How Earned Wage Access Improves Your Consistency of Care

Earned wage access (EWA) – giving employees access to their earned but unpaid wages between paychecks – can make a positive difference in your recruitment and retention efforts. We cover the reasons why in this blog post, but we still hear concerns from organizations about offering this type of financial wellness benefit. These concerns are understandable, but they could be preventing you from reaching your staffing goals. Let’s go over the most common objections to EWA.

We don’t want to enable bad habits. My employees should learn to build up their savings.

EWA doesn’t cause bad habits. In fact, having access to earned wages before payday can help employees build their savings when emergencies come up. Of the thousands of people currently signed up for OnShift Wallet, powered by Payactiv, 76% say they have used this EWA tool to avoid unnecessary costs like late fees and bank overdraft fees. Plus, 91% have used OnShift Wallet to help them buy groceries, pay bills, pay rent, and cover unexpected expenses.

OnShift Wallet takes the financial wellness aspect of EWA a step further by offering free financial counseling, financial literacy courses, and a savings tool so your employees can learn to better manage their money.

I get why my employees would like this, but I don’t see how it benefits me or my organization. In fact, it sounds like it would create more work.

Offering EWA is a huge advantage for your organization in terms of recruitment and retention. A study from AARP found that employer-sponsored emergency savings programs can improve worker productivity, improve job satisfaction, and lower levels of employee turnover. And for many employees, EWA is changing from a perk to an expectation – 14% of senior care workers said it’s a top valued benefit – so if you don’t offer it, you stand to fall behind in the competitive hiring market. In fact, 89% of OnShift Wallet users would recommend their workplace to a friend.

When you use OnShift Wallet, offering EWA does not create more work. OnShift Wallet seamlessly integrates with your payroll system and automatically manages deductions from paychecks. And, since OnShift Wallet is part of the all-in-one OnShift mobile app that includes employee scheduling, employees don’t have to download another app to get access to this benefit. 

I think this will encourage employees to pick up fewer shifts since they’ll have access to their money up front.

The opposite is true! When people have instant access to their earned wages, they pick up shifts because they can get instant gratification for those hours worked. We’ve seen this happen time and again with senior care organizations who offer OnShift Wallet to their employees. When employees access the OnShift mobile app to see their schedule, they see their earned wages at the top of the app home screen. This can encourage them to pick up available shifts to see that number get higher. 

As an example, a chain of skilled nursing facilities across Texas, Alabama, and South Carolina saw a 12% average monthly increase in shift requests once they gave their employees access to OnShift Wallet. Overall, their total monthly shift requests went up by 100% in just six months of offering OnShift Wallet!

Earned wage access really can help ease the stress of living paycheck to paycheck for senior care employees, and can help ease the stress of staffing for senior care providers. We get that you have questions and concerns, and we’re here to talk through those and show you how OnShift Wallet can work for your unique organization. Schedule your demo today to learn more.