identifying a weekly average of hours scheduled over the 12 months before the leave start date (29 CFR 825.205(b)(3)).

This exception exists for true edge cases, not as a convenient workaround for complex scheduling. Given the compliance risks associated with this calculation method, it should be your last resort, not your default approach. 

How to make that judgement call

Determining whether or not you can establish certainty requires careful assessment of how you communicate work schedules to your employees. This isn’t a technical decision, it’s a compliance judgement that should (ideally) be informed by legal counsel. Really long story short: employers can categorize employees with variable schedules into two groups: 

1. Those with schedules that can be determined with certainty
2. Those whose schedules cannot

Your leave solution should make this easier, not harder

Variable schedule leave calculations aren't just an administrative challenge—they're a legal requirement that directly impacts your employees' rights and your organization's compliance posture. Getting this right requires more than good intentions; it requires systems built by teams who understand both the letter of the law and the operational realities of modern workplaces. Use our vendor evaluation worksheet to see if your current solution is equipped to handle this complexity:

Cocoon can help

The complexity of variable schedule leave management isn't going away—if anything, it's becoming more common as workforces become increasingly flexible. But with the right system, it doesn't have to be so complicated. 

We believe leave shouldn’t be harder just because an employees’ schedule looks different than the “typical” 9-5. That’s why we’ve built support for employees with variable schedules that gives them the leave experience they deserve, and streamlines leave management for HR teams. We built our variable schedule support with this level of care and legal rigor because we understand what's at stake. Technology should actually understand leave law, not just claim to automate it.

As a reminder, Cocoon is not a law firm and this content is not intended to provide legal advice. While our Principal Compliance Architect Frank Alvarez is an attorney, he is not your company's attorney. Always consult with your legal counsel for guidance specific to your organization's circumstances.

At the heart of our latest product release roundup are updates that tailor the Admin experience so they can find what they need, fast, unblocking leave-takers and their People teammates in the process. With new Admin roles, more support for employees with variable schedules, and better communication preferences, we’re excited to keep evolving and improving a Cocoon built for you, no matter your role in the process.

Tailored visibility for HR Business Partners (HRBPs) 

As one of the first touch points for leave-takers with questions, HRBPs need real-time visibility to provide effective support—which is exactly what their new, dedicated Cocoon dashboard delivers. HRPBs can now see a comprehensive view of all leaves just for the employees they cover, organized by employee name, leave type, leave dates, status, and more. That way, they can proactively prepare for employee conversations, coordinate with managers, and provide personalized support instead of chasing down basic status updates.

💡 Learn how to set up HRBPs in Cocoon in our launch announcement.

Step in (without overstepping) with Proxy Admin power 

Proxy Admin power becomes essential when life gets in the way of completing certain leave tasks. Employees can focus on their reason for taking leave in the first place while letting Admins step in to handle certain critical actions to keep leave management on track, like:

• Create or cancel a leave on behalf of an employee
• Submit non-claims related paperwork
• Edit or extend leave dates
• Record notes for accountability

💡 See examples of Proxy Admin power in action on our blog. 

Better leave support for variable schedule employees

Does your schedule vary week to week? We’ve got you covered. 

Work schedules impact everything from FMLA eligibility calculations to determining what constitutes a “workweek." So, for the most accurate and fair time tracking for employees with varying schedules, we calculate leave time by workweek proportions rather than days and hours. When an employee requests a leave, we’ll ask what their anticipated schedule is, leaving room for adjustments later, and base our calculations on workweek proportions taken—no manual calculations necessary. Admins can review and approve in bulk, or auto-approve to keep time submissions on track. If you’re a current Cocoon partner, reach out to our Customer Success or Support team for more specifics!

💡Learn more about how it works and why our approach is best for any type of schedules in our launch blog.

Intermittent leave tracking for hourly employees

Intermittent leave tracking can be a mess of manual work, missed submissions, and even compliance risks, so we also updated our current experience to make it hourly employee-friendly. Leave-takers report their time away against their actual scheduled hours and Admins can easily review and request additional details. Meanwhile, Cocoon sends reminders so nobody needs to be chased down and auto-updates pay tracking details, FMLA balances, and flags any issues for review. 

💡 Walk through an example of intermittent leave tracking in action with our very own Frank Alvarez.

Customize Cocoon for your team, your needs

Auto-synced census data with our new Rippling integration

We now have an integration with Rippling, so any Rippling users’ employee census data will now automatically sync to Cocoon. You can rest assured that with real-time data, eligibility, payroll, and state and insurance benefits are all calculated based on the most updated HRIS data—no more manual file uploads. If you’re interested in turning this on, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager for more details. Learn about our other integrations here.

