Provide on-demand pay without the payroll admin burden

The evolution of pay isn’t coming – it's here. And with the rise in popularity of on-demand pay, it’s quickly becoming an employee expectation. In a global online survey by The Harris Poll conducted on behalf of Ceridian on full-time and part-time employees, 31% said they wanted to see their employers prioritize financial wellness offerings like earned wage access.¹ While organizations are often interested in rolling out on-demand pay as part of their retention and attraction strategy, some have concerns about the impact on their payroll team to deploy and maintain it. Here's why the right on-demand pay solution can give organizations the benefits of providing earned wage access to their people, without burdening their payroll team.

What is on-demand pay?

On-demand pay, also referred to as “earned wage access”, is a financial wellness benefit that provides workers access to their earned wages in real time. With on-demand pay, employees are empowered to have greater control over their earnings and can avoid turning to credit cards or payday loans with high interest rates and fees.

Helping your people improve their financial wellness can increase your organization’s productivity and performance simply by helping decrease the time spent worrying about personal finances. Offering on-demand pay can be a great retention strategy and key differentiator, setting your organization apart from competitors.

How does on-demand pay work?

Instead of employees waiting to receive their earned wages on their scheduled payday, they can access their earned pay after a completed shift or workday.

Different vendors have different ways of configuring on-demand pay. In the case of Dayforce Wallet, it’s an extension of Dayforce Payroll. It leverages a continuous calculation engine to help keep the payroll register clean by accounting for taxes, deductions, and garnishments as pay is earned. This means more accurate payroll data, fewer corrections, and a single integration to maintain. This allows organizations to easily leverage the benefits of on-demand pay, such as talent attraction and retention, while maintaining existing processes.

Won’t employees overspend if they have access to wages in real time?

Many employees use on-demand pay as part of their financial planning strategy. For example, according to a 2022 study on Dayforce Wallet users conducted by SSRS on behalf of Ceridian, 50% of respondents plan to use on-demand pay for household expenses and recurring purchases like groceries and gas.²

Some providers allow you to configure aspects of on-demand pay, giving you flexibility in establishing a positive financial wellness path for your people. For example, Dayforce Wallet provides employers with the option to set parameters around the availability, timing, and proportion of pay exposed for on-demand access.

What’s the impact on payroll administrators when offering Dayforce Wallet?

A common question that’s asked before rolling out on-demand pay³ is, “How much additional workload is this for our payroll team?” The simple answer is very little, if any at all.

Let’s start with the implementation process for Dayforce Wallet. Since this is an easy add-on to Dayforce Payroll, the implementation is streamlined and straightforward with minimal disruption and no additional work for your team to roll out. The feature can be enabled and the settings defined within a few short hours, and employees follow an intuitive guided process to activate their accounts from their smartphones. Plus, on-demand employer marketing tools and informative Q&A materials make it easier to get the word out to employees.

Another popular question among payroll administrators is, “Where will these transactions be seen and how are they reconciled?” Every on-demand pay transaction is recorded in a live payroll register, and reports are available out of the box to help you keep a finger on the pulse of on-demand pay activity. On-demand pay requests are processed as regular pay runs with applicable taxes automatically remitted. In addition to the cyclical pay slips Dayforce produces, every on-demand transaction generates its own pay statement automatically. The Dayforce Wallet app provides employees real-time visibility into their earnings to date and the gross-to-net calculations applied, just as their on-demand pay statements do. These features provide greater clarity for both payroll admins and employees and help ensure there are no surprises on scheduled paydays.

We live in a world revolving around immediacy and now employees expect the same from their pay. Rolling out this financial wellness benefit to your employees doesn’t need to be complicated, expensive, or stressful. “The amazing thing about Dayforce Wallet is it doesn’t affect your payroll process at all…actually turning the feature on took about 20 minutes at most, and we were able to roll it out to our first pilot group the very next day.” said Dayforce Wallet customer, Bethann Dubois, Payroll Manager at Nipro PharmaPackaging. Providing a seamless experience for our customers and their employees is at the forefront of everything we do, including on-demand pay.

Read more on how to best evaluate if on-demand pay is right for your organization

[1] The Harris Polls Research Study on employees across the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia, conducted on behalf of Ceridian in December 2021.

[3] Not all employers choose to offer on-demand pay with Dayforce Wallet. Check with your employer to see if this is available to you. Some blackout dates and limitations may apply based on your employer's pay cycle and configurations. GO2bank does not administer and is not responsible for on-demand pay.