Written by Kieran Delamont, Associate Editor, London Inc.

EARLIER THIS FALL, Scotiabank announced that it was partnering with Calgary-based payroll solutions provider ZayZoon in a deal it said was about expanding a relatively rare payment model into the Canadian marketplace: earned wage access, or EWA.

The principle is simple ― no more waiting up to 14 days or more for payday. You work, and you can access your wages instantly.

“By working with ZayZoon to give employees access to their earned wages, employers can improve employee engagement, keep employees longer and save money on recruiting costs,” said ZayZoon general manager Shubh Sihu. Matthew Parker-Jones of Scotiabank said it helps promote “financial wellness and innovation for Canadian employers and employees.”

EWA is nothing new ― it’s nibbled at the margins of payroll systems for years, but has never really caught on, in part because it can complicate accounting and requires capital in reserve (something that having a major banking partner solves). It’s leading some to ask whether EWA’s time has finally come.

“The leading global employers have all adapted flexibility as an ethos in their workforce, and the next wave of that is adding things like earned wage access,” suggested Will Eadie of WorkJam. “It’s become a tool that gives a lot of flexibility to frontline workers, but it has also become a tool to really help top corporations attract talent.”

Research by ADP has found that adoptees of EWA like it, and employers offering it overwhelmingly say it helps with employee retention.

But Workable writer Keith Mackenzie notes that it’s not without its drawbacks. There’s the liability inherent in employees having immediate access to their money ― they may spend it impulsively, after all. It can also be challenging for workplaces to implement. “An on-demand pay model built into an existing payroll system can lead to numerous technical and logistical headaches, at least in the short term,” he wrote.

Nonetheless, it looks like there is finally some momentum behind EWA, with big banks now willing to jump into bed with fintechs to offer the service. One report suggests that the market for EWA software is expected to grow by more than $4 billion over the next five years.

“I would never make a blanket statement that it works for everybody,” says Eadie. “I’m sure there’s a use case here or there that I haven’t thought of. But we have not seen any environment where it doesn’t work.”

BENEFITS

Using PTO as your competitive advantage

More and more companies are starting to fight the war for talent with vacation benefits and flex-time incentives

LAST WEEK, CANADA’S annual Top 100 Employers, published jointly by Mediacorp and The Globe and Mail, was released, and two local companies ― LBMX Inc. and Digital Extremes ― found themselves on the list this year. (LBMX is a first-time winner; Digital Extremes has been listed more than a dozen times.)

There are a lot of ways to land your company on the top employers list ― some win with great benefits, some with great salary, others with great culture and some by just being fun places to work. But the editors of this year’s top employers list highlighted something else that they say is a more profound shift to how well companies’ staff experience their jobs and consequently rank on the list: paid time off (PTO).

“In 2000, a starting vacation allowance of four weeks was offered by just eight per cent of the employers. Three weeks was the norm, and a major chunk of the employer applicant pool gave people just two weeks to start,” said editor Richard Yerema. “Today, you can almost turn around the figures. Fully 31 per cent of this year’s winners provide at least four weeks to start, and a mere seven per cent are still hanging back at two weeks.”

It’s evidence that preferences in the job market are shifting. Salary has always been an important marker of job attractiveness, of course, but other factors have come and gone. The tech boom of the early 2010s shifted so much focus to cool offices. It’s a punch line now, but the iconic ping-pong table and beer tap in the office really were how companies were seeking to attract staff. For a minute in the pandemic and afterwards, hybrid work was all the rage. But now that we’ve settled into a somewhat steady state on that, PTO appears to be the big distinction for jobseekers; indeed, a full one in five say it’s now even more important than salary.

“There was a notable shift coming out of the pandemic, in the sense of folks feeling like they lost time,” said Kristina Leung, one of the top employers list editors. “They were realizing the value of their time, whether it’s through vacation policies or hybrid work in general, because they lost so much time commuting, they lost so much time staying at home.”

And it’s here to stay, experts believe. The next generation of workers appreciate good pay like everyone else, but it’s time off and flexibility (as we’ve written about frequently in this newsletter) that matters more than ever. Whether it’s the four day workweek or generous vacations, companies can’t afford to be stingy on this front anymore. 

“My thoughts in the last couple of years has been, is this how change comes?” asked Yerema. “Policies like unlimited vacation didn’t exist 25 years ago. Do we accidentally trip into these things? I find that an interesting aspect that we can see in the data.” 

HEALTH & WELLNESS

Say hello to the burnout coach

As chronic work stress climbs, entrepreneurs find opportunity in the burgeoning space of burnout coaching

THE THRIVING ECONOMY in career and professional coaching appears to have no limits. And for evidence of that we can point to one of the new jobs out there: the burnout coach. (Say what you will about the professional job market, but it has a knack for inventing solutions to its own problems, eh?)

With burnout on the rise, and workplaces increasingly cognizant of the various tolls that takes on productivity and the bottom line, more companies are starting to employ “burnout coaches,” reports Canadian Business writer David Silverberg. He talks to one burnout coach, Bonity Eby, who launched a burnout coaching business after going through it herself. They’re consultants who work with offices and workplaces to set up structures that will better help them manage and diffuse burnout risks before they start to eat at employee wellbeing. In the United States, the field is becoming big business, according to The New York Times.

It’s one of those jobs that sounds like a somewhat frivolous expense for an employer at a time when many are cutting back, but experts say it can be good value. “Organizations are being very fiscally careful, but it’s coming at a bit of a cost, and that cost is to their people,” said Cal Jungwirth, workplace expert at Robert Half, which has tracked employee burnout in Canadian workplaces.

But is a burnout coach really a necessary job all on its own? Some doubt it, suggesting that a burnout coach doesn’t do anything that a good therapist, social worker – or for that matter, a good manager – can’t do to mitigate burnout. “The biggest problem with unregulated professionals is that they cannot be held accountable by anybody if something goes wrong,” warned Toronto psychologist Houyuan Luo.

Even some coaches acknowledge that there’s only so much they can do, and that oftentimes what they are really offering is a feeling of being acknowledged. They can’t restructure companies or change the state of the world. “There’s so many institutional stressors,” one burnout coach told The New York Times. “There’s definitely a limit to what coaching can do.” 

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