How Nuro saves nearly half a million dollars each year

Nuro is on a mission to improve everyday life through robotics. Founded in 2016, Nuro is best known for their autonomous delivery vehicle, The Nuro Driver™, which was the first autonomous vehicle to receive NHTSA-approved exemption—and which has been deployed across seven vehicle platforms.

In addition to licensing their world-class L4 autonomous technology to automotive and mobility platforms, Nuro is devoted to advancing the field of Artificial General Robotics. Using their unique AI infrastructure, Nuro is finding new ways to bring robotics into the physical domain, rethinking how people live, move, and interact with autonomous technology.

Accounting for every employee’s unique needs

Nuro believes in a world where everyone is welcomed, embraced, and valued—and their employee culture reflects that.

“At the end of the day, it’s the people who run the business,” said Jo Garnace, Benefits Analyst at Nuro. “That’s why employee care is so important to us.”

Taking care of Nuro employees—the Nurons—starts with understanding their individual needs. “Our demographic is diverse and expansive,” Garnace explained. “We have young folks, we have older folks, we have people from different landscapes. So we want to ensure we’re capturing everyone’s feedback when it comes to our benefits - their benefits.”

To do that, Garnace and her team survey employees regularly, hold office hours where employees can discuss their options, and use ticketing systems to answer questions and address concerns. “We have an open-door policy. And we like to ensure that we’re hearing everyone out,” she added.

Nuro offers a robust employee benefits package, which includes a 401(k); restricted stock units; comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage; flexible paid time off; pet insurance; and fertility benefits.

“We also have excellent mental health benefits—like covered therapy and counseling—which are available to our employees’ dependents as well,” Garnace said.

Plus, Nuro offers 10 weeks of paid parental leave to Nuron parents, regardless of how long they’ve been working at the company. “Here at Nuro, we want to ensure parents get the time to properly bond with their new child,” Garnace said.

When Nuro wanted a more effective way to support employees before and during parental leave, the company reached out to Sparrow.

The challenge: Giving employees a stress-free leave experience

Before partnering with Sparrow, Nuro used a different employee leave management provider—but Nurons weren’t having a positive experience preparing for leave and filing for benefits.

“Our employees weren’t getting the timely responses they were promised from the provider,” Garnace said. “There was a lot of confusion about what they needed to do to file for leave benefits and who they needed to talk to.”

Nuro employees were left to navigate the filing process largely on their own, completing paperwork and following up with state agency representatives with little to no concrete guidance.

Despite having a dedicated leave professional from Nuro’s leave of absence provider, Nuro employees were being constantly redirected. “They’d be talking to our vendor, but having to come back to Nuro’s people team to ask for confirmation on certain things,” explained Garnace.

On the administrative side, communication was tedious and ineffective. “A lot of the communication started between our employees and our provider, and then it transitioned to the employees and Nuro, then Nuro having to return to our provider for updates or answers,” Garnace said.

The perpetual back-and-forth correspondences created twice the amount of work for Nuro’s people team. “There was this feeling like, ‘Why do we have this vendor if we’re just going to end up doing the work ourselves anyway?’” said Garnace.

With a super lean people team, Nuro knew they needed a way to reduce their administrative burden while also leveling up the employee experience during leave. “It became too hard to keep up with other aspects of the job with all the leave coordination and the income replacement work,” she said.

When Nuro researched new leave management providers, Sparrow stood out from the start.

The solution: Partner with Sparrow to support employees every step of the way

Nuro’s primary reason for switching to Sparrow for full-service employee leave management was the well-being of Nurons going out on leave.

“With Sparrow, Nuro employees can easily address their action items when going out on leave, and get all their questions answered,” said Garnace.

Instead of having to reach out to multiple people to get answers or instructions, Nurons just talk to their Sparrow Leave Specialist. Sparrow Leave Specialists set up one-on-one introductory calls with all Nuro employees taking leave; during the call, they break down the benefits Nurons are entitled to, explain how the filing process works, and answer questions about paperwork and pay.

Sparrow then submits paperwork on the employee’s behalf, and Sparrow Leave Specialists follow up with state agency representatives and insurance providers, keeping Nurons in the loop along the way.

“Our employees love how personable Sparrow Leave Specialists are,” Garnace said. “I’ve gotten feedback from parents saying that Sparrow made the entire leave experience seamless, and helped lower their stress during a time in their life when they were going through something really huge and all-consuming.”

Nuro’s secondary reason for switching to Sparrow was the administrative work. With Sparrow Leave Specialists coordinating and communicating with Nuro employees, the people team’s leave-related workload is minimal.

“For me, it’s been night and day with Sparrow,” said Garnace. “I’ve never worked with a leave vendor who has actually taken on the responsibility they said they would prior to implementation—until Sparrow.”

“Sometimes a relationship with a vendor starts strong then deteriorates over time, but that’s not the case with Sparrow,” she explained. “We’re going into our second year now so something is going very right.”

With Sparrow’s hands-on help, Garnace doesn’t have to review complex state leave laws, complete paperwork, or calculate payroll. Sparrow handles every task, including staying up to date on leave laws and tracking filing deadlines.

“I love being so hands off now,” she explained. “All I have to do is check the emails that Sparrow sends me and relay information if I have to. The whole process has been really smooth, which I appreciate.”

When she has questions or when Nurons need additional information, Garnace gets responses from Sparrow Leave Specialists right away. “Sparrow’s turnaround time for responses is incredible,” she added.

“In previous roles of mine at other companies, I ended up spending about 35 to 50% of my time working on leaves, and I’d have to do payroll every other week,” Garnace said.

Now, Nuro’s people team doesn’t have to factor payroll adjustments into their workload. “I love the income replacement aspect of Sparrow’s services, because they work directly with payroll, and I don’t have to get into it,” said Garnace. The cost savings is a bonus: in 2024, Sparrow helped Nuro recoup more than $420,000 in wage replacement costs.

Sparrow streamlines payroll administration by setting up automatic payroll calculations for Nuro and creating custom payroll reports, which Garnace and her team can see on the Sparrow portal.

“The Sparrow portal is really easy to navigate and understand,” she added. On the platform, Garnace and her team can see the entire company’s leaves at a glance, including start and end leave dates and pay breakdowns.

“Every vendor has their own portal but they’re not always user-friendly,” Garnace explained. “And I appreciate that Sparrow’s is user-friendly on the employee’s end as well.”

Nuro employees on leave can log onto their Sparrow portal to see exactly how their pay shakes out, including how much they can expect in each check and which percentage of pay comes from the state and from the company.

Making more time for what matters

Sparrow’s in-depth leave expertise and practical support have transformed Nuro’s entire leave process, reducing employee stress and relieving the People team of needless admin work.

“Since I’ve been at Nuro, Sparrow has been the easiest and most seamless vendor that I’ve worked with so far,” said Garnace.

With Sparrow handling everything from paperwork to payroll, Nuro’s people team has more time for employee care. “Going forward, we want to expand our benefits and take a more holistic approach. We made some changes for our 2025 benefits, and we want to keep making even more,” Garnace explained.

“At the end of the day, I just want to know what our people need—and make sure we’re always delivering.”

Sparrow makes employee leave management seamless. Find out what we can do for you or book a demo today.