VANNOY:

The truth about on-demand pay, what employers need to know. Hi, I’m Mike Vannoy, vice President of Marketing at Assure, and, and this is a really timely subject, so you hear us every week talking the show about the war for talent has hit Main Street. And so small businesses have to compete not only with each other, but big companies. Big companies have different types of resources, but how do you compete for, for talent? Coincidentally, there’s the, been this, I’d say megatrend mega shift happening around how people get paid. My daughter comes home from a babysitting job. She’s paid Venmo in the car ride home. This is how the workforce is starting to get used to getting paid. And I think you got these two kind of worlds colliding in, in, in. It manifests in this new capability in the payroll world called earned wage access on demand pay. Got a great guest to unpack this topic today. Tate Hacker, he’s the co-founder and president of ZayZoon. Tate attended University of Victoria to study economics and finished his final semester. It’s City University in Hong Kong. Takes the brainchild behind ZayZoon developing the idea of providing access to funds before payday back in 2013. ZayZoon is a socially responsible financial technology company that was created to end predatory lending and give employees control over their paycheck. Tate, welcome to the show.

HACKETT:

Hey, Mike. Thanks for having me.

VANNOY:

So, but let, let’s maybe just start with just a, a definition. I think this is a term that people are starting to get used to more and more. But how would you define on demand pay earned wage access? There’s a whole bunch of acronyms for this.

HACKETT:

So I would describe on-demand pay, exactly how you described your daughter getting paid after a babysitting shift. I think that was so well said. It’s, it’s the concept of getting paid when you need it and when you want it. Right. it’s archaic to have to wait two weeks for a paycheck. Of course, it makes sense. There’s a lot of administration that needs to occur. There’s a lot of moving parts and everything else. But as, as an employee on demand pays this concept of getting paid when you want and when you need and typically that’s, you know, as much as every day. Or it could be just when that employee is in a cash flow crunch and needs to access pay in between paychecks.

VANNOY:

Yeah. Good. I, I’m curious for, for you to share your thoughts. You know, part of your mission is to, is to end the predatory pricing strategies of these like same day loan payday loans. I think we all, we all know, even us old fogies, we, we, we notice, like you drive you see along the side of the road same day title loan kind of payday loan sign flashing. And, and, and these things can be pretty nasty, right? It’s it’s dare I say, preying on those of us who need the help the most and can least afford those kinds of fees. Can you maybe explain the evolution from that business model, how it’s kind of technologically advanced to where you are today and why you aren’t that if, if there’s a, if that’s a good way of saying it.

HACKETT:

Payday loans are interesting. There are more payday lenders in the US than there are McDonald’s. Wow. And by, by a large margin, which is just such an insane thought, right? You know, it, it, it’s interesting. So when, when we first think about or, or, you know, the concept of on-demand pay and why is, why is on-demand pay being able to, you know, be offered to employees provide that same sort of utility as a payday loan, this concept of accessing your pay prior to the next payday, but in a really responsible way. And there’s sort of a couple key factors that make that possible. Payday loans are expensive because they kind of have to be. And people believe that payday loans are making money hand over fist, and it’s not exactly true. Now, of course, they’re charging a crazy amount.

 They’re charging crazy fees. They’re absolutely predatory. It’s terrible, terrible experience for the consumer. But the business itself is, is actually you know, they have tight margins just like any other business. And the reason being is, is a couple of reasons. So, so we kinda have three things. There’s this old school administration practice where a lot of it’s still done by paper and pen or legacy software. It’s brick and mortar typically. So like, you know, you’ve pointed out there’s payday lenders on what seems like almost the, the every single street corner, right? Yeah. more payday lenders at McDonald’s. And then the last thing is, is you have all of these really good customers that are subsidizing for the bad customers. And what that means is, effectively every dollar that a payday lender gives out around 20 cents of that dollar doesn’t come back to them.

