Customer Story

Mr. Cooper Group drives employee engagement with holistic well-being

Meeting employees where they are

Mr. Cooper Group Inc. is an industry-leading mortgage company providing customer-centric servicing, origination and transaction-based services related principally to single-family residences throughout the United States with over 4.3 million customers.

As a company, they have worked tirelessly to transform their culture from the inside out to put their people first. Utilizing team member feedback, they developed core values for their organization that will help them achieve their goal of becoming America’s most-loved home loan company.

Carol McBride, Vice President of Benefits shares that, “Mr. Cooper is all about empowering our people. We believe that happy team members leads to happy customers and that’s good for everyone.”

McBride and the benefits team have built an award-winning culture around three main values:

Champions for Our Customers – Strive to give customers the best homeownership experience possible by delivering radical service. Mr. Cooper Group knows that when customers win, they win and when they win that helps them keep their promise.
Challengers of Convention – Challenging the status quo is a part of Mr. Cooper Group’s DNA. They offer a safe space for team members to challenge the status quo and find a better way.
Cheerleaders for Our Team – Happy team members make happy customers. The Mr. Cooper Group team is dedicated to creating a place where team members love to work and celebrate all of their successes on the basis they enjoy the journey and are better working together.

These values have led Mr. Cooper Group to be recognized as a certified Great Place to Work five years in a row along with several diversity, equity and inclusion awards.

Challenge

Following the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr. Cooper Group transitioned to a remote workforce that would only visit the office occasionally for celebrations, team collaborations and training. Going to a remote environment brought the challenges of keeping team members connected and engaged with the organization. The Mr. Cooper Group benefits team could no longer rely on the methods they used when everyone was in the office. McBride explains, “being home-centric requires us to reimagine how we work and ensure that we focus on our team members physical, mental and financial in innovative ways which included a focus on diversity, equity and inclusion.”

The team began looking for ways to evolve their traditional wellness program that focused mostly on biometrics and health screenings. Team members were incentivized with premium reductions for their medical benefits but often the program felt transactional in nature. Many team members would wait until the 4^th quarter to participate so they could earn their premium credits. Mr. Cooper Group realized they wanted to redirect the experience and focus on providing holistic well-being resources that meet team members where they are and drive engagement throughout the entire year.

Solution

Driving sustainable team member engagement

Mr. Cooper Group partnered with Limeade to create their Wellbeing360 program focused on offering a total suite of well-being activities and resources. Their top priority was boosting participation by supporting team members in becoming healthier, wealthier and wiser, so they can live their best lives. The benefits team focused on reducing the stigma of the prior transactional wellness programs by creating a well-being program team members want to use versus simply earning a premium.

“We leverage Limeade to build a well-being program that is fun and exciting, where team members want to come back regardless of the incentives.”
Leslene Pender, Assistant Vice President Benefits

Wellbeing360 program goals included increasing year-over-year participation, instituting friendly team challenge competitions, boosting monthly active users and improving the health metrics of team members. In order to achieve this, Mr. Cooper Group partnered with their Limeade Strategic Account Executive to utilize best practices in creating an engaging team member experience.

Leveraging leadership buy-in to increase participation

Organizational support is one of the most critical factors for team members to engage in their well-being program and feel confident that their organization supports their well-being. To achieve their participation goals, the Mr. Cooper team deployed several campaigns and initiatives throughout the year utilizing their executive leadership team. Leaders would sponsor team challenges, participate in custom challenges focused on unique Mr. Cooper Group values and post content promoting benefits in a more relatable manner.

To make outreach more meaningful, Mr. Cooper Group leaders would create fun and engaging videos promoting steps challenges or sharing inspirational content around mental health and finance topics. These videos along with team member success stories made the team member experience feel more personal and encouraged team members to continue engaging with the program on a regular basis. The program saw a 22% year-over-year increase in team challenge participation thanks to the dedicated leadership team.

Cross-departmental collaboration

The Mr. Cooper Group Wellbeing360 team didn’t stop their collaboration efforts with just organizational leadership. They continued to search for opportunities to expand their reach by partnering with different teams across the organization. They discovered that their DE&I team had several initiatives that overlapped with their goals and began working together to cross-promote and drive awareness. They teamed up with 12 Employee Resource Teams to create a Champion Network — a group of team members who are passionate about well-being who can share information and support team members at a local level. Using these Employee Resource Teams allows Mr. Cooper Group to promote their benefits in a more relevant manner. Cross-promotional campaigns included Employee Assistance Program training for the Cooper Cares resource team and promoting a new women’s health program in the working parents and women’s network groups.

The internal partnership was mutually beneficial to the DE&I team. Using the Wellbeing360 communication capabilities they promoted upcoming Employee Resource Team meetings, guest speakers, and themed content like Black History Month and Mental Health Awareness Month. Employee Resource Team groups and DE&I initiatives were promoted in activities and team members were given points for joining and participating.

Personalizing the team member experience

The Wellbeing360 program is designed to support individual well-being journeys by providing a personalized experience for each team member. The program offers a wide variety of content, resources and benefits that support any team member’s physical, emotional, financial and work well-being. To further personalize the experience, the Mr. Cooper Group team created over 30 custom challenge activities that tied to their culture and key areas of focus.

Supporting at-risk and high-risk team members was a priority for the benefits team. Principle of Benefits Rachel Roy explains, “we provided a variety of activities throughout the year that targeted top chronic conditions as well as encouraging completion of preventive exams.” Using these targeted campaigns, the Mr. Cooper Group benefits team were able to meet team members where they are in their well-being journey by providing relevant resources that give them the tools and information to improve their health.

Mr Cooper Group employee wellbeing activities with Limeade

Consistent communication

A strong and consistent communication strategy has been key to the success of Wellbeing360. The Mr. Cooper Group team developed a robust communication strategy that contains a variety of content to engage team members in both a fun and informational way. Content includes benefit vendor spotlights and quick tips through Mindful Monday, Well-being Wednesday and Financial Friday posts.

The Mr. Cooper Group communication strategy includes a multi-channel approach using the Limeade platform to post three to four times per week in addition to corporate emails and intranet resources. To ensure team members are only getting information and updates that are relevant to them the team relies on a targeted communication strategy. They send weekly manager team updates, new activities and challenges, a monthly benefits newsletter and targeted communications for new hires.

“A huge win for us through our partnership with Limeade was a new communication channel that we’ve not been able to leverage previously. Limeade allows for custom posts within the platform as well as sending push notifications to app users and has really allowed us to connect with our team members across the country while reaching them in their method of choice.”
Rachel Roy Principal of Benefits

Results

As a result of their hard work, the Mr. Cooper Group saw their efforts pay off. They experience gains in overall engagement, registration and monthly active usage year-over-year. The Wellbeing360 program resonates with a wide variety of people and provides an engaging and personalized experience that keeps team members coming back on a more regular basis.

In the two years post-launch, Wellbeing360 has achieved: