Employee financial wellness has become a hot topic in small and medium-sized businesses as well as large corporations, particularly since the post-COVID-19 era.
Employee well-being discussions are now focusing on the relationship between employees’ financial stability and the output of their work. Businesses have been forced to reconsider workplace benefits and define the future of work, including motivations and compensation.
Engaging and retaining a pool of qualified and highly motivated employees to carry out the day-to-day responsibilities of their roles is critical to the success of any business venture in Nigeria. It is also critical that there are no (or at least minimal) distractions that could affect the quality of their output while they are carrying out the tasks assigned to them.
According to PwC’s 10th annual Employee Financial Wellness Survey, over 63 percent of employees’ stress levels rose during the pandemic, and many were four times more likely to struggle to meet monthly household expenses. According to the report, employees were twice as likely to have used a payday loan or payday advance.
Financial distress in Nigeria has recently reached an all-time high, prompting some employers to implement cost-cutting measures such as layoffs, salary reductions, and freezes on raises and bonuses.
Employers are in a difficult position, particularly because workforce productivity is directly proportional to the overall health of the company and its operations. As a result, employers must take deliberate steps to ensure that a framework that ensures employees’ financial wellness is embedded in the business’s organizational culture.
Given that many Nigerian businesses place a high value on key metrics such as productivity, retention, and physical health, it is now critical that employers implement innovative solutions that provide a certain level of security to protect the aforementioned metrics as well as the organization’s bottom line.
This is necessary to avoid productivity loss due to distractions, which can frequently result from unmet financial obligations. A quick poll of some Nigerian employees whose financial stress has increased in recent months due to inflation revealed that their finances have become a distraction at work.
These are the circumstances that have necessitated a greater focus on the financial well-being of employees worldwide.
One of the growing financial well-being solutions that has been proposed is on-demand pay. This system, also known as Earned Wage Access (EWA), allows employees to access wages earned prior to the traditional four-week payment cycle.
In essence, the salary on-demand model allows employees to access their earned wages. It is not a loan or an advance; it is money earned over a specific time period.
The co-founders of Cadana, a salary on-demand tech start-up based in Ghana with recent expansion into Nigeria, Albert Owusu-Asare and Ameer Shujja, are at the heart of this innovative solution for African businesses.
Cadana helps businesses delight their employees by offering a modern payroll platform that allows employees to access their earned salary on-demand, at any time, and from any location.
With the goal of accelerating wealth creation for African workers, the payment and salary on-demand company is developing a flexible, real-time, and borderless compensation solution.
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Given how unpredictable our daily lives can be, unexpected bills and expenses can cause great distress for employees, forcing them to rely on payday loans with often unfavorable loan repayment terms.
Cadana is shaping the future of workplace compensation by collaborating on a vision to provide over 400 million African workers with financial solutions that will impact Africa’s work culture through increased productivity.
The appealing platform helps African Human Resource Managers with payroll, statutory compliance, onboarding, offboarding, reports, time tracking, and other processes.
Cadana’s time tracking solution automatically syncs with payroll to ensure seamless disbursement, making life easier for human resource managers and small business owners throughout the pay cycle.
With the current level of inflation experienced globally, and particularly in Nigeria, it is critical for business owners to investigate solutions such as Cadana to address issues relating to employees’ poor financial health, as these issues impede workforce productivity.
According to the Financial Wellbeing Index 2019, 19% of employers reported increased absenteeism due to financial difficulties. According to the same study, 22 percent of employers believe that poor financial health reduces productivity.
At this point, it is safe to say that on-demand pay, with the assistance of technology, can significantly reduce financial stress, resulting in a more motivated and productive workforce in Africa.