And that results in a big hit to their revenue. Sure. And that’s why they charge such exorbitant fees. And so earned wage access on demand pay, what really makes this diff what what really makes it different is this integration with payroll providers, that ease of capturing that employee data, being able to seamlessly offer up an amount to an employee based on the hours that they’ve worked but haven’t yet been paid for. And then the seamless repayment of those funds. So now actually getting repaid through those funds that employee doesn’t have to forget or, or think about, you know, walking to the corner of, of, of that payday loan store and repaying that check or anything like that, those funds are paid back automatically, safely, securely. And that basically means that the business is, is a really streamlined, nice, efficient business. And all those savings can be passed onto the consumer. And that’s why you see on payday or with on demand pay, typically fees range from anywhere from $0 to around $5 for an employee to access their funds. Whereas with a payday loan, those same fees are, you know, upwards of 30, 40, $50.

VANNOY:

That makes sense. So if I’m a brick and mortar old school payday loan company all I really have is I can run credit on ya, give you, gimme your social security as some form of ID and your last three paychecks, but I don’t have any way to verify that you actually are getting a next paycheck, right? I mean, you be, you may be coming to me because you just got fired. You’re not telling me. So everyone in the system has to absorb that loss. Am I thinking about that, right?

HACKETT:

Yeah, you’re a absolutely correct. Yeah. And, and add to that, again, like the brick and mortar nature, the marketing that goes into payday lenders, right? You see the commercials with the big yellow flashing lights and everything else, right? On-Demand pay, again, is this beautiful, succinct solution that gets offered through a payroll company and through the employer as an employee benefit. And all that marketing and lift and credibility is built through those clients. Which really, again, like from a consumer point of view, they get to reap all the rewards and benefits by having a lot cheaper way to access capital in between paydays.

VANNOY:

Yeah. Like, and just know through the, through our, our integration. I mean, you just know, oh, John Doe you know, maybe may instead of walking into the store, they’re doing it right here. But you know, in real time that Mike is actually an employee of Assurer and therefore, and this is how he’s earned, earned money in the past. So you have your underwriting is, you, you have a lot better data to underwrite and be much more cost effective. Right.

HACKETT:

Exactly. And, and it’s, you know, again, like really important to point out that earned wage j access isn’t a loan. Right. And, and you’re, you’re saying it, it, it’s, it’s using that pay data in real time, right? Right. To decide how much an employee can access early maybe taking a, a, a little step back just to provide everyone with further context in case they’re kind of like, you know, wading through it here trying to put together the pieces you brought up a Sure. So, so a typical kind of process for, for an employee, what that looks like is normally they’ll be notified through an email, maybe a lunchroom poster in their workplace, they’ll go to sign up for, for an on-demand pay solution. And because that integration is already built in, because everything is sort of working in the backend, that employee enters in a couple key key pieces of information, and they’re up, they’re running, they’re able to access funds in real time. Those funds are sent automatically to their bank account, and then again, on payday, they have nothing to worry about. It automatically gets deducted off of their paycheck. Yeah. And there’s nothing for that employer to worry about either because of kind of just what’s running in the background with that payroll company. So it’s really a nice solution that’s hands off for the, the client and makes a ton of sense for the employee.

VANNOY:

So let, let’s spend just maybe a couple minutes talking about benefits to the employee. I mean, this show is really for employers, you know, around compliance and benefits and productivity. That’s where I wanna spend most of our time today. But, but just speak speaking to the benefits for employees in, in, in maybe some of the challenges in today’s financial climate that, that so many employees are facing.

HACKETT:

It’s interesting. I I, I would like to think that a benefit to the employee should be a, a, a, you know, brain dead benefit to the employer, right? Like, like if, if you are benefiting the employee as an employer, you should really care about that. And with on-demand pay, sort of what we see is an employee that uses on-demand pay is typically one that’s less financially stressed. They are one that is, you know, due to being less financially stressed, they’re more productive at work. They typically have a better morale. And they’re more likely to stay because they’re not eyes wide open looking across the street for 25 cents an hour or more because they’re not stretched between paychecks. And so the same benefits that give employees access to this cheap liquidity in between pay periods is the exact same benefit that gives employers all these, you know increased retention, increased productivity better recruitment. All of these are, are really byproducts of earned wage access.

