Why Employers Need to Rethink Seasonal Worker Payroll

When thinking of payroll, it’s easy to fall into the trap of only considering the people who work relatively stable, dropdown#toggle” data-dropdown-placement-param=”top” data-term-id=”291078040″>time of year, as retail, hospitality and a variety of other businesses take on extra staff to handle dropdown#toggle” data-dropdown-placement-param=”top” data-term-id=”291078025″>holiday season.

Whether it’s working in busy warehouses, or even serving people hot chocolate and fireworks, these employees have very different demands from a payroll perspective. In this blog, we’ll look at how challenging seasonal payroll can be for new employees and employers alike, and highlight the technology that has a major part to play in solving those challenges.

Common challenges around seasonal pay

One of the most common reasons people look for seasonal employment is the flexibility it gives them: being able to earn some money for a fixed period of time, and at certain hours, without compromising their personal arrangements. However, while businesses obviously benefit from being able to scale up their workforce at busy times, it can be a challenging proposition in payroll terms for several reasons:

• Competition for jobs: generally speaking, there are far more vacancies for this kind of work than there are employees available. This means that employers have to go the extra mile with their pay and payroll offerings to stand out from the competition.

• Talent retention and acquisition: now more than ever, the gig economy is giving employees looking for flexibility much better conditions – and is doing so all year round. That adds to the challenge of attracting and holding onto enough employees of sufficient skill level and quality.

• Advance payroll demands: if seasonal work is based around festivals like Eid, Christmas, or Chinese New Year, then many employees will expect to get paid in time for those festivities, and earlier than would normally be the case.

Why Earned Wage Access is the answer

The solution to these challenges lies in Earned Wage Access (also often referred to as ”˜Pay On-Demand’). This removes many of the time delays and inflexibility that can come with seasonal work, by enabling employees to access and withdraw their wages as soon as they’ve earned them. Through a mobile app such as CloudPay NOW, they can check how much they’ve accrued on a day-by-day or shift-by-shift basis, and independently transfer any or all of their available money to their own personal bank account within a matter of seconds.

Businesses providing for their seasonal employees will find it much easier to:

• Handle delays: economic uncertainty has led to many seasonal recruitment drives being carried out later in the year, according to the Recruitment and Employment Confederation. This puts pressure on standard, rigid payroll processes to deal with dropdown#toggle” data-dropdown-placement-param=”top” data-term-id=”291078020″>seasonal workers to access their pay quickly, without any adjustment to existing payroll processes and finance reporting.

• Improve employee satisfaction and dropdown#toggle” data-dropdown-placement-param=”top” data-term-id=”291078049″>mental health by removing financial stress.

• Recruit talented staff: connected to the previous point, being able to offer employees near-instantaneous pay can be a major USP in the job market, helping a business stand out to the best employees around. And as more and more employers choose to adopt EWA, being left behind could have a serious impact on recruitment.

• Realize long-term benefits: applying the same principles and benefits of EWA to the entire workforce can help address skill dropdown#toggle” data-dropdown-placement-param=”top” data-term-id=”291078033″>wellbeing for everyone, whatever their employment status.