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May 21, 2015 at 08:13 AM
Zenefits — the startup benefits company valued at $4.5 billion after its last round of fundraising — is rolling out two more potential industry disruptors in the form of Zenefits for Managers and Zenefits Business Intelligence.
The two products will be available for free, like much of the Zenefits software platform. The company makes money by acting as a benefits broker, a new model of middle entity between health insurance and payroll providers and employers.
“This is by far the biggest change to our product since we launched two years ago,” Zenefits CEO Parker Conrad said. “We’ve only had employee-level users, who have access to their own information, and administrators, who sort of have godlike power over everything. And in most organizations, authority is more widely distributed than that. This product adds a third role, or third group of people — the managers of the company.”
Conrad noted that Workday software is at the core of the new product, and that it’s designed to act like enterprise-grade human resources software — but it’s free to use, which he believes will make it more accessible to small and medium businesses.
“We didn’t want any complex implementation,” Conrad said. “The way it’s set up, anyone who is a manager in the company can request any change in Zenefits that they want, whether it’s hiring an employee, firing an employee, increasing compensation or arranging a transfer.”
Managers’ requests are just that — requests — and a company administrator must approve them.
