A new report by Everest Group has highlighted that people across the world want flexible access to their wages, but global solutions that meet this demand are in short supply.
The report – Global Earned Wage Access (EWA): Strategic Benefits for Employers and Financial Well-being for Employees – reveals that a combination of new demands from staff in a flexible world of work, the need for quick access to funds amid financial concerns and a desire for a consumerised experience, is driving a need for employers to provide access to earned wages as and when employees require it.
According to Everest Group, despite this demand, there is only a handful of vendors offering Earned Wage Access (EWA) solutions, with even fewer providing a global approach. This is indicative of a reluctance to change what may be viewed as ‘unbroken’ processes in payroll, or the lack of awareness of the availability of a global solution.
Failure to move with the times could be detrimental to hiring strategies. According to Everest Group, 75% of the global workforce are currently looking to change jobs. With 57% of respondents indicating that wellness programs including financial wellbeing have a direct impact on their employee experience, while 43% stated that process improvement was a strong influencer, future talent attraction and retention strategies could be hindered without EWA solutions.
CloudPay CEO, Paul Bartlett said, “The shift to more flexible payroll solutions has been gaining speed for some time, but it’s certainly accelerated in a post-Covid landscape where agile working options, combined with cost-of-living concerns, are rife.
“At CloudPay we’ve witnessed this evolution and have been adapting our global solutions as a result. It’s clear from Everest Group’s report that we’re only on the cusp of the adoption of Earned Wage Access and with a breadth of market drivers continuing to influence the market globally, this demand will only increase. However, there’s long been a reluctance across payroll to change processes that seemingly work.
“As the war for talent rages on, businesses need to ensure they are giving their people what they need, and to offer parity across a global workforce. According to this latest insight from Everest Group, people want more control over when and how they access their pay. Those who don’t provide this will lose out on top talent.”
This latest news follows recent data from CloudPay which revealed that the number of employers signing up for “on-demand pay services” has risen globally.
This is alongside the number of withdrawals per month of earned wages that has more than doubled since October, with the average amounts withdrawn dropping from £97 to £66. This is indicative of employees increasingly accessing money they’ve already earned as and when they need it to cover daily costs of living.
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