In A Tight Jobs Market, Employers Reconsider The Payroll Card

In today’s jobs market, for employers, finding ways to attract and retain talent is imperative to continuing operations and growth. Payroll is certainly at the top of the list when it comes to factors that can make or break an employee-employer relationship, so identifying the right payroll technologies to support talent acquisition goals is key.

Terri Roeslmeier, the president and CEO of Automated Business Designs (ABD), recently told PYMNTS that she has indeed witnessed the challenges that employers using the firm’s Ultra-Staff EDGE staffing software face in today’s current climate.

Nixing paper checks is an important part of optimizing payroll for employees with higher expectations over how they receive wages. And, according to Roeslmeier, the payroll card has become an unexpected champion of payroll modernization, especially as it proliferates beyond the usual adopters and use-cases.

A Fluctuating Workforce

For organizations that do rely on outsourced staffing and recruitment service and solution providers, managing payroll can look a bit different than when everything is managed in-house.

Still, there needs to be a close relationship between that service provider and a hiring company, particularly when it comes to implementing payroll tools and workflows that meet the unique needs of the firm and its employees.

Roeslmeier noted that for many of ABD’s clients, migrating away from paper checks is paramount to upgrading payroll workflows.

“We have some clients that will do up to 10,000 checks per week for their temp employees,” she noted, adding that while this is on the higher end of the range of check volume, others are still managing thousands of checks.

Digitizing wage payouts is important, but there remains a significant portion of the professional community that is under- or unbanked. As a result, direct deposit is not an option, and payroll cards are imperative to supporting employers that need to satisfy their employees’ own needs when it comes to getting paid. Otherwise, in this jobs market, firms risk higher turnover.

Roeslmeier also pointed to another facet of today’s difficult jobs market that is affecting the way employers migrate away from paper checks. Such a high volume of paper requires significant time and effort in the form of manual work performed by humans. Embracing digital, automated payroll tools like a payroll card can ensure that payroll is completed on-time and accurately during every pay cycle, even when the availability of human capital to perform payroll-related tasks runs thin.

Beyond The Hourly Worker

When it comes to adoption of the payroll card, the first user that comes to mind is often the underbanked hourly or temp worker. Indeed, Roeslmeier said that firms in the light industrial arena are common embracers of the payroll card to pay their professionals.

Yet she also noted that use cases for the payroll card are expanding to other professions.

“We’re seeing it get popular in more professional areas as well because everybody likes to do things [electronically],” she said, noting that integrating payroll cards with ABD’s scheduling module, popular in workforces like the healthcare segment, have turned payroll cards into an attractive option for nurses and doctors. Members of the IT profession have also seen gains in payroll card adoption, she said.

“It’s a good means to pay people. Hardly anybody is issuing checks anymore,” Roeslmeier added.

Key to adoption is a seamless workflow of issuing and managing payroll cards alongside ancillary human resources (HR) workflows. For ABD, that means collaborating with Brink’s Money Paycard to implement a payroll card management capability directly within its staffing and recruitment solution.

Choosing a pay card offering that offers an agile workflow is imperative to the success of a program as well, with Roeslmeier pointing to the ability for Brink’s to ensure employees use the same account number across employers, presenting a more streamlined way to manage these cards as a professional moves from one firm to the next or, in the case of a lost card, replacing a lost card. Having access to fee-free ATMs is another critical benefit of certain payroll card products, she said.

As more organizations seek to digitize back-office operations, modernizing payroll will be an important part of strengthening workflows and keeping professionals satisfied. And while direct deposit remains a popular choice for employee payouts, it’s clear the payroll card can offer a flexible and integrated option for more employees and employers alike.