VANNOY:

So, so, so let, let’s talk about the competitive advantages. I, I, I think, so the example I use all the time is you know, I walk into a restaurant, I see a bunch of open tables thinking, oh, my wife and I we’re gonna get seated right away, right? And they say, oh, it’s gonna be a 30 minute wait. And I’m like, what are you talking about? But we don’t have enough staff to, to cover the entire restaurant. I mean, I, I think everybody knows what that feeling is like. That didn’t exist pre covid. It’s, I I think it’s, it’s here to stay. This is not a covid thing. This is a, this is a, this is a combination of birth rates 50 years ago, 40 years ago in job participation rates. There’s a whole, whole big, whole bigger story at play here. But the war talent is real. Now, if I’m a restaurant on one side of Main Street and says now hiring and the restaurant and the other side of the street main Street has now hiring get paid at the end of your shift, which, which restaurant is more attractive to an employee, right. To me, that just brings, brings it home. Maybe say more about what, what are the, what are the other competitive advantages for an employer of why you’d want to offer this?

HACKETT:

I I’ve been talking about this story a lot. But, but I, I really love it and I love it because it’s something that is so obvious in hindsight, but at, in, you know, in the moment, I really would’ve never guessed or seen it. Our, our company’s azos partnered with a large swath of Wendy’s franchises. And one franchisor in, in in particular sent an email to me one day and said, Hey, I was going over my, my cash till theft numbers, right? All, all, all the skimming that occurs from my, from my cash float. And since implementing zsu, our cash till theft has gone down by 80%. Wow.

And they attributed that exclusively to the access of on-demand pay. And when you sort of think about it, it starts to make sense if your employees are stressed between pay periods, if they are scrambling to buy groceries that night and trying to figure out how to budget for the next 8, 9, 10 days it starts to get tempting to take $20 outta the cash register. Yeah. But if you can access those wages in real time, all of a sudden it helps relieve that stress for that period of time. Right. And now there might be a bigger problem at play here with just wages in general and how much people are getting paid and other benefits that are being offered. But I think as a short term solution and something that can really provide immediate relief to an employee earned wage access is such a beautiful solution because it, it, it does, it takes away that stress immediately from an employee and does things like reduced tilt theft by 80% for an employer, which again, after hearing hindsight makes sense, but just ridiculous.

VANNOY:

That warms my, I’m not exaggerating, that warms my heart. What a what a what a reflection of humanity, because it’s so easy. I mean, I’m an entrepreneur, I’ve been, I, I own some businesses. I’ve been part of owning businesses for my whole career. And it’s, it’s real easy to jump to some conclusions about criminality and mindset, good person, bad person. But when the same human doesn’t take from the till because there can access their legitimate paycheck early, it really screams to need, right? In, in, in, in not having to wait the two weeks plus another week for payday and all that kind of stuff. It’s like the, the people who need it need it. And it’s, it’s not to go buy, spend it on nefarious things. It’s for groceries in, in daycare and gas to get to work in, in life’s essentials, right?

HACKETT:

Yeah. We see, I think the most recent stat that we’ve, we’ve pulled and, and surveyed from customers is 86% of Z zoom transactions are used for short term necessities. So these are groceries, utility bills, medication, things that can’t be weighted on. And again, super powerful, right? I have another story as, as a benefit to the employer. Last year I embarked on a 75 day RV tour across the United States. We hit 21 different states across 75 days. We brought 41 Zian team members along for different parts of the journey. And the intent of it was, you know, we’re growing as a company. We added a bunch of people to, to, to the business, and we wanted to instill this concept of just ownership in, in our, in our team. And this concept of talking to your customer and learning from your customers.

And so, you know, we are embarked on this journey. And we were in Dayton, Ohio with one of our clients, a large manufacturing client, and they implemented Zen. I didn’t know about this until actually chatting with the, the leader of HR there. They implemented zn because they were doing advances in-house to the tune of about $10,000 annually that they were spending just on transaction costs. And so when you think about like, the power of, you know, that administrator employees coming into our office asking for advances, a paper check, having to be cut off the side of the desk, maybe an off cycle pay run, or a wire fee being made this is an employer that wants to help their employees, right? They want to, like, who wants to have an employee come into your office and say, Hey, I need money. And your response is, nah, I can’t help you. Sorry. Like, of course you’re going to, if, if, if, if you’re, if you’re a good employer, but it does pose issues, right? It costs money, it creates some somewhat of a liability. Or are you gonna give Paul the same advance that you’re gonna give John or Jane? Right? and so, so when I heard that, again, like I recognized that businesses were doing advances for employees, I didn’t realize to what extent, and I didn’t realize to what extent it was costing them. And so another good wide opening experience for me,

