Trusted launches Tuition Reimbursement for its employees

Steven Loeb · March 16, 2016 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/4404

Trusted is an on-demand babysitting service, which has bucked the trend of hiring contractors

One of the downsides of the rise of the on-demand/sharing economy has been the effect on workers. Companies like Uber and Lyft have been fighting hard to keep their employees as contractors, meaning they aren't eligible for the same type of benefits as a full-time employees, including minimum wage, health insurance, and unemployment benefits.

Obviously there are two sides to every argument, but it's clear that these workers are not benefiting from the system as it currently stands.

That will eventually be settled out with lawsuits. In the meantime, it can actually benefit other companies in the same space, who can tout how well they treat their employees, unlike those other guys, who try to deny workers basic benefits.

A good example of this is Trusted, an on-demand babysitting service. On Wednesday, the company announced that it is instituting a Tuition Reimbursement Program for its employees, who can get $5,250 in reimbursements if they are a full time student.

At the top of semester, anyone who want to be a part of the program just has to submit an application, and as long as they are enrolled in accredited university, they will be accepted, no matter what they are studying. Once the semester is done, they just have to turn in a bill, along with a copy of their transcript, and if they have a 3.0 GPA or above, they will get the reimbursement, which is also a tax free benefit. 

The company has been beta-testing it with students from the University of San Francisco’s Nursing School, and is now ready to bring it to all of its employees.

In an interview with Anand Iyer, co-founder and CEO of Trusted, he made it clear that he views the company's providers, not only as the face of Trusted, but as the backbone of what makes it successful.

"A large part of what we deliver, in terms of our service, are our providers. They show up wearing a jacket, with a Mary Poppins bag full of goodies. They're trained to answer intelligent questions," Iyer told me.

Trusted doesn't work with any agencies to find providers, and instead sourced all of them in house, going around various nursing schools to find people to work for the company. Now over 90 percent of those providers are nursing students, and many of them have student loans, which Iyer found to be the thing that was giving them the most stress. 

"They are family. They embody our values, and we want to make sure we are taking care of them any way we can."

On top of programs like Tuition Reimbursement, all of Trusted's employees are on a W2, and are Trusted's payroll. They are payed directly by the company for the hours they worked.

"Vivian Chan and I both worked at Microsoft, which offered great benefits, like a 401k, and we wanted to do something similar," he said. "We want to always be there for them, and benefits that are meaningful to them."

Plus, it helps set Trusted apart from other companies, who seem to be going in the opposite direction when it comes to helping out their providers.

"There's a pattern I noticed, that there seems to be a differentiator between core employees and non-core employee. If a person's a valet or a  driver, and the company is about building a service for valets and drivers, full time employees get benefits, but contractors do not," he said. "For us, from the get-go, we made everyone an employee. We want to ensure that our core values permeate down, and any benefit we can take advantage of, they can take advantage of."

Plus, he noted, the cost of constant employee churn, of acquiring new drivers or valets, who leave because they don't feel like they are treated well, can cost a company a lot of money. 

"On our platform, we dont want people to leave. We want them to enjoy what they're doing. That's a  guiding factor for us, the retention of employees," he said.

The company has had literally no employee churn so far, with only a couple of providers being forced to leave by the company as they did not meet its qualifications.

Launched six months ago, Trusted is convenient way to secure a qualified and heavily vetted child care provider. The idea for the company came from when Iyer and his wife had a child, and struggled to find good childcare providers. 

"We had two bad incidents, and that made us lose faith in the system. We were disheartened. We stopped going out, our friends forgot who we were. We became antisocial," he told me. "When I reflect back on that time, I wanted to be the hero for our family. I wanted to find care options, and I was always letting us down. I wanted to be an early adopter, but it wouldn't happen."

After talking with other parents, he realized this was a common problem, and there was a giant void to be filled. 

It has so far worked with hundreds of families, and done over 1,000 bookings, with the typical use case being a parent who needs a babysitter two or three times a month, though the company is also seeing an increase in parents using Trusted as a daily service for their children.

The company has raised $2.1 million in venture funding from Slow Ventures, Crunchfund, Metamorphic, Techstars Ventures, KPCB Edge, Great Oaks, Naval Ravikant and Semil Shah.

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Trusted is the fastest and most convenient way to secure a qualified and heavily vetted child care provider when and where you need one. Coverage currently in San Francisco.

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