Give Your Workers Room for Dreams

“To help workers find time to pursue their dreams.”
Why is this important to employees and to you, the employer?

This vision grew out of something PayActiv only discovered after we’d been in business for awhile.  Time had always been at the center of PayActiv.  As discussed in CEO Safwan Shah’s book “It’s About Time”, employees suffer from financial stress because of the time delay between doing work and getting paid.

Safwan also realized that time was an asset for employers that was locked up as a result of the flawed payroll system.  If time was an asset, then the old saying was true – time is money. 

We discovered that Earned Wage Access actually turns time into money.  When workers spend time worrying and thinking about their financial situation, that leads to losses in productivity – money.  However, lost productivity can be recovered via Earned Wage Access. 

Then we discovered something even more interesting.  Employees were also sitting on a valuable asset that they were unable to exploit.  It’s the very same asset we already understood:  time.

Financial stress wasn’t just taking time away from work, but time away from home life. 

Stress only does one thing – it consumes.  It consumes energy, psychological space, physical health, and it consumes time.  It does this by removing a person’s productivity at home: being present and aware for spouses and children; distracting a person from activities they might enjoy or that are important, like exercise; pushing them to eat unhealthy fast food instead of making healthy home-cooked meals; to read; or to learn new skills.

On a worker’s personal balance sheet, time was a restricted asset, offset by the liability of financial stress.  They were working with negative personal equity.

Earned Wage Access changed all of that.

Removing financial stress from your workers’ lives allowed the asset of time to be freed.  Time was no longer restricted.  The asset was available.  Time was available.

Time to be with family. Time to play with the kids. Time to exercise. Time to eat right. Time to relax. Time to smell the roses. Time to learn a new skill. Time to read. 

And most importantly, time to dream.

All humans dream of a better life.  It is our natural state to self-transcend.  No matter how good we may have it, we always strive to find something grander for ourselves, and often times, for others.

Yet most people don’t dream of a big house on Lake Como.  They dream of things that many of us take for granted.

When they have the time to pursue those dreams, it creates a virtuous cycle. Their motivation and positive attitude improves.  They become more ambitious about what they wish to achieve.  They will work harder for themselves and for you.  There is a holistic benefit that flows through their entire lives.

You may not see it, you may not hear it, and you might not feel it, but they appreciate what you’ve done for them.

Just as an improvement in your balance sheet allows you to leverage those assets to enhance your net income, the analogy is true for your worker.  Their version of net income is Quality of Life, enhanced by leveraging their new asset of time.

But there is one more reason why time matters so much to your employees.

Because time itself isn’t what this is ultimately about for them.

It’s about what time actually translates to at the end of the day.

Time = Freedom

Everyone wants to be free.  The human heart yearns for it.  There was a single obstacle in the way of your workers’ freedom, and that was the batch payroll system.  In removing that obstacle, what you have actually done is freed your workers from that prison.

That is why they appreciate you.  And they will not forget it.