Kronos has partnered with financial app Even, allowing employers using its platform to provide its employees early access to their pay, the companies said Thursday.
The new partnership will add Even’s financial wellness app to
The partnership “will enable millions of people who work at companies that use Kronos for scheduling and payroll to better budget their earnings every pay period,” says Jon Schlossberg, Even’s CEO and co-founder.
Even, which connects to workers’ bank accounts, allows employees to access a portion of wages for hours they already have worked before their payday. It also helps employees create savings goals and a budget by pinpointing exactly how much they can safely spend before their next paycheck.
Nearly 20% of Americans don’t save any of their annual income, while another 21% only save 5% or less, according to Bankrate. Those dire statistics showcase the need for resources, such as Even, “to help people take control of their finances and set themselves up for future success,” the companies said in a statement.
Key to the integration with Workforce Dimensions, says Even, is its schedule and earnings product that allows users to view their upcoming shift schedules and review how much they’ve earned during previous shifts. These schedules are directly linked to Kronos time management and automatically appear in the Even app as managers add shifts to a user’s schedule. Users can review their shifts and earned wages within the Even app.
More than 10 employers, including Walmart, offer Even — which launched in 2014 — as a benefit to workers.
The retail giant said last month at the
“One of the biggest problems employees have [with money] is timing, when income and expenses don’t always add up,” Scott Pullen, Walmart’s senior benefits manager, said during the conference, hosted by Employee Benefit News and Employee Benefit Adviser. “You get paid every two weeks, but your bills are every month. And because sometimes those timings are off, just even by a day or two, it can drive late fees.”
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Pullen acknowledged that there can be some flaws to implementing a program such as Even, citing a
To avoid potential pitfalls, he said, Walmart put in place a number of “guiderails” around the product “to make sure [getting advance pay] didn’t become a habit.” Those include only allowing workers access to early wages one time per pay period and limiting access to a maximum of 50% of the net wages that they’ve earned “so they can never have a zero-dollar paycheck at the end of the cycle.”
Schlossberg says that although there’s no silver bullet for employees’ financial problems, the app is helping people get more control over their situation.
“It’s not a loan,” he said. “It’s an advance; you’ve already earned this money. There’s no fees, there’s no interest.”
