Demands on employers keep growing over time. Times are changing, and it isn’t easy to keep pace with them. Responding to change in every direction and meeting the needs of today’s workers isn’t always simple. Alongside legislation, employee care is a key element in building a productive and healthy work culture. The range of benefits on offer plays a significant role in employee satisfaction. But the situation is also changing for employees themselves, whose standard of living has fallen in recent years. In moments like these, cultural and sports benefits take a back seat.
Responding to the current situation
Today’s world is unimaginable without digitalization and automation. Technology makes life easier and faster, not just for individuals but for entire companies. Attendance systems, payroll systems, and many other automated solutions are what most often help them, easing the running of a company and significantly reducing administrative work. One example of such a comprehensive solution is the Nugget SW payroll and HR system from RSM. This system efficiently manages all employee data, from the easy entry and updating of employee information and wage data to generating electronic outputs for state administration. It also offers a smart system of individual program adjustments, thanks to which neither the payroll nor the HR department has to worry about manual entry and complex calculations. RSM has been working with Advanto for more than a year, which allows Nugget SW clients to give their employees access to earned wages at any time.
Speed of response is key
In situations where people experience financial difficulties, 70% of them rely on help from their employers1. Providing this kind of financial help, however, is not yet standard practice in the Czech Republic. Slowly but surely, though, that is what Advanto’s Earned wage access employee benefit is becoming. The app of the same name gives workers easy, fast access to money they have already earned but not yet been paid, in just a few taps on their phone.
Adler Pelzer, a manufacturing company in the automotive industry, is one example of a company that has expanded its offering with this socially responsible benefit. It wanted to give its employees a benefit with a genuine positive impact. And precisely in combination with the significant rise in inflation in recent years, Advanto proved to be a suitable solution.
Thanks to access to their earned money, users of the Advanto app can bridge a difficult financial situation and thereby avoid predatory loans. Over the past six months, the most common reasons for withdrawing part of a wage before payday have been covering everyday expenses such as buying groceries, rent, or energy bills, which have become increasingly hard for people to cover amid rising prices.
Advanto is often mentioned in connection with wage advances. Unlike an advance, however, the smart app doesn’t require a visit to accounting or HR with your head hung low, doesn’t affect the company’s financial cash flow, and above all doesn’t create administrative work. The amount available for withdrawal accrues for workers over the course of the month based on hours worked. It is always a predetermined portion of the wage, at most 50% of it. If a user sends their money to their bank account through the app, they have it available within moments. The entire process runs automatically, from accruing the available withdrawal amount, through submitting the payment, to closing the month, when the only administrative task for the accounting department connected with Earned wage access is downloading a single spreadsheet.
Benefits for both sides
From the employer’s perspective, Earned wage access brings its main benefits in increasing worker efficiency and loyalty and reducing turnover by up to 28%. Seeing your earned money (even if it’s just a number in an app) drives us toward further work2. Although the benefit is becoming increasingly popular with both companies and their workers regardless of industry or location, Advanto still represents a significant competitive advantage on the labor market, one that appeals to candidates from various age groups.
The benefit’s setup is flexible. The employer decides for itself under what conditions the benefit will be made available to employees and what amounts they can withdraw over the course of the month. At Adler Pelzer, the benefit was launched in the summer of 2023. All of the company’s employees, including part-time and seasonal workers, were thus given a first line of help in financial difficulties. “We wanted to offer our employees the option to draw part of their pay before the standard payday, so they could cover an unexpected expense or manage their financial situation during a period of high inflation and rising prices, allowing employees to handle the situation without having to take out a so-called quick loan and fall into debt traps and the like, while at the same time not burdening our company, HR, and finance departments with administration,” describes Dušan Běláč, HR Manager CZ/SK at HP-Pelzer s.r.o. Workers on probation can also withdraw their pay at any time. It is precisely when a worker starts a new job that their financial situation tends to be tight, and they don’t receive their first paycheck until ninety days after starting. Thanks to Advanto, companies can give new colleagues access to money after just a few shifts worked, which significantly reduces their financial stress.
Connecting smart solutions
For Advanto to work automatically, it connects to the company’s payroll and attendance system. In the case of Adler Pelzer, this meant connecting to the Cominfo attendance system and the Nugget SW payroll and HR system.
Nugget automatically generates a file containing reduced personal data of employees needed to set up and manage their records in the Advanto system. This data includes basic personal information and contacts, as well as the specific data necessary for drawing advances, such as bank details, wage amount, insolvency information, and other restrictions. Any drawing can be fully disabled from within Nugget.
“This data is then transferred using the Advanto Client tool to Advanto’s cloud environment, where it is processed. For the purposes of accounting for the advances paid out, Advanto then generates a monthly file that can be imported back into Nugget and integrated into employees’ pay,” describes Jan Kölbl, co-founder and CTO of Advanto. The period for drawing pay through Advanto for a given calendar month ends with an automatic payout of wages to employees, reduced by the portion of pay already paid out, which the company sends to Advanto.
A long-term solution for unexpected situations
Across companies, Advanto is used monthly by 30–50% of employees. According to Advanto’s statistics, the service has been widely used at Adler Pelzer ever since its launch. This fulfils the original goal of its introduction, which was to help employees bridge a difficult financial situation. User satisfaction also confirms how well-suited the benefit is. “Our expectations have certainly been met. The response from employees has been very positive, and the administrative burden is minimal,” describes Běláč. During the course of the year, the benefit is also set to become available to Adler Pelzer’s employees in Slovakia.