VANNOY:

You know what, and I, I kind of love, I had, I had, before we started this conversation, I had in my head, we’re gonna talk some employee benefits, some employer benefits. And I love how you corrected me out of the gate that, you know, they’re, they’re co-mingled. They’re the same thing, right? Cuz if, if you’re fighting the war for talent to attract people, and then when you get good people, you want keep ’em o of e even if you’re, if you are doing this purely outta the goodness of your heart, you wanna find ways. If you’re a capitalist peg and you don’t care anything about them, you simply need good people. It, they’re still completely intertwined, right? And it just, that story got me thinking it’s kind of none of the employer’s business <laugh> that they need some help right now.

Right? And how embarrassing is it if I’m an employee that, you know, I’m a single parent I’ve got a domestic whatever issue, and I’m trying to find a way to feed my kids, get ’em to school that, that day, that week, whatever, it’s like, do I really want my boss to know that about me when I’m just grinding and working as hard as I can to, to, to get ahead and, and sh and show my best foot forward? Right? I mean, clearly that’s very personal sometimes in it’s employee centric, but if I’m an employee that’s working for an employer that provides that benefit to me, I mean, that’s just goodness.

HACKETT:

It’s, it’s interesting because if you think about the multitude of benefits that are available sure there’s reports that are provided and sure, as an employer you can dig into things and query the system, but it’s not very typical that you know exactly what employees are using, what benefits you have or how often they’re going to see a therapist versus sure. You know, whatever other type of doctor. And so with, with earned wage access, again, like why not give ’em a little bit of anonymity, offer this right to, to, to the entirety of the staff and just know that, you know, they’re gonna use it as they see fit. If they’re using it, they probably need it. And take surveys, communicate with, with your staff, figure out how they’re liking it, figure out if, if there are ways that that can be improved upon it, and have that open communication.

I think we see a lot of employers where their initial reaction if it’s not, wow, this is awesome, then it is typically you know, oh, I don’t want my employees to take advantage of this, or, oh, like, what happens if they use it too? And, and they sort of fall into this cycle or trap. And for me, I think that’s indicative of a much broader problem and an opportunity as an employer where you can coach your staff, you can put other benefits into play. You can have this open door communication policy that I think creates a much better relationship. And so, again, like, I’m obviously biased, but to me it’s, it’s such a win-win.

VANNOY:

So, Tate, I, I am curious you, you know, being in this world, you, you’re, you’re I’m sure familiar with a trend around financial wellness, right? So you go back, you know, not that many decades and, you know, quote unquote employer benefits basically meant, you know, healthcare, he health, dental, vision, right? And in the last couple decades, it’s morphed into a whole bunch of stuff from employee assistance programs to pet insurance to you name it, right? The, the plans are getting more and more creative I think just to serve needs of employees as, as our world continues to evolve and employers are in a tougher, tougher fight to attract and retain the, the talent. Where do you see financial wellness fitting in in the trends for offering as a benefit? How do you see on demand pay earned wage access as even being positioned? Do, do you position it as a component of the benefit plan? May maybe speak into that if you could.

HACKETT:

Yeah, it’s, it’s it depends. We definitely view earned wage access as, as a crucial part of an employer’s benefit offering. Again, like we talked about all the, all the benefits to both the employer and employee, I think it’s hard to ignore earn wage access as a core benefit. I, I think when you’re an employer looking at what to offer, again, like have that open communication with your staff, figure out what problem areas they’re running into, figure out, you know, you mentioned pet insurance, do your staff have pets? Like if they don’t have pets, then why would you offer pet insurance? Like that? That seems very common sense, right? And so I think similarly with earned wage access, you can kind of view it in two buckets. You can view it as, are my employees having cash flow shortfall issues? And ways that I can measure that could be by an anonymous survey I could look at, I could go chat with my HR administrator and figure out, hey, how many of our employees are actually asking for advances?

