REWARD
Pay on demand roundtable
InMay, the CIPP hosted an online roundtable to discuss the emergence and development of this practice. This is the second of two instalments reporting the discussion
Jason Butler: I’ve been doing ‘financial education’ a long time in terms of training and educating families. People do not need financial education in my opinion. What they need is financial awareness, because for most people money is a source of pain and worry – and it goes right to their core identity. One of the reasons why they love engaging with the app and not talking to their director or the manager or anyone Jill Bonehill ACIPP, account manager, Marketing and Business Development, CIPP Abhishek Agrawal, director of EarlyPay, Access Group Anthony Cronin, chief executive officer and founder, Flexi Range Jason Butler, head of financial education, Salary Finance Jaspal Randhawa-Wayte ChMCIPP, director of product management, Payroll Solutions, Zellis Samantha Mann MCIPPdip MAAT, head of policy and research team, and technical lead, CIPP Katie Duxbury MCIPPdip, head of payroll services, BUPA James Herbert, chief executive officer and founder, Hastee Brian Sparling ChMCIPPdip, senior manager, Global Managed Payroll, Ceridian Europe Ltd
Anthony Cronin: So, rather than try to educate people and show them what they are doing, within Flexi Range we give them a choice. We allow them to determine what payroll frequency best suits their life. I think it would be dangerous to give someone access to on-demand-pay if it’s not restricted. We try to help people understand what is good for them. Brian Sparling: It’s good having controls around this: a percentage that you can draw down but also the number of times in the monthly cycle you can request an advance from pay. Do you offer advance from pay once or twice or are you going to allow any employee who has worked a ten-hour shift to have an advance if they say they want to be paid for the shift. It’s about understanding your business and how it’s going to work best. James Herbert: I think it’s not right for us, or human resources professionals, to tell the workforce how they should live. We need to give them an element of empowerment, how to spend their own money. But, yes, we can restrict them to a certain level. We can empower them and provide education and tools. There are interesting studies that human beings operate on cycles by week, and we just about manage monthly. But we’ve only been paying people monthly since 1961. So, the motivation, the understanding, the management of funds
else about their finances is because they think that weakness in their finances shows weakness in their individual character. I’ve done a lot of work in salary financing for external organisations, and Covid-19 is just the straw that broke the camel’s back. It exposes the weaknesses and flaws in how people manage money, their relationship with money and work, the role of work, and what they choose to spend their time and money on. People would rather binge-watch a Netflix series than do a free online Open University course. So, it’s not information, it’s not about learning; it’s about awareness and helping people find their own way, their own truth. We’ve seen massive engagement with downloading the app and massive amounts of ongoing looking at it, like it’s money in their wallet. And whilst I agree that gives the opportunity to politely remind people of starting to save, it’s a bit like the situation where after downloading any kind of app for meditation or yoga the reminders etc get to be a bit of a pain. Yes, there is a potential for engagement, but no one knows the right ways to get people to wake up and be aware. No one knows the answers, and a wage advance product on its own is a dangerous thing; relying on that for engagement methodology is useful, but it’s not the only thing.
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward | September 2020 | Issue 63 40
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