CUSTOMER STORY
Helping Expanding Horizons recruit and retain care professionals with flexible pay for care staff
Expanding Horizons is a care provider based in South Wales and the South West of England. They specialise in providing care services and supported living services for adults with multiple and profound learning disabilities and enduring mental illness. Like many other care providers, retaining staff and recruiting the best people is key to keeping them thriving and growing.
Orka Pay has helped them offer a useful benefit to new hires. But also, to retain the existing staff they value so much by providing flexible pay for care staff.
An alternative to manual advances
Ellis Jenkins is Head of People and Culture at Expanding Horizons. He mentions that before Orka Pay, the care provider used to offer pay advances.
This was done manually.
Switching to a solution such as Orka Pay has saved them time, streamlined the process and made it easier for staff to manage their finances in a safe and confidential way.
“The time it takes to manually track advance payments, make payments, record them all and make sure you have a system to track it takes a massive amount of time. Our Finance Manager was doing that every time, until we started using Orka Pay,” says Ellis.
“It made so much sense for us to use a system like Orka Pay. It took all of the manual labour away from our side. It made it easier for the employee to access cash advances in a confidential, safe way.”
“It made so much sense for us to use a system like Orka Pay. It took all of the manual labour away from our side and made it easier for the employee to access cash advances in a confidential, safe way.”
“It made so much sense for us to use a system like Orka Pay. It took all of the manual labour away from our side and made it easier for the employee to access cash advances in a confidential, safe way.”
Recruitment & retention
As recruiting enough qualified people for the care sector is often a hot topic for care providers access the UK, employers have to get more creative. For Expanding Horizons, Orka Pay providing flexible pay for care staff is a benefit that makes them stand out from competitors.
“I don’t know of other local competitors that provide Orka Pay or anything similar. It sets us apart from others. If staff are offered roles in other companies, they can look at this as an added benefit they will only get with us,” says Ellis.
He mentions that Orka Pay has quickly become a benefit attached to job adverts and something staff are made aware of regularly.
“If it’s something you can offer your staff team, that’s a benefit to them, I think any business would be silly not to do that. We provided that service in-house anyway and that involved a lot of manual tasks. I’m yet to try and think of a reason why you wouldn’t use something like Orka Pay.”
Why Orka Pay is suitable for the care sector
Orka Pay has seen increasing interest from the care sector, and has partnered with several companies to provide the benefit of Early Wage Access to care professionals. We asked Ellis why products like Orka Pay were so relevant for care workers.
“Our staff tend to work long shifts of 10 – 12 hours. You may only work 3 days a week, but those shifts are crammed into longer workdays. If you want to withdraw and pay yourself weekly, it means you have access to large sum on a weekly basis,” he explains.
“Secondly, most care providers have a bank team. This is a team of care providers that work flexibly and pick up shifts as and when they can or want to, they usually combine it with other jobs. They can withdraw money as they work, and then have access to funds straight away.”
Earned Wage Acess is something that can help care workers manage their money in a smarter way, customising their pay cycle to suit their own needs and motivate them to pick up shifts as and when needed. Knowing they will have access to the money straight away helps drive uptake of shifts.
Financial safety for employees
Ellis has amazing feedback on how Orka Pay helps the members of staff.
“I was doing an induction for a member of staff. They said their car had popped a tyre. It was late in the month, so they used Orka Pay to put a new tyre on really quickly and easily. They didn’t have the stress about not being able to afford it. When they fed that back to me, it’s a really nice feeling to know you’ve helped a person in that way.”
Orka Pay is designed to be a safety net for employees, providing flexible pay for care staff. Where they may previously used credit, overdrafts or other unfavourable methods of accessing money, Orka Pay gives them a safe and convenient way to access funds in emergencies, putting them in control of their expenses.
“It’s about being able to access the money when you want it. Traditionally, you don’t really hear of it. It’s normal to wait until payday to access your money, no matter the consequence, and I think changing the norm on that is really good. And the feedback we’ve had from our staff has been fantastic.”
Access to Orka Pay
Orka Pay can be used by companies of any size in any sector. If your HR and payroll team constantly deal with advance salary requests and still have paperwork-heavy processes around this, Orka Pay could not only help you eliminate the admin around advances but also help you retain and recruit staff, improve staff happiness and productivity and make your business more competitive.
Speak to sales today to start your Orka Pay journey.