Waive Serious Health Condition (SHC) form requirements

For certain leaves, getting an SHC form before leave approval isn’t the ideal order of operations—maybe a leave-taker is already incapacitated, or an employer has sufficient knowledge to make an informed decision. Now, Admins can approve leaves and waive the form requirement, while leaving a note explaining their reasoning. 

💡 Get the full rundown on reviewing medical leaves and SHC forms with our free checklist. 

These updates are just the latest chapter in our ongoing mission to build a leave management platform that truly works for everyone who touches the leave experience. That’s why we’re always listening to your feedback and rising to the occasion across the different nuances and complexities each leave can bring. Keep an eye out for more updates by subscribing to our blog or following us on LinkedIn for announcements and opportunities to share your feedback. 

Just like a good game of tennis, consistency, timing, and playing by the rules are key for a smooth and compliant leave process. But sometimes, the ball gets stuck in a leave taker’s court—putting themselves and your People team at risk of missing key deadlines that can affect things like pay and compliance. Without Cocoon, this can stop a leave dead in its tracks, as you keep trying to reach an unresponsive employee or their leave management rep. Luckily, Cocoon’s got you covered with our Proxy Admin role to lend a helping hand and keep the ball rolling without overstepping boundaries or taking on more work than necessary. Keep reading for scenarios where Proxy Admins come in handy, what they can do with Cocoon, and why it’s a win-win for you and a leave taker.

When does Proxy Admin power come in handy?

Proxy Admin power likely isn’t at the top of your list when evaluating leave management solutions, but when you need it, you really need it. It comes in handy across situations like:

1. Bigger life circumstances make getting input hard

It’s pretty common that leave plans change, emergencies happen, and/or an employee rightfully needs to focus their attention on the reason they took leave in the first place. Sometimes it happens in the planning process, or when they’re already out on leave. Regardless of when, you don’t have to be dependent on employees taking certain clear and undisputed actions—like extending leave dates—to ensure nothing gets off track, denied, or falls into non-compliance.

2. Good intentions without proper follow through

Navigating leave requirements can be complicated. Employees can forget to submit something, it isn’t complete, it’s not done in a timely manner, or they submitted something to the wrong channel. Whatever it is, Proxy Admins can successfully resolve these issues without defaulting to deficiency notices, while keeping a clear record of each action taken, by whom, and when.

3. Employees on-the-go, not tethered to their desktop

Cocoon caters to a wide array of employee types, whether they’re traveling a lot, working on job sites, or simply aren’t comfortable and familiar with certain software. With other solutions, the burden remains on the employee, but Proxy Admins can jump in to take care of certain tasks.

What Proxy Admins can do in Cocoon

Now that you have an idea of when you might need proxy power, here’s what you can do with it. The process is straightforward and consent-based; employees give consent upon creating a Cocoon account. With this consent, Proxy Admins can:

• Complete certain non-claims related employee tasks — Upload forms like fitness-for-duty, serious health condition, or proof of child.
• Create parental, medical, and caregiver leaves — Get a leave started for unforeseen leaves.
• Edit or extend leave dates — Jump in when an employee needs more time, moves to tracked intermittent leave, or hasn’t confirmed a return date.
• Cancel submitted leaves — If an employee initiates the leave process but then doesn’t need it or their plans change, you can cancel it so things don’t get left hanging without a resolution.
• View and leave a complete notes and actions log — Cocoon always keeps a complete record of who took which action and when, with the ability to log notes. E.g., on a phone call with an employee, you were able to clarify the leave return date. 
• Access helpful information from Cocoon — We’ll share helpful information that you can pass on to employees as needed so they don’t get overwhelmed across various sources.

The benefits of having Proxy power

With these scoped and specific abilities for Proxy Admins, you can achieve better leave experiences for all to step in when needed, without overstepping.

Unblock your team and leave takers faster. Paperwork didn’t get submitted? A simple task stands between approval or denial? These don’t have to be blockers anymore, nor do they have to mean extra work for People teams.

Provide a better employee experience. Most people aren’t walking into an emergency or caring for a newborn with a laptop nearby. Stepping up for an employee when they need you leads to a better employee experience to show you’re there for them and not bothering them with things you can do on their behalf. 

Focus your time on the details that matter. With a clear view into a leave taker’s deadlines, to-dos, and leave details, you can add a personal touch or jump in to help where it’s needed instead of wasting time playing telephone or time tracking down the wrong information. 

