Financial wellness impacts every facet of an employee’s life, including mental and physical health and interpersonal relationships. Financial challenges can cause absenteeism, lower productivity, stress, and turnover.

This is where earned wage access fully embedded within Legion Workforce Management (WFM) comes into play, enabling businesses to deliver a better, more holistic employee experience.

Key Summary

• When employees are in financial and emotional distress, their work performance is one of the first things to suffer.
• Legion WFM Software helps businesses foster employee wellness by streamlining the scheduling process and providing early access to earned wages.
• With Legion InstantPay, employees can view the potential earnings associated with specific schedules and open shifts and get paid immediately after working the shift. This results in faster shift uptake.

The Importance of Financial Wellness for Employee Well-Being

One in three employees runs out of money between paychecks, even those earning an excess of $100,000 annually. What happens if they support a family and have bills they can’t pay?

This aligns with another report stating that nearly 40% of Americans struggle to pay their household expenses on time. These stressors take a massive toll on the well-being of employees and their families.

When employers use workforce management solutions to promote financial wellness, they signal that they care about their staff’s financial well-being. When employee engagement increases, everybody wins.

Impact on Productivity and Satisfaction

There’s a direct correlation between employees’ financial health and their productivity levels, job satisfaction, and retention.

44% of American households don’t have $400 in emergency savings (Federal Reserve). When emergencies arise, or financial concerns are present, the result is often increased absenteeism, decreased productivity, and attrition. This is particularly true for new employees who often struggle to wait between pay periods for their paychecks.

A study by the Harvard Business Review revealed that 30% of new hires leave their positions within the first 90 days. This attrition can be related to poor onboarding, scheduling concerns, or, often, employee financial challenges between pay periods. Beyond the apparent loss of talent, this high turnover rate can also have costly repercussions in terms of productivity.

What is InstantPay?

Earned Wage Access (EWA) allows employees to access a portion of their earned wages before their scheduled payday. This flexibility is particularly beneficial for hourly workers and is designed to give them greater flexibility and control over their finances.

Legion InstantPay provides employees immediate access to earned wages before traditional payday cycles. This is the first and most significant step towards helping employees achieve financial security. With Legion InstantPay, next-day transfers to any employee-directed bank account are free.

Instant transfers are also available for a minimal fee. To create a frictionless experience upon implementation, Legion InstantPay does not require using a prepaid credit card or opening a new bank account to access pay,

Workforce Management Software and EWA Promote Employee Financial Wellness

One key component of WFM Software is its ability to streamline the employee experience. This includes viewing schedules online, clocking in, requesting time off, trading shifts, and more. But it doesn’t end there.

Workforce management and earned wage access combined deliver a powerful solution to maximize operational efficiency for your businesses while simultaneously improving employee financial well-being.

Legion InstantPay is fully embedded into the Legion app, providing real-time access to earned wages in the same app employees use to check their schedules. Employees can also record their hours worked, manage time off, and more.

Why does this matter? Studies have shown that while standalone EWA apps see 24-30% adoption rates when embedded directly in the workforce management software, EWA delivers significantly higher adoption rates of 60-70%.

All the data needed to run a fully compliant EWA/InstantPay program is available directly from Legion. Legion manages schedule costs and generates timesheets, accurately computing the wages based on wage rates, overtime, double-time, secondary wage rates, and more, making it available for instant payment.

All with no separate/unique onboarding/offboarding is required for employees to access Legion InstantPay.

Benefits of Implementing Legion InstantPay

The benefits of InstantPay are numerous. In addition to immediate access to funds, the embedded connection between daily timesheet approvals and access to earned wages shows how companies can impact operational metrics and employee engagement by implementing Legion InstantPay. For example, employees can view the potential earnings associated with specific schedules and open shifts, resulting in faster shift uptake. And, with no new apps to learn or payroll projects required, businesses get fast adoption and quick time to value.

When employees see how much they can earn by working a particular shift, they’re more incentivized to pick up open shifts. When looking at shift offer claims, companies with EWA typically see an 18% increase in open shift fulfillment.

Managers will receive exception-free, accurate timesheets and can anticipate increased schedule adherence because employee pay is only made available after a timecard has been approved. With automatic approvals on exception-free timesheets, employees are encouraged to enter accurate and complete data.

Timesheet accuracy increases as employees are incentivized to clock in and clock out regularly before and after their shifts. Payroll benefits as well by eliminating retro adjustments and significantly reducing the number of “look back” checks/transactions.

Enhancing Employer Attractiveness

Employers aren’t just competing with other brick-and-mortar companies to recruit and retain employees. They’re also competing against a gig economy that is very attractive to those who want to experience greater flexibility and freedom with their work and pay. With Legion WFM, you give employees the best of both worlds—a stable job with gig-like flexibility.

Offering Earned Wage Access can be a compelling benefit to attract new talent and retain existing staff. Legion WFM’s approach highlights EWA as a key differentiator in the competitive labor market, helping HR teams to stand out to prospective and current employees. According to research conducted by Wagestream, job listings that mention EWA benefits are filled an average of 27% faster.

ALDO Case Study: Benefits of Earned Wage Access

ALDO Group North America supported employee financial well-being by implementing Legion InstantPay. Fully embedded into the Legion app, InstantPay provides real-time access to earned wages in the same app employees regularly use to check their schedules, record time, manage time off, and more.

“They don’t want to wait two weeks for their pay—they would like to have their money right after their shift. Pay flexibility is more important than ever before.”

-François Paquin, Senior Operations Manager, Sales & Operations

Not only did associates adopt the solution immediately, but with an added benefit, clock-in performance for associates who did adopt InstantPay improved by 66% in the first three months. Today, InstantPay users have 72% better clock-in performance than non-users. Associates even rated the InstantPay solution 4.5 stars in the app store. The Senior Operations Manager, Sales & Operations stated, “Pioneering earned wage access with Legion showcases our commitment to employee financial well-being.”

Schedule flexibility, instant access to wages, and a modern, intuitive app have helped improve employee communication and engagement and reduce turnover while simultaneously transforming workforce management.

Enhance Employee Well-Being With Workforce Management Software

Ready to give Legion a try? Request a demo to see Legion InstantPay in action and learn more about how Legion InstantPay is the only financial well-being app designed to improve operational efficiency and reduce financial stress.