As a technology platform that offers on-demand pay, DailyPay is one of the many tech companies that have experienced a swell in use as a result of a pandemic that poses challenges to individuals’ lives in and out of the workplace.
For many, those hurdles are financial. Last year, the company — which serves entities such as hospitals, restaurants, retail stores and call centers — conducted a joint survey of hourly workers with retirement policy organization Funding Our Future. According to their findings, 57 percent of respondents reported accessing their savings due to pandemic-induced financial challenges.
For DailyPay, the monetary burdens prompted by the pandemic bore out in a torrent of user activity. In fact, the company reported that, during the first few months of the pandemic, usage was up 400 percent.
“Throughout the pandemic, a DailyPay transfer was made every second of every day,” Senior Director of Marketing Jaime McDougall said.
According to McDougall, services like DailyPay have been embraced as a “need-to-have benefit” as organizations seek to address the needs of the workforce.
“DailyPay became the glue holding many households together that needed the reliability and flexibility to pay bills to make ends meet,” McDougall said. “And for employers, on-demand pay and financial security emerged as a critical element in the overall employee experience.”
To stay abreast of the needs of the market, product pivots have included a recruiting toolkit and job board for employers to attract workers amid what McDougall characterized as a difficult hiring landscape.
In May, DailyPay announced that it had raised $500 million in funds. On the heels of its latest influx of capital, McDougall shared how the goals of the platform align with users’ needs right now.
The Covid-19 pandemic has shined a light on the significance of employee flexibility in the workplace. How do DailyPay’s offerings meet that need?
DailyPay was designed to be simple, flexible and give employees complete control of their pay and finances. That was more apparent than ever during the pandemic, in a highly inflexible environment. With DailyPay, users were able to spend their earnings on critical supplies during uncertain times. They were able to find childcare for the days that required them to go to work, but children were forced to stay home from school. We don’t know everyone’s personal life or situation, but what is special about DailyPay is that it can safeguard employees from the unexpected and it can meet the needs of virtually anyone.
Baking Product Ethos Into the DailyPay Culture
Looking back over the last year and a half, how has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the remuneration landscape for DailyPay’s customers, partners and users?
DailyPay is unique in that we have a platform that is helpful for the needs of businesses and employees. We offer a pay experience that enables employers to give their workers full control and flexibility of the timing of their pay.
Since the pandemic started, we’ve seen DailyPay and the on-demand pay industry go from a nice-to-have benefit to a need-to-have benefit. Many businesses shifted to prioritize employees during the pandemic, which meant understanding their professional and personal needs. Having 100 percent availability of your pay provided a sense of relief and comfort for so many users in times of extreme uncertainty.
Employees have responded extremely positively. We often say “life happens between paychecks,” and it’s true. With DailyPay, money is always in the right place at the right time for our users — in good times and bad.
DailyPay was designed to be simple and flexible and gives employees complete control of their pay and finances.”
How has DailyPay adapted its product in order to meet industry challenges?
With the unprecedented labor shortages caused by the economy reopening, employers are forced to get creative to stay competitive as employers of choice. Things like sign-on bonuses are becoming the norm, but can be quite costly and have little to no correlation to overall job satisfaction.
Our research has found that the majority of hourly workers prefer on-demand pay to any other pay frequency, with 38 percent willing to leave their job for a similar one that offers this benefit. With this in mind, we created a recruiting toolkit and job board to help our employer partners attract job candidates to open roles. We’ve seen twice as many applicants with a job that advertises DailyPay; those employees receive higher job satisfaction and stay up to 72 percent longer.
At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, what sort of usage patterns did you see?
A year ago, when the pandemic first hit and there was media hype surrounding stocking up on groceries and toilet paper, we saw a 400 percent spike in DailyPay usage. That demonstrates that, in times of crisis, our users know the money they’ve earned will always be in the right place at the right time for them to use. Under normal circumstances the typical DailyPay user will use our service to pay a regularly scheduled bill. For example, you are more likely to see a transfer of $115.52 or $90.73 instead of someone taking out $50 or $100. That typical user will check their balance once a day, to track and budget, and make a transfer once or twice a week.
Lastly, in connecting with HR and people teams, what other key themes has your team observed as it relates to the future of work? How does DailyPay plan to navigate or address those themes?
The future of work will continue to be centered around the employee’s needs. People leaders are hyper-aware of the importance of strengthening the bond between the company and its employees. DailyPay was built on this principle. Our product design and innovation really looks at how we can use pay to provide a unique and game-changing employee experience that an individual can’t find anywhere else.
