How We’re Working With TriNet in Response to the Overturn of Roe v. Wade

In times of volatility and uncertainty, I find myself returning to Mode’s core values, which continue to serve as the North Star for the kind of company we want to be. In the past few years, we’ve encountered an unfortunate number of situations that have required us to stand up for these values – from taking a stance on racial injustice, to helping our people adjust to remote work during the COVID-19  pandemic, to maintaining a rigorous ongoing commitment to diversity in hiring.

The recent Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade presented us with a uniquely complex challenge. How could we continue to serve the healthcare needs of our employees on a national scale–and importantly–in a way that is anonymous and protected? We knew that we needed to find an immediate solution that would enable us to continue providing quality healthcare to our employees with no interruption.

In the days following the Supreme Court decision, we saw a number of large companies announce that they would offer travel benefits for their workers who need to leave their home states to access abortion or gender-affirming care. But the challenge is steeper for startups and emerging businesses like Mode: because we are too small to run our own insurance program, we are unable to change the details of our insurance coverage. Any way that we might run a program ourselves would require our employees to disclose their care to management, and would leave their data open to subpoena (not protected by HIPAA).

So we reached out to the leadership team at TriNet, who were already taking steps to enact programs for their own employees as well as their customers. We helped them understand our requirements and what we hoped to get out of our program. The final product they have delivered exceeded our expectations.

Mode is proud to be a part of the customer feedback team for TriNet’s Enrich Program. This enables us to continue serving the needs of everyone who works at Mode by providing our team with travel benefits to access healthcare and medical services that may be legally unavailable in their areas, while maintaining complete anonymity. 

At Mode, we believe that providing a work environment grounded in physical and psychological safety for all our employees is not only the right thing to do, but will best position our business for long-term success. While critical even in normal circumstances, the need is especially acute right now.  We’re proud to partner with vendors like TriNet who are using their scale and power to fight for human rights on the national stage.