Tip of the Month: Embrace Technology Offered By Your Staffing Supplier

I don't know any person who prefers high cost versus low cost. It would make no sense. So when your staffing company embraces technology to lower its cost structure to keep your bill rate low this should be viewed as a good thing. . . right?

In our March 2009 “Tip of the Month" we touched on the overall advantages to working with your supplier to keep costs down. The “win-win” mentality for the success of both supplier and client was addressed and included such things as safety, workers comp claims, UC claims, payment of invoices, etc.

Getting attention this month is the trend throughout the staffing industry to eliminate paper paychecks. The process to do this is called “electronic pay distribution” and its purpose is twofold.

We're throwing out the paper, and switching to electronic pay cards. Click here to read about the program.


The first is to increase the productivity of your staffing service as they desperately try to keep their costs (and your rates) down.

The other is to provide a more effective, efficient and timely method to deliver a temps wages in to their hands. Let’s face it; temps are not at the high end of the pay scale.

I’m not sure, but the term “living paycheck to paycheck” may have been first coined by a temp. They need their money and they need it yesterday.

ELECTRONIC PAYCHECK DISTRIBUTION ACCOMPLISHES BOTH.


Ryan Staffing is in the process of establishing an EPDS using a payroll debit card or “pay card” which works just like a bank debit card.

We have decided not to establish direct deposit as part of our system for several reasons. The diversity of our workforce by being both physically disbursed and transient in nature would eliminate the desired cost saving goals.

Can you imagine the cost of establishing (and maintaining) direct deposit accounts of about 6000 employees per year residing in multiple states involving hundreds of different banks? In fact, about 11% of the US workforce do not have bank accounts and that number in our industry probably exceeds 50%. This defeats the purpose of moving to a paperless system.

Our method relies on the payroll debit card. Instead of receiving a company issued paper check our employees will receive wages earned on their “pay card." Employees can make purchases using the card just like any other debit card or withdraw cash from the cards balance at ATM’s.

If using the card is too scary for a temp to use they can simply authorize a “convenience check” which is a paper paycheck that is self-issued by the employee, not Ryan Staffing.

Let’s face it, the post office is becoming obsolete for many purposes these days. The internet has become to the dismay of the USPS what the telegraph was over 150 years ago.

Paper paychecks are routinely lost in the mail or stolen. They are fraudulently modified and they can impose unnecessary expenses on temps depending on how they cast them.

And, I’ll be the first to admit to being more “lime” than green but paper paychecks do kill a lot of trees and pose environmental issues. According to the Electronic Payments Association producing and delivering paper checks uses 674 million gallons of fuel each year producing 3.6 million tons of green house gases.

It’s no wonder Al and Tipper are splitting!

It costs the U.S. Government 98 cents to issue a paper check versus 10 cents for electronic distribution.

The U.S. Treasury Department has reported that 85% of all those receiving Federal Benefits receive them electronically. If you don’t believe that I double dare you to hit a Wal-mart store at midnight on the first of the month and watch the cards fly.

What about pay stubs you ask? Well, a few years back Ryan Staffing invested in on-line technology that not only lets applicants apply on-line but also allows access to weekly paycheck data for all of our employees. Providing this info is mandatory for those establishing EPDS. And, I might add that the Obama administration recently stopped issuing paper pay stubs to some Federal employees so it can’t be bad right?

So, what are the “Tips” in all this?

• Support your staffing company as they implement an electronic paycheck distribution system. These are their employees and policies.
• Review the materials provided by your Staffing service about the program and if they don’t provide them request them.
• Don’t attempt to answer question you may be asked by temps about the program. Your service and their card provider have the knowledge to answer questions with 100% accuracy; also, it will take up a significant amount of your time.
• Remember what while change can be difficult for some, technology is good and serves to improve the quality of life.

It was interesting to learn that only 20% of all Social Security payments are issued via paper checks yet they accounted for 90% of the reported 1.4 million annual inquires SSA receives pertaining to mis-placed, damaged, stolen, mis-directed and missing paper checks.