Attracting, retaining and engaging talent with on-demand pay: Mark Paraskeva, Founder & CEO, paiyroll
- 5 Min Read
In this instalment of our HRD Tech Founders Q&A series, Mark Paraskeva, Founder & CEO, paiyroll®, reveals why today’s workers expect to be treated like consumers in the workplace. This means giving them full control over their pay and benefits. Allowing workers to access pay-on-demand, not only reduces payroll costs, but means that workers are twice as likely to apply for a job and half as likely to leave.
- Author: Michael Hocking
- Date published: Nov 13, 2019
- Categories
What is the true potential of HR and how can technology help us to achieve it?
In this instalment of our HRD Tech Founders Q&A series, Mark Paraskeva, Founder & CEO, paiyroll®, reveals why today’s workers expect to be treated like consumers in the workplace. This means giving them full control over their pay and benefits. Allowing workers to access pay-on-demand, not only reduces payroll costs, but means that workers are twice as likely to apply for a job and half as likely to leave.
What is paiyroll®?
paiyroll® is a cloud HR, pay and benefits technology solution, which transforms the way businesses attract, retain and engage talent.
By automating traditional manual processes, employers can reduce internal effort by 75% / external costs by 50%. The great online experience workers have as consumers can now be replicated in the workplace. Workers can access their earned pay on-demand, anytime 24×7 without waiting for a fixed payday. Engaging workers with visibility of their pay from day one, allows you to catch errors early, achieve 100% accuracy and de-stress the entire process.
Why was it necessary to create paiyroll®?
Three mega-trends have profoundly changed every aspect of our lives:
- Cloud (Mobile/SaaS/Online). Every industry has re-invented itself in terms of a cloud platform app.
- On-demand economy. We live in an on-demand world, where consumers can get what they want, when they want and how they want it.
- Robotic Process Automation. Automation is everywhere.
Before advising private equity on the HR, pay and benefits market, I was CEO HR/Payroll division of the largest privately held software company in the UK. I realised then that almost every payroll still ran on desktop, or even mainframe computers. I was struck how pay and benefits, for the most part, had been entirely missed by these mega-trends, and was firmly stuck as a manual process in the last millennium.
The idea was quite literally to reimagine payroll in terms of the three megatrends of cloud, on-demand and Robotic Payroll Automation (RPA):
- Why not take payroll out of the back-office and onto the workers mobile?
- Why not give workers pay on-demand?
- Why not automate a manual industry with Robotic Payroll Automation (RPA)?
I realised that automation could reduce costs by 50-75%. Ground-breaking features, like pay on-demand, would allow employees to access their pay when they wanted.
Why is HR technology crucial to the success of a business?
People are the most important asset in a business. Attracting, retaining and engaging talent is therefore critical to the success and creation of shareholder value.
Today’s workers expect to be treated as consumers – they expect the same experience in every HR work related touchpoint, as in their personal life. For example, workers using a live payslip on their mobile can check their pay, with the same ease as checking their next delivery. Holiday buy/ sell can be as simple as an on-line purchase. Workers will expect visibility and control of every aspect of their pay and benefits.
There is no other way to deliver this level of experience other than through HR technology. HR technology needs to give them what they want, when they want it and how they want it. In other words, the three megatrends are the norm.
How can an organization most effectively implement new HR technology?
It’s completely understandable why HR struggle to implement new technology: Current teams are usually sized to run existing systems and processes, often meaning there is no bandwidth to manage new projects.
- Step 1 is to identify a partner who can truly assist in addressing this issue. A partner that not only provides the new HR technology but has software and expertise that can lead the transformation of old data and old processes for you. It’s not only the shiny new tech, but its software that can migrate from the old to the new that is just as important.
- Step 2 involves a phased roll-out. Often, there is no need to switch everyone over on day one. This allows the organisation to establish best practices prior to full successful deployment.
- Step 3 is to select a mobile-first cloud technology approach which can also provide real-time analytics. This will ease adoption with workers and key stakeholders like management and finance
What do you think is the biggest challenge affecting organisations today?
The balance of power is shifting from the organisation to the worker. Attracting talent, engaging and retaining workers is now harder than ever. It costs on average £30k to replace a worker and replacing staff costs British businesses a staggering £4bn each year.
Which emerging technologies do you think will transform HR in the future?
HR now has the opportunity to take the most important benefit, pay, and use technology to transform its ability to attract and retain talent with on-demand pay. Workers who are treated like consumers at work are more engaged with their pay and benefits.
The end of the monthly pay cycle: The worker of tomorrow will work for multiple organizations in multiple roles, potentially concurrently. Future jobs might be a day a week, or several months in duration and workers will expect control over when they are paid.
Today’s workers demand a different experience, and smart employers are responding. By deploying cloud, on-demand and RPA technology, employers can lower their cost base, attract talent, improve retention while delivering on the expectations of their workers.