 I think there’s ways that you can sort of look at it through that lens. The other lens that you can look at it at is, earned wage access is this no lift, no cost solution for an employer. Yeah. And so what’s the worst thing that’s gonna happen? You make it available and no employees use it. And the upside is that you make it available and just one employee finds an immense amount of value in it, right? Of course, you know, typically you see a lot, lot more. And, and I think employers would be surprised with how many of their staff actually do run into cashflow issues in between pay periods and find value in a service like this. But again, in evaluating benefits and how we think of it fitting into the broader benefits landscape it’s like anything, just talk with your staff, figure out what’s needed, do a, do a comprehensive sort of view at at, at the benefits market and, you know, decide on what’s best for you and your business.

VANNOY:

So I, I, that’s, that’s so important. I think we need to say it twice. Let’s, let’s explore that a bit more cuz. So yes, the benefits to employees and employers are intertwined here, and there’s a bunch of goodness and and reasons to provide this type of a capability to your employees. But I think as an employer, you still have a bottom line to manage. There’s only so much margin to give. If you’re in a business that you’ve chosen, okay we’re gonna pay super high, we’re gonna pay top of market commission rates so our employees are can, can maximize earnings that therefore leaves less dollars on me for me on the back end to provide other kind of benefits. What, how you said this doesn’t cost anything, say, say more. How, why doesn’t it cost anything to the employer? And then how easy is this for an employer to deploy

HACKETT:

Earned wage access, generally speaking, as an industry typically doesn’t cost the employer anything. Now I, I can speak for, for ZayZoon in particular we, we never cost the employer a dime. And for our service, we can onboard an employer in literally minutes with zero ongoing administration required on their behalf. I think the latter part of that statement, ongoing administration varies provider to provider and certain things are, are required by, you know, different providers in order to offer the service. But generally speaking, it’s a pretty low lift, no cost solution for an employer. And, and, and a benefit that’s really utilized and paid for by the employee. Does that help answer, answer your question, Mike.

VANNOY:

Okay, so, and I lost, we might, I lost the signal for just a second there. Sorry. all right, so no cost. Here’s, here’s a, I think I wanted to be crystal clear. The purpose of this show is to provide information to employers to help them grow their businesses, right? Stay compliant attract and develop talent. There’s a bunch of earned wage access vendors out there. All I’ll say is that we, we went through a very extensive e evaluation with, with, I’d say all of them. And we chose ZayZoon for a reason platform technology, people process et cetera. So but whether you do business with ZayZoon or not I, I think that’s an important thing for employees, employers to consider, is why wouldn’t you add a benefit to your employees? And don’t assume, oh, my folks don’t need that, because there’s probably at least someone who does when it’s extremely low effort and no cost on the employer side. I mean, very rarely is an employer, as an entrepreneur, are you gonna come across opportunities to add value for your employees that cost you nothing? I mean, this, this, this feels about as no-brainer as it gets. Am I, am I overstating that tape?

HACKETT:

You’re definitely not overstating it. The biggest objection that we get from prospective clients is, in one way or another, you know, this is too good to be true. We, we, we talk about how simple of of an integration it is, or, you know, no integration at all. Simply an activation because of the, all the heavy lifting has been done with the payroll provider in the backend. And, you know, typically when a employer is thinking about anything connected to payroll, they’re thinking of that initial, you know, e r p solution that they put in, or, you know, this, this need to kind of do ba bank reconciliation and match their bank account up and onboarded the payroll pro. Like all these things that

VANNOY:

Right

HACKETT:

Isn’t, isn’t included here, right? And so it truly is like a, a no-brainer, super simple, super easy to implement. And yeah, I, I, I can talk about that for forever because obviously I’m, I’m such a proponent of it, but again, like whether you’re an employer of two or three employees, or you’re an employer of a couple, few, five, 10,000 employees it, it, it truly makes sense.

VANNOY:

Yeah. So we’re gonna compete with a train by That’s good. This, I love this. This is this, we’re working in real time here. So let, let’s, let’s demystify that if you can. I’m not asking to, to trade give trade secrets or give away your p and l, but for the person watching, the entrepreneur watching today is saying that’s too good to be true. How is this free to me? I mean, at the end of the day, as an, I can tell you from the payroll provider side, we want to provide the most competitive payroll product that we can to help employers attract and retain talent. And so it doesn’t cost us anything either. The, the, the model’s really built for you to make money, but because you’re technology-centric, not bricks and mortar payday loans, you can do it through scale and low-cost efficiency of technology. Am I, am I, am I saying that right? Or is there anything you’d add?