Always have a unified record. No matter what happens, there’s a clear record of who did what, when, and why. In the event of a dispute or compliance issue down the road, you have a clear track record of what happened.

The bottom line

Leave is a series of endless outliers and edge cases, and you need to be equipped with a solution that gives you and your employees the flexibility and fluidity to tackle them successfully, head-on. Proxy Admin power is just one more way to help you smooth the edges and step up for an employee when they need you most, with Cocoon there for you the whole way through.

Managers, admins, and HR business partners each play a vital part in managing a leave. But in order to do so effectively, they need easy access to the same real-time information to coordinate and problem solve. To give them just that, we’ve expanded our admin functionality to now include a role for HR business partners (HRBPs), giving everyone the visibility and tools they need to deliver a seamless, supportive leave experience. Because no matter your role, you deserve a Cocoon built just for you. 

The importance of HRBPs in the leave process 

HRBPs are often the first point of contact for employees with HR questions—especially when it comes to taking a leave. Tailored access in Cocoon gives HRBPs their own dashboard for direct visibility into where leave takers are in the process, and better insight into the work Cocoon takes on. That way, they’ll know what’s done, and what’s coming up so they can be prepared and see where they might be needed. However, they won’t see sensitive details, giving leave takers privacy and Workspace Admins ultimate oversight and control. 

They’ll also have access to our resource library to help them craft onboarding/offboarding plans, and coach managers through the process. With Cocoon automating things like payroll calculations, they’ll be able to focus efforts on personalized attention. Ultimately, effective coordination amongst everyone involved in managing a leave affects employee experience, retention, re-onboarding, and overall career success. Parentaly recently showed that those returning from parental leave who had the support of effective managers were 6x more successful in re-onboarding after their leave and 1.7x more likely to stay on at the company.

💡Pro tip: download our ultimate guide for managers to get tons of tips on how best to support someone before, during, and after a leave.

What an HRBP can do and see in Cocoon

Setting up an HRBP admin role

Setting up the HRBP role is fast and easy, while balancing flexibility with privacy. First, a Workspace Admin just needs to add the HRBP’s details and submit them from the Admin Settings.

From here, you’ll link the HRBP to any employee groups they’re responsible for, like departments or cities, etc. already created from your census data. This also means they’ll automatically link to teams, managers, and employees they oversee. Workspace Admins can add or remove access as needed, and as your census data updates, so will Cocoon.

The Cocoon experience for HRBP admins

When an HRBP logs into Cocoon, they’ll have a dashboard showing any upcoming, current, or prior leaves taken by employees in their group. The dashboard breaks down the view by employee, leave type, cadence, start date, end date, and status.

By clicking on an employee’s record, they can get more details around leave dates, laws and policies that apply to them, and pay coverage details. Additionally, they’ll also get notified when:

• An employee submits or updates a leave plan
• A leave gets approved or denied
• An absence gets reported
• A leave taker’s return date is approaching so they can plan accordingly 

💡 See it in action in our click-through tour:

The bottom line

Giving HRBPs tailored visibility in Cocoon directly translates into their effectiveness in being a better partner to a leave taker (and their own HR teammates), ultimately leading to bigger wins for the employee experience overall. With better admin capabilities, Cocoon gives each unique stakeholder the details they need, when they need them—especially as organizations change, grow, and scale. Leaves are never a one-person journey and Cocoon is built for you no matter your role in the process.

Leave is never an easy, one-size-fits-all plan—and that’s especially true for employees whose schedules fall outside a typical nine-to-five. Yet here at Cocoon, when we see leave complexities, we lean into them so we can simplify them for leave takers and ultimately build a leave management system that doesn’t just work for some customers and People Ops teams, but one that is truly built for you. That’s why we’re pleased to start supporting employees with variable schedules in Cocoon, with all the automation, compliance, and proactive communication our platform offers.

Here, you’ll see why this update is crucial for teams like yours, how it works in Cocoon, and what makes our approach to leave for employees with varied schedules different. Want to see how our variable schedule support works first hand? Try our clickthrough demo or go more in-depth with a demo from our team.

What are employees with variable schedules and why does that matter for a leave of absence?

We define “employees with variable schedules” or “variable employees” as employees whose work schedules vary week to week, who might only know their work schedule a few days or weeks in advance. Some examples:

• A floor manager who works five eight-hour shifts during the week, but the dates and times of those shifts vary.
• A nurse who only receives their weekly schedule on the Sunday before their work week.
• A staff member who works Monday through Thursday every week, but their shift durations vary.

