Today’s employees face mounting financial pressures – so it’s no surprise that financial wellbeing is fast becoming a top priority for HR leaders. For SaaS platforms operating in the HR, payroll, or employee benefits space, this shift presents a clear opportunity: by embedding financial services like earned-wage access (also known as instant-salary access), you can offer real, practical solutions to your customers – and drive meaningful product differentiation in the process.
In this article, we explore how embedded finance enables earned-wage access within your existing app, why demand for this feature is growing, and how it can boost both employee satisfaction and customer loyalty. Whether you’re looking to improve retention or unlock new revenue streams, this is a feature your platform can’t afford to overlook.
It’s not unusual for workers to have too much month left at the end of their pay cheque. With earned-wage access embedded into your app, employers using your platform have a practical, financially-viable option for helping their employees deal with temporary cash flow woes.
What are your innovation options for turning an effective HR-related software product into an indispensable one? Better still, how do you boost your platform’s capabilities to potentially attract a whole new tranche of subscribers?
Product improvement focuses on what’s missing from your current offering from the perspective of actual users. As such, it’s worth giving serious consideration to one of the hottest topics in today’s HR environment: financial wellbeing. This goes beyond remuneration. The emphasis is on organisations actively supporting their employees’ financial stability, and offering practical help to reduce money-related stress.
If your customers are weighing up possible financial wellbeing measures to implement, earned-wage access i.e. granting employees access to pay, before their regular payday – is an option that’s pretty much impossible to ignore. Get it right, and it’s a low-risk, practically zero-cost way of helping workers alleviate short-term cash management issues. The embedded finance approach can empower your users to enact earned-wage access policies using your platform. Here’s what this can mean for your customers, their employees, and your platform’s value proposition.
The context: financial wellbeing is every responsible HR manager’s business
Two-thirds (63%) of workers admit that they have experienced running out of money before their next pay day. A third say they’ve never been able to make ends meet without relying on an overdraft, credit card, or savings. (Totaljobs)
Financial pressure is now the top external stressor in the workplace, affecting 41% of employees. 52% of employees say that financial worries have negatively affected their work performance, while 45% say it disrupts their sleep. (MHFA England)
36% of UK employees have taken time off due to money worries. (Personnel Today).
Sensible employers appreciate not just the value of streamlined employee management workloads, but also the obvious benefits of making life easier for their workforce; whether it’s updating their financial details, configuring their benefits package, or submitting their expenses claims. In fact, this is probably what drew them to your app in the first place.
So it’s safe to assume that your subscribers are a savvy, responsible bunch, which is why they’ll almost certainly be alive to the issues highlighted in the statistics quoted above. Put bluntly; a lot of employees are struggling. Perhaps less obviously however, those struggles aren’t necessarily confined to the lowest rungs of the corporate ladder. For instance, workplace financial advisors, Bippit, found that managers are more than five times more likely to take time off for financial reasons compared to non-managers. (N.B. If you assume that your archetypal users are too corporate or too well-remunerated to be interested in things like pay cheque advances, it may be worth a rethink).
For many employers, the response to all of this involves looking long and hard at workplace financial wellbeing, defined by the UK government’s Money and Pensions Service as “Feeling secure and in control, being able to make the most of your money day to day, being able to manage something unexpected, and be on track for a healthy financial future.”
So how does this translate into concrete action? To illustrate, here are a few of the key financial wellbeing-related questions many of your customers will be asking, and how your platform can help to address them…
How can we be more transparent surrounding compensation?
As part of your employee-facing payroll features, consider providing clear and accessible information on matters such as bonus entitlement, raises, and benefits. You might even want to give employers the option of including external salary benchmarking information.
Can we deliver practical financial management guidance?
Look at interactive learning modules on topics such as budgeting, saving, and debt repayment strategies. Give end-users the opportunity to set monthly budgets and savings goals.
Is our benefits package tailored to employees’ actual needs and circumstances?
If your platform covers management of employee benefits, consider embedding features such as employee spend cards, giving employees more freedom to pick the perks that match their needs.
What practical help can we introduce to reduce financial stress?
Offering an easy-to-use, fair, and flexible way for employees to access a portion of their earned wage before payday, instant salary access has the potential to become a flagship element of your customer’s financial wellbeing strategy.
Earned-wage access in real life: how does it work?
Also known as instant-salary access, here’s how it can work when embedded into your platform:
- You can integrate instant salary access with payroll or time-tracking functionality to monitor hours worked in real-time.
- Based on hours/days worked, the tool automatically calculates how much of each employee’s wages are available for withdrawal.
- Employees log into your app, and request a portion of their earned wages. You can configure it so your subscriber can set their own rules on things like how early in the pay cycle requests can be made, how often each employee can use the function, and withdrawal limits as a proportion of earnings.
- Depending on your preferences, you can configure it so that transfers can be made directly into employees’ bank accounts, or into payment wallets (a handy option for very junior, or unbanked employees).
- When the regular payday arrives, amounts advanced are automatically deducted from the employees’ pay cheque, with no calculation or admin required of your customer.
- The feature can sit seamlessly alongside other financial wellbeing-related capabilities within your app; e.g. budgeting tools, a money-management education portal, and salary benchmarking information.
- Pricing-wise, there is huge scope to customise your offering. Do you prefer fees for each transaction – or perhaps a subscription uplift for the feature as a whole? Should it be employer-sponsored, employee-paid, or a choice of either? You can shape your offering in a way that makes most sense to your business and your customers.
Who benefits from earned-wage access?
Here’s how earned-wage access makes a difference to your customers, their employees, and your business…
Your customer: making the leap from ‘computer says no’ to financial wellbeing hero
It’s very easy for employers to make all the right noises when it comes to financial wellbeing. But if a worker needs practical action, and nothing is forthcoming, it can all sound a bit hollow! Instant salary access fixes this. Finally, your customer has a framework from which to offer real help, right when it’s needed. And because it’s done on your employer-branded platform instead of a standalone app, all the credit for giving this help is rightfully attributed where it belongs – i.e. with the employer.
The employee: when they need it, help is there
Hopefully, end-users appreciate your platform already. If it’s enhanced with an instant salary access function, a lot of them are going to love it even more (something that’s always welcome on the user advocacy front). Earned wage access performs an incredibly useful stress-busting role; helping users cover unexpected expenses, while reducing the need for things like murky payday loans, overdraft fees, and high-interest credit cards.
Your platform: earned-wage access as a winning differentiator
From a product development perspective, instant salary access provides a prime example of innovation approached in the right way; the type of feature that speaks directly to a very real user need, and that sits seamlessly alongside your current functionality, while setting you apart from your competitors.
But just how viable is it? This is where Weavr comes in. Our solution means you can embed ready-to-go instant salary access capabilities into your existing platform, and fine-tune it to meet the needs of both your customers, and your business.
Ready to offer earned-wage access through your platform?
If you’re building HR or benefits software and want to help your customers support employee financial wellbeing – with minimal lift and maximum impact – Weavr can help.
Speak to our team to see how embedded earned-wage access could fit seamlessly into your product.
Talk to an expert about embedding instant salary access, or learn more about how Weavr supports HR Tech platforms here.
