On-Demand Pay: The Edge Your Hiring Process Needs

If Walmart and PayPal are already using this strategy to recruit new hires, why aren’t you?

Adam Robinson, CEO of Hireology

10/10/2022

a person looking through the money in their wallet

In this day and age, companies in the hospitality industry are doing everything in their power to not only catch the eye of top talent but add them to their teams. Businesses are pulling out all of the stops, offering flexible schedules, allowing employees to pick their preferred shifts, and even offering higher pay.

As it turns out, however, offering higher pay isn’t always the end all be all when it comes to hiring. If your hotel can’t compete on pay, there’s another way you can use money to incentivize potential employees to join your team: by offering on-demand pay.

Instead of making a new hire wait a full pay period to receive their first paycheck, on-demand pay allows employees to receive the money they’ve earned whenever they want. Other names you might have heard for on-demand pay are earned wage access (EWA) or instant pay, but they all refer to the same concept: letting employees use the money they’ve worked hard for when they need or want it, whether that’s one day into the pay cycle or the day before checks are printed.

While on-demand pay has been around for decades in the form of pay-day loans, where employees are left with covering startling interest rates, current technology allows you to add a daily pay option to your payroll platform at little to no cost to you. On-demand pay isn’t necessarily a new concept — but it can be just the edge your company needs to meet your hiring goals. Don’t believe me? Big names like Walmart and PayPal are already using this strategy to recruit new hires. If it’s worked for them, it might just work for your business too.

Life waits for no one — and neither do bills. Since most of the labor force lives paycheck to paycheck, on-demand pay is a way to help new employees get back on their feet. In fact, recent data has shown that up to 60% of employees would like the ability to access their earnings before the regularly scheduled payday. Even if employees do not take advantage of this program, having the option to access earned wages when they need it could become the competitive advantage your business needs to recruit top talent.

For employers who have had difficulty filling necessary roles, like front desk staff or housekeepers at hotels, offering on-demand pay could be the competitive advantage they need to attract and hire more workers. We all know that a large part of the hiring process is meeting candidates where they are and speaking to them in a way they understand.

So what can you do to start offering on-demand pay and market it to your ideal job seeker segment?

Approach your finance and property leadership team to figure out what changes to your existing processes will need to be made for this program and if it can work at your location.
Make sure that your payroll system enables on-demand pay so you can follow through on any promises made.
List on-demand pay as a benefit everywhere — in your job descriptions, on your organization’s social media posts, on your career site, etc.
Have your recruiters play up on-demand pay as a benefit to candidates during the screening process; you want the candidate to be reminded of it every chance you have to organically work it into the conversation.

While it may have seemed lately that paying employees more was the only option to attract more applicants to your open roles, this simply isn’t the case. With on-demand pay, you can give potential candidates more than just money in their hands faster; you can promise them a future with a company that listens and understands their needs in this modern labor market.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adam Robinson is the co-founder and CEO of Hireology, driving his mission to help business owners make better hiring decisions using predictive data and innovative technology.

With more than 20 years of experience, Adam is a noted recruiting industry expert and speaker. He is the author of The Best Team Wins: Build Your Business Through Predictive Hiring, host of The Best Team Wins Podcast, and columnist for Inc.

Adam has been named a finalist for Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst&Young, added to the Chicago Tribune’s Blue Sky Network of Chicago’s top innovators, listed in the Chicago Tech50 by Crain’s Chicago Business, and named a “Top 25 HR Industry Game Changer Under 40” in 2015 by Workforce magazine. Under his leadership, Hireology was listed at #94 on the Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest-growing private companies in 2016 and listed at #332 in 2017. Hireology has been recognized nationally as a “Top 50 Best Workplace” by Inc. magazine and a “Top Company Culture” by Entrepreneur magazine. Hireology was named the “#1 Talent Management Platform” in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and “#1 in Customer Service” in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017 by Human Resources Online magazine.

Adam is passionate about entrepreneurship, donating time to a number of organizations that support the entrepreneurial cause. Through multiple leadership roles at Entrepreneurs Organization, he has helped to develop and launch programs that teach core business skills to early-stage entrepreneurs around the world.

Adam has a BA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and received his MBA from DePaul University. He’s a member of the Economic Club of Chicago and lives with his family in Chicago, Illinois.

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