Q&A with Gravie’s Chief People Officer, Amy Spartz

In 2015, inspired by the innovative team at Gravie, Amy Spartz broke a promise to herself to never work for someone else again, and left her own HR consulting company to help build on the creative and uplifting culture that was being cultivated. Now Gravie’s chief people officer, Amy sat down with us to share her thoughts on how Gravie is not only rethinking the world of health benefits, but the company and people behind them.

What do you think contributes to employee satisfaction and how does Gravie implement those things?

Employees today want to know they’re making a difference and that what they do in their daily work life matters. The company-wide focus here is on achieving a new and improved healthcare experience for members. The healthcare system is broken, and most people have felt that at some point in their lives. We develop products and services under the lens of simplifying something that’s complicated and bringing value to people where it often doesn’t exist.

To help Gravie employees understand their connection to this mission, we talk about our flagship product Comfort™ at every all-company meeting. We keep employees informed of our upcoming innovations. We readily share member feedback we’ve received (both positive and negative) to always keep the end user in the front of our minds. Consistently pointing back to shared goals, successes and milestones helps to foster a sense of purpose. In fact, 97% of Gravie’s employees say they understand the company’s goals and how their job connects to those goals.

Autonomy and independence are other big contributors to job satisfaction, and we offer several benefits and work styles to support this including flexible PTO and other perks.

When you think about Gravie’s culture, how do you want employees to feel about working for Gravie? What’s your vision for your team?

I want our team to feel like they work for a company where people treat each other right because it’s the right thing to do. I was immediately drawn to that culture and attitude here. We’ve also established four cultural pillars at Gravie to help guide that:

• No Jerk Policy: Simply put, we don’t believe thick policy binders are what influence employee behavior and how we treat each other. We believe this pillar is self-explanatory, and is a major guiding principle.
• Think. Ask. Explain: Communication, curiosity and critical thinking are important qualities we look for and encourage regularly. We welcome diverse opinions and healthy internal pushback.
• Remove Obstacles: Solving problems is what we do, even if that means recruiting help from another team member or working cross-functionally. We want employees to always feel empowered in our collective mission to remove obstacles for each other and our customers.
• Reasonable People do Reasonable Things: This is one of the guiding principles behind some of our benefits like flexible PTO, and frankly even our own health benefits plan Comfort, which offers 100% coverage on most common services. We put our trust in the employees we hire to make reasonable and smart decisions, offering guidance or parameters when needed.

What qualities do you look for in the people you hire and keep on board?

We try to connect with people who will thrive in a work environment that enables autonomy and ingenuity. Gravie’s core competencies of authenticity, creativity, curiosity and outcome orientation are traits we look for in every single job we hire for.

We’re no longer a startup, but we’ve carried on that energy of excitement and passion for fresh ideas and always will. The innovative culture that we’ve built doesn’t revolve around one department, or even a product, but instead around our customers and end users, and the mantra to put the health plan member first. We try to encourage employees to listen intently, seek to remove barriers rather than create new ones, and pay attention to the issues that employers and employees face as it relates to health benefits.

This culture has allowed for collaboration and unity while we work with purpose to better the entire healthcare industry.  

Gravie recently held an internal job fair. Can you tell us more about that and how you’re helping employees find their best fit within the company?

We’re dealing with an ever-changing healthcare landscape, and as a company trying to make the industry better, we also need to provide our employees with meaningful opportunities for personal and professional growth.

Our recent Career Exploration Day was an opportunity for all employees to learn more about the different departments at Gravie. The hybrid event was open to everyone at the company, across departments. The idea was, if we let our current employees explore all of the different teams at Gravie, from account services to HR, they have an opportunity to potentially switch paths and find a role that they can keep thriving and growing in. Being upfront and transparent about potential job moves can be scary for many employers, but it’s so important to build a team of unique individuals who are passionate about what they do. Keeping good employees in the right roles is ultimately a win for Gravie, and our people.

Gravie is set to grow even more this year. Can you speak to any of the departments you’ll be focused on hiring for and what you’re looking for?

We’ll be hiring in every single department this year. We’re looking for people who are passionate about improving the healthcare system, and who are inspired by making a generally difficult-to-understand product easy and valuable.

In addition to passion, we seek out people who are gritty and not intimidated by tough problems. They’re smart and help us push through the way things have always been done. We also seek candidates with high levels of empathy because along with celebrating their colleagues’ wins, we want them to be curious about what consumers want and need in their health benefits.

Learn more and apply to join the team on our Careers page!