HACKETT:

I think you will hear a little bit of a train here. That’s all good. <Laugh>, I’m I’m working remotely today out of Florida. Beautiful, beautiful weather. So, yeah, I, I, I, I think you, you said that really well. When we, when, when ZayZoon approaches the market, we partner with payroll providers like Assure, and we make sure that that is our first and foremost focus. And we know that if we can have a really, really amazing partnership, and that includes the technology integration in the backend, right? It also includes the people side of things, right? We know if that we can, if we can have that really beautiful partnership, then for an employer, the account manager, their support rep, their salesperson, is able to have a credible conversation about ZayZoon. And the activation that occurs is really straightforward, really easy, really simple, because of all the heavy lifting that assurance ZayZoon have done in the background months and months prior. And so, again, like super simple, super easy, there’s no reason why an employer shouldn’t turn a solution like this on.

VANNOY:

So let’s talk about productivity. So I mean, you talked about, I mean, real world impact on theft from the till. We talked about, you know, the, the, the privacy a aspect for employees and, and not putting employers in uncomfortable positions, but I think they’re just real world benefits to having more productive employees because of stress, and they’re not spending working hours dealing with, you know, they’re on the phone with say, a creditor or utility company lining up this or that. What, what, what information can you share there about actual hard dollar impact to productivity?

HACKETT:

Yeah, unfortunately, I don’t have stats or, or stats that I’d be comfortable with being quoted on these. I’m sure I’ll get, get the percentages off by one or two points. But you know, in, in general there, there’s, there’s a lot of time spent by employees doing exactly what you said, going to spending time on the phone with the utility company, spending time going to the bank during working hours spending time worrying about money during working hours. So a lot of time that is wasted at work. A lot of this absenteeism or presenteeism is actually spent worrying about finances. Yeah, it’s a financially stressed country. You know, over, over 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. They have less than $400 of savings in their bank account. And so, like, there’s no wonder that productivity starts to suffer because of it.

 You know, what we see specifically at Z Zoom is, is yeah, a decrease or an increase in productivity due to offering a solution to combat, you know, exactly that financial stress. But I think as an employer, it’s, it’s pretty important to dig in deeper and figure out exactly what, what other stressors employer, employees are having. We’re a small business too, right? We’re, we’re, we’re a team of just shy of a hundred people. We run quarterly e NPS surveys. If, if your listeners don’t know what that is, it’s basically just like, how much are your employees enjoying the time at the organization? How, how much would they actually recommend the organization to a friend or, or colleague? And what comes out of that is, again, this like, stream of open communication, right? So we use these surveys as a way to understand how much the organization is stressed at work, how much the organization is feeling like their workload’s too much.

Why is the workload feeling too much? Is it because there’s actually too much work to do? Or is it because the work is spread out in 20 different buckets and they’re continually context switching? Is it because they’re financially stressed? And so all of that stuff then feeds into what we were talking about earlier, Mike, which is like, let’s look at your benefits package. Let’s look at things like earned wage access. Let’s look at our organization holistically and start piecing together the parts of what can really benefit our employees and make them more productive at work. Cuz ultimately, like if you can make an employee happy, if you can make them less financially stressed, in my mind, that, that that’s, that’s a perfect combination for increased productivity.

VANNOY:

Okay? So I, I think we probably don’t need to, I, I think we’ve said it right? I mean, it costs the employer nothing. There’s a million benefits to the employee. Happier employees make better, more productive employees. I mean, this feels like no brainer. So certainly we hope everyone chooses assure and accesses a zoom through Assure. But regardless if you’re on another platform and you say, you know what? I, I, I gotta, I gotta do this, this is, this is stupid not to, let’s shift to successful or not successful implementations. So I’m an employer, I run, run a small business. I’ve determined that, you know, call it a third of my, maybe it’s half of my workforce is, is will likely benefit from this. What are the best practices to roll something like this out in my organization,

HACKETT:

We actually developed a, what we call earned wage access buyer’s guide to tackle this exact question. Because earned wage access is for everyone, but there’s different providers depending on your type of org, what you’re trying to accomplish, what your employees want, et cetera. So I, I think from an implementation perspective, what you should be looking for is like understand, are you, you can do a survey beforehand figuring out how many of your employees are actually gonna uptake a service like this. Are your employees unbanked? Are they underbanked? Do they want a card solution? Is a card really important? If it’s not e e ex

VANNOY:

Explain that and what and why that would matter.

