New plan to boost Qld pubs and staff
TWO Queensland pubs have introduced an “extreme” pay measure where staff can access their wage at the end of each shift as they try to retain and lure new workers.
Rocky Sports Club in Rockhampton and Club Toowoomba have both recently started offering staff Earned Wage Access through payroll integration platform Paytime.
The scheme allows employees to access their earned wages on an on-demand basis instead of waiting until a designated payday.
Rocky Sports Club general manager Jack Hughes said nearly half of their 100 staff had taken advantage of the “huge drawcard” in the past three weeks.
“It’s been a tough time for the hospitality industry, and we’ve felt it too in terms of being unable to find staff,” he said.
“There’s been days where we’ve had to close the bar early or cancel the courtesy bus because we don’t have a driver.
“Since we started with Paytime we’ve noticed an increase in the uptake of shifts and we’ve actually been putting it into job ads as a drawcard for new staff members.
“Like many in the hospitality industry we hire a lot of uni students and senior school students so being able to offer them their money straight after a shift is a huge drawcard.”
But Queensland Hotels Association chief executive Bernie Hogan said a platform like Paytime could expose venues to a number of “liabilities” including potential cash flow issues while not addressing the core issue of “skeleton staff”.
Online employment marketplace Seek has recorded a 20 per cent spike in hospitality job advertisements compared to October last year.
“I know most of our businesses are paying above award wages or at the very least award wages – (employers) don’t want to be paying in advance because there’s too much liability,” Mr Hogan said.
“As a general policy it sounds like an extraordinary move that will not actually increase the number of people in the employee pool.”
Mr Hogan said on-demand pay was a “very extreme measure” but that in exceptional circumstances the service may be able to assist a long term staff member under duress.
Paytime has revealed about 50 per cent of the industry specific inquiries received each week come from hospitality workers who want to be able to access their shift earnings immediately.
Paytime CEO Steven Furman said employers needed to acknowledge that financial stress was a “major issue” among many Australian workers and looked to “catch up” with hospitality companies in the United States and United Kingdom already providing earned wage access including McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Hard Rock Cafe, Hilton, Holiday Inn and the Intercontinental.
“Young workers, particularly Millennials are used to having instant access to most things in life – and now they’re wanting that same access to their wages,” he said.
“We all work everyday, have expenses everyday, but are then forced to wait for a payday that suits the employer.”
Mr Furman said research had proven that “forcing” employees to wait for a set payday did not help them with budgeting.
“As we all know, there has been a significant increase in living expenses in the last year, that not even the most generous of wage increases has been able to cover,” he said.