Promoting Paycard Usage

Once you have decided that deploying a paycard program within your organization is the right choice for your employer and workforce, one of the most important activities that you will need to engage in to make your paycard program a success will be the active promotion of your program to the specific employees who are the intended users of the cards. Without a clear strategy on how you will achieve high levels of participation in your paycard program, you may not reach the participation rate that you have set as your goal.

In the case of paycards, your target employee population will likely be those individuals who do not have access to a traditional bank account and have little or no experience with financial institutions and/or the use of ATMs or point-of-sale terminals in retail stores. Your paycard promotion initiative must effectively educate these employees as to why a paycard is better than a paper paycheck and what they will get out of accepting one to receive their pay.

Even though employers throughout the country have achieved approximately a 65% participation rate for direct deposit over the past 25 years, this success took a great deal of time and continual educational outreach by employers and financial institutions to the U.S. workforce. Fortunately, the promotion of paycards to your workforce will be easier in some respects than direct deposit from the perspective that you will automatically overcome a major employee participation obstacle by being the responsible party for establishing a bank account where wage payments can be electronically sent and accessed by workers using the cards that you issue to them.

DEPARTMENTAL AND MANAGEMENT SUPPORT FOR PAYCARD PROMOTION

Before embarking on the implementation and promotion of your paycard program to your workforce, it is critical that you, your other payroll department team members, the human resources department, and senior management fully understand and support this endeavor. Without the unconditional buy-in and support for your paycard program from these key areas of your organization, your promotion plan will not achieve the intended results. Your workforce will quickly notice if any of these internal stakeholders do not know about your paycard program, are not in agreement with it, or are not showing enthusiasm about its deployment. By getting everyone on-board with you about the benefits and value that the paycard program will bring your organization, you will be able to achieve a unified approach to gain acceptance of the program from your employees.

In addition, by involving these other areas of your organization in the promotion of your paycard program, you may also achieve the benefit of obtaining additional feedback from them about how to make the program a true success. These various areas of your organization may be able to provide you with direct knowledge or impressions about how your employees may initially react to your future paycard campaign, including potential pitfalls to avoid. And the development and promotion of the program may dovetail with other organizational initiatives that may be pending that you may not be aware of, thus benefiting multiple organizational goals and objectives.

If your organization has an internal corporate communications and/or marketing department, consider seeking their guidance and help with the promotion of your paycard program to your employees. Your human resources department and senior management team should be able to secure the assistance that you may need from your corporate communications/marketing department, as they likely have more regular contact with these departments on other matters.

CAN PAYCARD BE MANDATED?

If you're goal is to get as close to 100% electronic wage payments as possible, you should consider whether you and your organization want to require employees to receive their pay electronically, either by direct deposit or paycard. If the answer to this question is yes, you will have to determine whether or not specific state labor or banking laws and regulations permit employers to mandate their use. Many employers have already faced this hurdle in regards to direct deposit - can it be mandated for current employees, new hires, both, or neither? In some states, it is likely that you may make participation in direct deposit or the use of paycards a condition of employment for new hires.

Multi-state employers will need to do their due diligence concerning compliance with various state labor laws and regulations that may comment on how employees are to be paid their wages. Because payment technologies have changed much faster than state laws, many state labor laws and regulations currently do not address the use of paycards as a method of payment of wages to workers.

Some states specifically address the use of paycards, while others say they will apply their direct deposit regulations to the use of paycards. In some instances, states may require you to obtain affirmative written consent or permission from your employees to pay their wages with a paycard. If you have concerns about doing this type of research on your own, approach your human resources department and/or senior management and ask them to involve your in-house or outside legal counsel.

PROMOTING PAYCARDS TO YOUR WORKFORCE

After obtaining support from your human resources department and senior management, you will then need to devise an actual promotion campaign to encourage the high rates of participation that will help you achieve your goal. To achieve this, seek help from your corporate communications, marketing, and/or public relations departments to design and create promotional materials for your paycard program such as brochures, large posters, pay statement inserts, and videos.

Once you have all the promotional materials ready to go, use them during a specific time of year when you can focus energies on promotion of your paycard program. Consider launching your program during direct deposit month or during a pre-planned company event where there will be a lot of employee participation and presence. And of course, add these paycard promotional materials to your other new hire documents and within any established new hire process.

If your targeted employee base for your paycard program speaks English as a second language, your paycard promotional program will have greater success if it is communicated to employees in the language that they best understand.

Overcoming language barriers could be one of the best ways to increase paycard program participation. As well, it would be prudent for employers to also do a little research on your employees' attitudes toward traditional banking. In some cases, employers may find that some of their workers who were born and raised outside of the U.S. have a more skeptical view of the banking world. Understanding these cultural perceptions associated with financial institutions will help you tailor the appropriate promotional message to your workforce.

Paycard Program Vendor Support

Since it is likely that your organization will be partnering with Global Cash Card to help you create and launch your paycard program, why not leverage our previous experience with other paycard customers to help you develop a paycard promotional plan that will work for your organization? Global Cash Card will participate with your organization in rolling out paycards to your workforce. You may want to include a representative from our organization to participate in your internal paycard promotion discussions and meetings.

Promoting Paycards in a Union Shop

At organizations with employees represented by a union, the terms of employment for those employees are governed by a collective bargaining agreement. This contract most likely governs how employees covered by it are to be paid, including the method of payment. Introducing paycards to this population will have to be bargained with the union before the program can be implemented. Be proactive and set up a meeting with union leaders to educate them on how the paycard program will benefit the workers that they represent. Including them early on in the decision making process will decrease the likelihood of an adversarial or skeptical reaction to paycards and make bargaining over the issue that much easier.

Paycard Program Selling Points

When promoting paycards to your workforce, be sure that your communications highlight the following benefits that your employees can expect by participating in your paycard program:

• Better and faster access to your pay
• Avoid excessive paycheck cashing fees
• No more waiting in line to cash paychecks
• No more waiting for paychecks in the mail
• No need to come into the worksite to pick up paychecks
• Have access to your pay 24 X 7, even when you go on vacation
• Lost or stolen paper paychecks take longer to replace
• Increased security for personal information, avoiding identity theft
• Paycards minimize unforeseen delays in receiving pay
• Carrying your entire paycheck in cash is no longer necessary
• Free signature purchases
• Free rewards program
• Free “Cash Back” with PIN purchase
• Discount programs for health, legal, roadside assistance and entertainment.