HACKETT:

Yeah, certainly. So, so earned wage access providers send money to employees in a number of ways. Some are more flexible, some are less flexible. For example, some earned wage access providers require a card. They require a payroll card that has the employee’s direct deposit put under that card, there’s full banking functionality provided with that card. It’s a really sleek, simple solution for an employee that otherwise wouldn’t have a bank account. Whereas other earned wage access providers might provide flexibility like ourselves, where that employee can choose to access funds to a card they can choose to access funds to their own bank account, or they can choose to access funds in, you know, multitude of other ways. And so if, if you’re a company that has a large part of your workforce that is unbanked and is using a pay card solution, and your employees are actually using that pay card solution, cuz we’ve seen it where they think that they’re using it, but actually none of them are.

 If they’re actually using that pay card solution, then it might be best that you look at an earn away Jackson provider that specializes in pay cards. If your employees don’t care about having a pay card, if they already are banking with Chase or Wells or a Chime, then you know, probably going with someone more flexible with more, you know, more functionality makes a little bit more sense. So that’s just one, one way that you can sort of look at the market and decide what’s required. Depending on your size of business, you know, small, medium larger businesses, each of those are gonna have a little bit different requirements. I’ll speak to z again, we specialize in small and mid-size businesses, typically a few thousand employees and under going all the way down to a couple employees, right?

 Now there are businesses that specialize in 10, 15,000 employees and above. And just given the nuances in those larger shops it might make sense to go with a, with a company that an earned wage access company that specializes in those large, large enterprise deals because they might have ways of approaching it a little bit differently than someone that just focuses on the small and mid-size. So I think there’s a lot of things that you can kind of point at and, and look at. Again, we have an earned wage access buyers guide to, to help with exactly that. But yeah, I think like, do your own research have a lot of conversations. It should be, you know, simple to have these conversations, grab demos and, you know, do business with people you like.

VANNOY:

All right. So Tate people listening today you know, they’re like, okay, no brainer. It doesn’t cost anything. There’s obvious benefits to employees and therefore obvious benefits to me as the employer. You know, entrepreneurs are working their faces off, right? I mean, they’re working 60, 80 hours a week. Probably not even sitting at a computer watching this, maybe listening to the podcast while on the treadmill after the kids went to better maybe on the car ride home from dropping the kids at school. I mean, this is the life of an entrepreneur. So what, what do you say to the folks who think this is a great idea. You had me at hello, but are scared to death about how much time commitment this is gonna be to actually implement what, what’s all involved there?

HACKETT:

Literally nothing. <Laugh>. so, so you’re,

VANNOY:

You’re gonna, you’re gonna have to go to more detail cuz no one’s gonna believe that, but it it is, it is true. But you’re, explain what you mean.

HACKETT:

Yeah. So, so again, like that, that integration that we’ve, we’ve created with Assure in the background means that this is automatically available to all assure clients without them lifting a finger, right? They have the option of opting out of this service. They have the option of saying, Hey, I don’t want it. Otherwise, it’s really just an added payroll feature that assures chosen to offer, right? And employees can use it as they see fit. Now of course, you know, speaking more generally and, and broadly if, if you have, you know, individuals listening that, that maybe aren’t assure clients or, or maybe looking to explore other Erway Jackson’s providers, it still is usually a, a very low lift minutes or hours, not days or weeks. You know, especially speaking to, to our solution, I’ll, I’ll use the example behind me here.

