Earned Wage Access (EWA) is growing in popularity with employers and workers across all industries. It is specifically helpful for part-time, casual and hourly-paid workers and assists employees in controlling their finances. It does this by offering a safe and reliable way to access money when they need it. In this article, we dig more into what Earned Wage Access is, how it works and how technology enabling it, such as Orka Pay, helps employees and companies alike.
Explaining Earned Wage Access
The idea behind Earned Wage Access is quite simple: Unexpected expenses can occur at any point in time, so why should you only get access to your wages once a month?
You may know Earned Wage Access by different names: instant pay, earned income access, accrued wage access, or on-demand pay. These are just different names for the same concept: Giving employees access to wages they’ve already earned and letting them withdraw a certain percentage of their earnings should they need to.
A timely benefit
Earned Wage Access is a benefit a company can offer employees to help them stay in control of their finances and avoid dangerous or unmanageable loans, expensive credit, overdrafts or even unruly buy-now-pay-later schemes.
In the last few years, the cost of living has risen sharply. As a result, people are borrowing more, spending less and cutting out expenses that may be crucial for their survival. Earned Wage Access technology, such as Orka Pay, wants to help resolve this problem.
An alternative to manual advances
As an employer, you may have experienced the admin-heavy process of following through with an advance payment request for a staff member with paperwork and manual data entry.
As an employee, asking your employer for advances can be an uncomfortable and slow experience. In the past, your request may have fallen through, been denied, or not even been processed correctly, leaving you back where you started.
The bottom line is: everyone despises advance payment requests.
With products like Orka Pay, staff can access their wages 24/7 through an app on their phone.
No admin. No paperwork.
It eliminates the need for HR or management to get involved and empowers employees to manage this privately.
Benefits for companies
Employers see a range of benefits from offering Orka Pay. Here are some of the main areas where Orka Pay is making a difference for companies:
- Reducing admin and paperwork
- Retention of talent
- Recruiting new staff
- Improving productivity & employee happiness
- Helping employees
“Increasingly, solutions such as Orka Pay are something people are looking for when starting a new job. Especially in hospitality and in casual or part-time work – and for students. Having access to their pay when they earn it is a pull.”
– Roz Gibson, Head of HR at Whistlepunks
Benefits for employees
Employees across the UK are already experiencing benefits from Orka Pay, which are the following:
- Financial well-being and flexibility
- Avoiding expensive and unfavourable debt
- Ethical, fair as fast access to money
- More control and peace of mind around their personal finances.
“It’s a good idea. In my case, I’d gone from a monthly to a weekly salary. But, unfortunately, this meant I had to wait quite a long time for wages to come through. So it was a good, handy thing to be able to pay bills and keep on top of everything.”
How to choose the right Earned Wage Access technology
Choosing the right solution for you could vary heavily between companies, and this can depend on a few factors, the most important being:
- Size of your workforce
- How many countries you operate in
- The contract type of the employees
Another thing to consider is how likely your workforce is to take advantage of the offer. Studies suggest that a younger workforce would be more likely to take a job that offers pay the same day.
Book an Orka Pay demo with our expert team to ensure you get the right solution. Our team can talk you through setup, activation and how to roll out the product to your staff members.