This is in contrast to a fixed schedule worker, who works the same schedule and hours each week, and isn’t reliant upon shift scheduling to know when to come in.

Work schedules impact the calculations to determine leave eligibility (whether it’s for FMLA or your own organization’s policies), leave compliance, how time is tracked towards a leave, and how pay is calculated. For example, FMLA eligibility requires that an employee has worked at least 1,250 hours for their employer during the 12 months preceding their leave (among other requirements). Eligible employees are also entitled to up to twelve work weeks—but for variable employees, a “work week” can vary week-to-week. 

How Cocoon supports employees with variable schedules

With millions of employees with variable schedules, it’s important to get this right while not overburdening them with manual work and calculations. That’s why we built variable employee leave support with the same automated but personalized touches that set Cocoon leave management apart, including:

Flexibility and guidance tailored to each leave taker

When you first implement Cocoon, we ask about the types of schedules your employees have to ensure everybody gets the right guidance and planning options based on their situation. When an employee starts planning leave, we help them map out their schedule, even if it entails some guesstimating or changes later on. Taking their varying schedule into account also ensures we don’t make assumptions that need to be corrected later, like not giving them the option to track time on Saturdays and Sundays.

Compliance and time-tracking accuracy 

We base our calculations for variable employees on a work week basis—not days or hours, because not all work hours or days are the same for them. Employees will always be able to know the amount of leave time taken and available to them, and can’t submit more leave time than the work schedule they submitted. Proportional time calculations ensure fairness and accuracy whether it’s a continuous or intermittent leave, or if a leave begins or ends mid-week. Here’s an example:

Ethan plans on taking an intermittent medical leave over a two week period, and has 0.5 weeks of total leave allotted based on his doctor’s recommendation and what was approved. 

• Week 1 schedule = Monday-Friday, 8-hour shifts, and he takes 5 hours on Wednesday → He’s used ⅛ of a week
• Week 2 schedule =  Monday-Thursday, 4-hour shifts, and he takes 4 hours on Monday → He’s used ¼ of a week

So, if Ethan needs more rest and recovery time in week two, he still has two hours left. Additionally, because he’s not scheduled for Friday, if he takes time on Friday, that doesn’t count against his balance and doesn’t need to be reported. Without proper calculation, Ethan may be taking too much or too little time, and calculating it incorrectly for FMLA compliance.

Smart schedule creation that you can double check

When planning their leave, an employee starts with their anticipated schedule, but we’ll check in to get more details as needed, and send estimated schedules to admins who can choose to review and sign off in bulk, or have them auto-approved.

What sets Cocoon’s approach apart from other leave management solutions?

We’re always improving and adding to our platform, because at our core, we believe that technology has the power to automate and simplify the hardest parts of managing leaves. In addition to giving you peace of mind and time back, you can look forward to: 

• Real-time automation and compliance: Cocoon ensures eligibility and tracking are done correctly across even uncommon leave situations, while automating calculations for accurate pay, compliance, and deadline tracking. No spreadsheets, manual processes, or leaving someone to figure out state leave laws by themselves.
• Scalability as you change and grow: Technology takes the lead, so whether you have five or 50 annual leaves, Cocoon offers a smooth experience. No more relying on one-to-one reps that tend to provide slow and manual support no matter how much you pay.
• Deep expertise in easy-to-use features: Experts like Frank Alvarez—with over three decades of first-hand employment and disability law experience—ensure we understand and codify leave laws and compliance so well that you don’t have to be the expert.
• More trust in more industries: Over 10,000 leaves have been managed in Cocoon, across industries ranging from tech to media, capital markets to banks, manufacturing to pharmaceuticals, and more.
• Tools to tackle the tough stuff: Though Cocoon can’t dictate your actual company policies, we can help you generate policy text, check how competitive they are, advocate for better ones, and ensure they’re compliant. 

“We used to spend a lot of time explaining how eligibility requirements worked… but with the way Cocoon visualizes and explains the information to leave takers, we get these questions far less, and the conversations that we do have are much more productive. Employees don’t feel like HR is just telling them something—they can interact with the information these decisions are based on.”
^{— Sarah Robillard, Senior Benefits Analyst @ ActiveCampaign}

Built for you, now and in the future

Need variable employee leave support? Talk to our team to see how it could work for you. In the future, we’re also excited about how this update sets the foundation for how we’ll handle complex scheduling to better accommodate any type of work schedule and worker. From nurses to restaurant staff, hospitality to manufacturing, more organizations and employees can now plan and manage their leave with Cocoon, giving your People team (and us) the chance to serve better, more equitable leave experiences to all.

