After a series of jobs as an hourly employee, where waiting on a paycheck could mean coming up short on expenses, Felix Rodriguez saw the advantage of signing up for
"I've worked a handful of jobs where I had to wait to get paid again, and sometimes it was like gosh, I have one more week," says Rodriguez, a Wisconsin-based general manager for the company. "And then you have something like DailyPay that exists and you say, 'I have this ready for me — I don't necessarily need to pull it, but it's ready whenever I need it.'"
Over half of U.S. employees — nearly 80 million — worked for an hourly wage in 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Earned wage access (EWA) benefits have become a popular way for employers to help workers, especially those paid hourly, deal with
While helpful for an employee's bottom line, it helps employers, too: Data from DailyPay shows a 27% increase in time worked by employees who use its platform in particular, and reductions in turnover. For example, the retail industry has seen a 24% turnover improvement, call centers have experienced a 50% improvement, and nursing homes have seen a 73% improvement when employees utilize the app.
Rodriguez, who started with Sbarro in April 2023, received an email about the benefit after he returned from training in Texas to the store he would be running in Wisconsin, and signed up right away.
"I've taken advantage of it ever since," he says. "There have been times when I've needed gas or something like that, and [my money] was just available for me. [Now], I have a credit card that I don't touch much at all, and even when I do have to use it, I [can] pretty much pay it off immediately."
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Sbarro partnered with DailyPay in April 2022 as an alternative to the bi-weekly pay schedule. Since then, half of its 1,800 hourly employees who have access to the platform have registered, and half of that group use the app regularly to withdraw money. Everything is done through the DailyPay app, which is connected to the corporate partner's payroll. It is free for the employer, and employees pay a small fee ($3.49) to transfer money immediately, or no fee if they choose to wait one to three business days.
"We started to see this type of benefit offered in other industries like the gig economy and we thought, that's definitely something we want to look into," says Rohan Shearer, SVP and chief administrative officer at Sbarro. "It's rare to find a benefit employees love that is free for the company and very inexpensive to the employee, and the advantages to the employee of having early access to their wages has been great. It's been huge from a recruitment standpoint."
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Knowing the benefit's usefulness in dealing with his own expenses, Rodriguez works to educate his employees about the offering, making sure they understand how to use it responsibly.
"If you withdraw too much, your paycheck will be shorter than what you're expecting," he says. "That's something I try to explain to all of them. I encourage them to pull what they need, but not necessarily the whole thing."
The ability to see how much they earn each shift also helps employees easily track how much they're making, as opposed to seeing a lump sum at the end of every two weeks. This puts an immediate value on their time and effort, says Dar Miranda, VP of customer engagement and advocacy at DailyPay.
"Time is a precious resource, especially to the hourly worker," she says. "It's not just about getting access to your pay; it's about having visibility into how much you're earning as you earn it, and being able to plan [financially]. You might say, 'My car insurance payment is coming up, so I can make decisions about how and when I work, and that allows me to stay more on top of it.' It's important that we enable somebody to make the right decision at that moment, and then the next right decision, which moves people along to financial wellness."
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Along with recruitment, EWA has become a driver in employee retention. A survey commissioned by Dailypay and conducted by Arizent, EBN's parent company, found that 53% of DailyPay users say EWA is an important part of future jobs. Meanwhile, 95% of businesses that offer EWA believe it has a positive impact on retention, according to separate research from Hanover. Rodriguez agrees, seeing this firsthand among his staff.
"It will keep a lot more people on board because it is something a lot of them take advantage of," he says. "People like money. I think it motivates people to want to come into work, want to perform, and actually get paid daily."
