The Co-Operative Bank, Access EarlyPay case study
Founded in 1872, The Co-Operative Bank have always had their workforce at the heart of their business. The Co-operative Bank are proud to be the first ethical bank, founded by real people with a real desire to challenge the status quo by creating a fairer, co-operative business.
Paving the way as a disruptor
As the original ethical bank, it made sense for The Co-operative Bank to offer a modern way of paying wages to their staff. As they were already using PeopleXD from The Access Group for their payroll and people management, The Co-operative Bank chose to turn on the on-demand pay module, Access EarlyPay. Although feeling a little cautious in making a change to the way they pay their staff, Ruth Clarke, Head of People Delivery at The Co-operative Bank recalls:
The real driver for us and one of the things that underpins our organisation is absolutely our ethics. We always ask ourselves, is this absolutely right for our colleagues?
After taking the idea to the board when the cost-of-living crisis hit, the idea was a hit.
We've been very cautious and certainly before moving to Access, we were a little bit technologically ‘behind the times’, I would say. I'd really like to be a progressive payroll and HR function, so when Access bought this new idea to us and I could see a benefit for our organisation and more importantly our people, I thought this would be a really positive step to take.
As a long-standing, trusted market leader in the financial sector, making changes to pay or bringing anything new and groundbreaking to the table can sometimes be a struggle. Ruth recalls candidly:
With a combined lack of knowledge of that type of product in the industry and a risk aversion nature, we struggled initially to get it over the line because I think there was just too much nervousness when it was first bought to the table. Fast forward a few months and we found ourselves in a situation where actually there's more of a social and moral need to provide this to our people, with the cost of living challenges. People are finding their paycheque to paycheque becoming more difficult. I resurrected the whole concept again and said actually, I think that the meeting of the need now far outweighs the cautiousness and the risk.
Why on-demand pay?
“Flexibility” is the word Ruth uses most to describe why The Co-operative Bank decided to offer on-demand pay. If people need money to cover unexpected costs or high bills, they will find it. Sometimes that can affect their financial wellbeing, with payday loans and credit cards implementing huge fees. This can then cause a recurring issue,
It was about allowing a level of flexibility. Flexibility for people to ensure they don’t get themselves in a situation where they were going for a payday loan at extortionate rates and getting themselves into that cycle that can then happen when you do that. So for The Co-operative Bank, it was something that provided a level more flexibility because pay has always been pay. It's been either every four weeks, every month, every week for people since day dot. And that generally works. But then by exception, sometimes it doesn't. On-demand pay feels like a really positive support, by giving people the capability to have some control over their finances. Our lives aren’t linear and there are things that will always crop up unexpectedly.
Find out how on-demand pay can help you engage employees, boost productivity and improve retention
If not now, when?
The current economic crisis is seeing everyone pull those purse strings a little tighter. The Co-operative Bank realised that offering on-demand pay to their people can help to reduce the impact of increasing costs, allowing employees access to their earned wages ahead of their scheduled payday.
Before the ever increasing costs of fuel, utilities and food, a person might have been able to cover an unexpected bill with their remaining wages. Ruth looks back on the timing of The Co-operative Bank‘s delivery of on-demand pay:
With such a simple solution available for us to put in place that will help them to overcome their financial worries, and the current climate, it was very much “if not now, when?”. This is the right time to launch it. This led us to launching our on-demand pay option at exactly the right time, when our people needed it most. And we saw an immediate positive impact, even if they don't use it, knowing that they can.
Implementation? No problem!
It's the simplest thing that I've ever implemented. And I was surprised. Surprised at just how easy it was.
There were many questions from The Co-operative Bank prior to going live with EarlyPay; How do you communicate it out to people? How do they know how to create an EarlyPay account? How does our managed payroll service work with it? After a call with our onboarding team here at Access EarlyPay, The Co-operative Bank had all of their questions answered and were ready to go live.
We boast about how simple it is to implement on demand pay with Access EarlyPay, especially if you have a companion product from The Access Group, but Ruth recalls just how straightforward it was:
Honestly, the launch was super simple. It felt like it was is it practically zero effort. The most effort was the internal communications to let people know that it was available. The payroll integration is seamless. It is the easiest thing I've ever launched from a payroll perspective. I heard the words and I thought, ‘nothing's ever that simple’, but it was!
Managing on-demand pay
When asked about the continual management of EarlyPay, Ruth describes the admin as ‘light touch’:
On the admin side, we spend very little time in EarlyPay, to be honest. Our admin team soaked up the small bit of administration of any type that goes on. So it's not it's not had any impact on our on our resource. No challenge at all. It’s all very, very light touch.
We also delved into the ethics of offering on-demand pay. The Co-operative Bank has implemented a strategy to sit hand-in-hand with on-demand pay, so that if anyone shows high usage, they are able to take that employee aside and have a confidential conversation to see how else might be able to offer support as an employer.
What we do is proactively reach out. But in the meantime we withdraw their ability to draw-down any further funds whilst we have that conversation with them. And that's super simple, but it gives us a level of control if we're seeing signs of behaviours that would suggest that there's a wider problem, other than the purpose that it's intended for. We have a duty of care to our employees. We choose to offer further support to our people, and we’ve found that it’s helping to drive some really positive conversations with our colleagues as well.
Finally, we asked Ruth her final thoughts on offering on-demand pay both as a financial institution and as a company in general:
Honestly there isn’t anything negative to say. There's no drawback to it. It's just positive. We were cautious in the beginning and weren't necessarily sure whether this was the right thing for us, but that’s just dissipated now. All gone! It's completely bought into from board level as something that the bank now offers as a real positive.