The challenges you see with employee leave management don’t disappear as you scale. Professional Employer Organizations (PEOs) who manage leave across hundreds (or thousands!) of employers have to navigate the same manual processes, fragmented systems, and compliance concerns.

Today, we're unveiling our solution to this industry-wide challenge: Cocoon for PEOs.

Our leave management solution for PEOs is designed to eliminate manual work, reduce complexity and risk, and deliver a seamless experience for every stakeholder involved—PEOs, their employer clients, and their client’s employees. Built on our proven leave management technology, Cocoon for PEOs adds the critical tools and functionality needed to manage leave at scale.

Why we built Cocoon for PEOs

In our conversations with PEO leaders across the country, we heard the same challenges again and again: "Leave management is monopolizing my team's time", "Our clients are confused and frustrated and so are their employees”, "We're worried about legal exposure with so many jurisdictions to manage", "There's no single source of truth across our multiple systems".

Traditional approaches to leave management simply weren't designed for the unique challenges PEOs face. We knew there had to be a better way—and we saw an opportunity to build on what we've already created for employers by adding the tools PEOs need to manage leave across multiple organizations simultaneously. And so Cocoon for PEOs came to life!

And we're already seeing traction—we've partnered with one of the nation's leading PEOs as our first client. They share our vision for modern, scalable leave management that serves every stakeholder and this implementation represents a major step forward to modernize leave management for PEOs. We’re also in discussion with several other major PEOs to implement Cocoon for PEOs—a clear signal that the industry is ready for a technology-powered solution to this persistent challenge.

Finally, automated leave management for PEOs

Cocoon for PEOs is a centralized, automated leave management platform that scales with you—and gives you the power to serve your clients with clarity, consistency, and confidence. Let Cocoon’s software handle everything from employee leave planning, to leave management including compliance, all the way through assisting employees with state and private insurance claims, and calculating payroll during leave. 

Our solution is designed with multi-employer operations in mind:

• Multi-employer management: Seamlessly toggle between employer profiles to streamline workflows
• Full leave lifecycle control: Act on behalf of employees and employer admins when needed
• Comprehensive audit trails: Access a log of every action taken on a leave for record keeping
• Bulk implementation: Onboard clients at scale drastically reducing implementation time

And while you gain advanced tools and controls, your clients and their employees still experience Cocoon’s trusted, intuitive leave platform—the same one they know and love.

Why Cocoon is the complete leave management solution for PEOs

Cocoon for PEOs replaces manual systems with end-to-end workflow automation designed specifically for multi-employer management. Our platform is uniquely built to serve three stakeholder groups simultaneously:

1. PEO administrators who manage leave across multiple clients
2. Employer clients who need visibility and control
3. Employees who deserve a seamless leave experience

This creates a single source of truth that improves visibility, reduces administrative burden, and increases client satisfaction. Ours is the first platform to bring clarity, compliance, and scale into one unified experience for PEOs.

Let us solve your biggest leave management challenges

With Cocoon for PEOs, you can:

Improve client satisfaction

Give your clients and their employees easy-to-use tools, complete visibility, and a smoother leave experience that sets you apart from competing PEOs. 74% of customers say Cocoon is a “must-have” tool in their HR stack.

Automate compliance

Eliminate risk with Cocoon's rules engine that handles leave compliance federally and across all 50 states—including eligibility calculations, required notices, and time balance tracking.

Reduce administrative burden

Automate employee leave planning, leave compliance, pay calculations, insurance claims, and more—giving your team tens of hours back per leave. Scale your leave operations without scaling your team. Teams spend 50% less time managing leave when they use Cocoon.

Centralize information

Replace scattered systems with one platform everyone can trust—creating a seamless experience across PEO teams, employers, and employees. As an HR user noted: “I love having one system for employees to go to and knowing it's compliant, and being able to look for information in the portal in case I need specific details (pay, time remaining, return to work).”

The future of leave is here, join us

Cocoon for PEOs is more than just software—it's a smarter way to work, a better experience for your clients, and a more scalable model for your business.

The competition for PEO clients is fierce, and those offering modern, digital-first experiences for critical HR functions like leave management will have a clear advantage. Whether you're managing 100 employers or 10,000, we've built Cocoon for PEOs to scale with your business.

👉 Request a demo to see the platform in action. We can’t wait to show you what we’ve created!