Salary revolution: How often do you want to be paid?

A new system allows workers to be paid at the end of each day in a move that will revolutionise payroll systems.

Giant HR and payroll company Ceridian has begun a North American trial of a system for paying employees daily.

Giant HR and payroll company Ceridian is offering customers in the US and Canada a new system for paying employees daily – a move it believes will help retain staff in a time of severe labour shortages in many sectors.

The system, called Dayforce Wallet, has been rolled out on the company’s platform and could revolutionise payroll – not only for casual or contract workers but also for full-time permanent professionals.

The move to immediate payment for work done runs counter to payroll processes in recent years when corporations have moved from weekly to fortnightly and – more commonly now – monthly pay.

But Ceridian, which hopes the system could be operating in Australia next year, says Wallet is a game changer – a real-time alternative for employees desperate for cash who now are often forced to turn to payday lenders while waiting for money already earned.

The firm’s Australian and New Zealand managing director, Brian Donn, says: “We’ve changed the way that our payroll platform works to allow you to do continuous calculation.

“So we can do real-time payroll runs every day for companies. That allows us to stream pay to the individual daily if the company or the individual wants that.”

Brian Donn, managing director, Ceridian.

Donn says the pay can be deposited to a worker’s debit card for immediate access to cash.

“If you are talking about retaining employees, for example in retail or hospitality, or in the blue-collar workforce … being able to offer real-time pay on the terms of the employee is very attractive,” Donn says.

“Companies want it, but nobody is delivering it yet, and so in the States we’re starting to deliver that. We rolled out Wallet and we’re seeing it is a massive driver for retention. As well, employees are attracted to come and work for that company because they can get access to their pay straight away.

“The option for a lot of these employees in the States was to go to a payday lender, which is not a very satisfactory situation if you’ve earned the money but you just don’t have it yet and you want to put food on the table.”

In areas such as retail, staff are paid at best fortnightly in the US, and many employees are paid each month.

Donn says Wallet, as a “semi-fintech product”, needs to meet various regulatory standards in Australia, but Ceridian expects to launch it here next year.

He says the pandemic has led to a much more mobile workforce and companies need platforms such as Dayforce that combine HR and payroll data and functions to do everything from “managing your talent pipeline to onboarding people quicker to training those people quicker and having a true honest understanding of what’s going on with those employees”.

The disruption of Covid means work is, in effect, borderless, Donn says. Employers who could use an HR/payroll platform to stay in touch with staff about benefits, training and other issues would have an edge in recruitment and retention. Donn says the Dayforce platform allows management of pay, hours, talent and performance on a single platform.

“It becomes a single source of truth in how you manage employee engagement,” he says. “Now more than ever … you need to build a talent journey for each of your employees to make them stay. And if you don’t do that, they will be off, because this Great Resignation thing is real and is happening. And the only way to counter that is with data.”