I’m, I’m sitting in front of a coffee shop at the moment. It’s a coffee shop of probably seven full-time employees. There’s a couple behind the desk right now. You know, this is the entrepreneur you’re talking about working many, many hours, probably one of them behind the, the, the desk is the owner at the moment. They don’t have time to implement something. And so we knew that coming into this, we knew that we wanted to make a solution that was really, really turnkey for the employer to offer. And it was really just a mechanism to make available to the employees so that they could have access to those wages as they see fit. And so when a coffee shop like this just decides to sign up in the case of Assure it’s just automatically available to them. In the case of other offerings that Zen’s partnered with, it might require that coffee shop to reach out to their support person or to their account manager ask for the activation to be turned on.

 It takes a, a matter of, you know, minutes it’s turned on, an email automatically goes out to all employees. That email contains a one click activation link where that employee logs in and sees exactly how many wages they have available. They can choose to access their wages or come back at a later time and do so. And then depending on the size of that employer, you know, seven employees, it’s probably a little bit too small. But once you’re in that 20, 30, 40, 50 range we’ll send out lunchroom posters, workplace posters, postcard materials, things with QR codes that employees can scan and sign up that way. So they’re not just reliant on a, on a email going to them. But again, like all of that stuff is taken care of by Zia Ensure there might be a little bit of intervention by the employer to actually hand that stuff out or, or hang up a lunchroom poster.

But it’s, it truly is a zero lift, zero ongoing administration play by that employer. And, and they get to reap all the rewards of, of the benefits of, like you mentioned, my increased productivity, reduced turnover better recruitment efforts. One thing I didn’t mention previously was across, you know, basically all earned wage access providers, you see an increase of about two x candidate pipeline just by offering earned wage access as a benefit in your job postings. And so again, these are all, all things that that, that employer gets to, to reap the rewards of for doing effectively no work.

VANNOY:

Right, right. Well, I, Ted I think that’s a good place to wrap. I mean, this is, this is one of those rare, rare, rare opportunities as an employer where you have something that costs you nothing. It’s in demand. It’s an in demand in a way that maybe not even all your employees understand it exists yet. And so if there’s any work, it’s maybe gonna be in the education side but you just heard from Tate that you know, if, if, if you’re a partner with us, that that, that part would be taken care of as well. But this is just a, a cool opportunity to help small businesses compete for the war, in the war for talent. Differentiate yourself as an employer offering something different than s same business on the other side of the street, across town, across country, whatever the gates may be to attract and retain talent.

 And even if it didn’t do any of those things, the, there’s, there’s people in need, right? The gap between the haves and have nots just continues to, to widen. And we’re all in the, the same ocean. We’re not all in the same boat and a lot of people have need for cash. And even if they didn’t have a need, the next generation, they’re used to getting paid at the end of their shift. And you’re gonna have to accommodate the needs of those employees to pay them the way they expect to, because increasingly they’re gonna have choices and they’re gonna go to the employers that meet those needs, whether it’s financial needs or just simply the expectations that they, they come to the workforce with. Tate, is there anything else you’d wanna say in closing here?

HACKETT:

We’re all in the same ocean, but not all in the same boat. That is something I’m going to steal. I like that saying a lot, Mike. No, I think you summed it up perfectly. It’s it’s, it’s an exciting time. It’s a solution that’s adopted by Walmart, by Kroger’s, by McDonald’s and Wendy’s and Hilton Hotels. It’s something that can be adopted by any small business, any large business. And so again, do your homework, but it is that ultimate no-brainer in my mind. Yeah, thanks so much.

VANNOY:

I think, I think, think it is too, and I don’t, I don’t say that lightly, anybody who watches this show every week knows that this isn’t, this is the show’s not a sales pitch. This is to bring information to employers to help ’em grow their business and stay compliant. But th this, this one’s a no-brainer. You should be implementing an earned wage access on-demand pay solution. The, the benefits are too obvious, the cost is too low and and, and such little effort required. So that’s it. Tate, really enjoyed talking to you. Good, good seeing you again. And until next time, and for everybody else, until next week’s show,

VO:

At Asure, we build human capital management software and services that help 90,000 companies like yours attract, develop, and retain great people. Our low upfront cost and affordable subscription model allow you to save cash to invest in things that drive growth not overhead. To learn more about how Assure can help you claim up to $26,000 per employee with the employee Retention Tax Credit Auto, to make your payroll and build productive teams that are compliant with ever-changing HR laws. Visit asuresoftware.com.