Earned wage access with TimeForge and Rain

And now now I'm just having so much fun. And Getting to talk to lots of cool people. And today is no exception today. We have second time guest, Audrey Hogan, joining us on all the Audrey introduced herself, and she decided to bring one of her friends to the show. Jen and I'll let I'll let her introduce Jen, but Audrey, for those that didn't get to hear the last episode, what who's Audrey?

Why don't we talk a little bit about Audrey at first, and then we can talk a little bit about what Audrey gets to do for a living. Yeah.

So I've got like. Six different sports that I'm constantly

Maybe a little bit longer maybe even longer. Yeah, it's probably been longer because I've been living in Texas for over two years, and I remember recording back when I lived in California. So for those that are less familiar with Time Forge, why don't you talk a little bit about what is Time Forge? Because I think it's going to be paramount to understanding where, where we go with this, this conversation with Jen and Rain.

Especially for the smaller independents, we will do everything from hiring up through running checks through one of our partners. And typically in mid market and enterprise groups, we get brought in for one of our special key differentiators, which is going to be around labor law compliance, especially on the coasts are dealing with fair work week or for labor optimization. We do some really crazy stuff with machine learning to predict future sales and then pivot that into ideal labor coverage.

And why don't you talk through kind of the, the, the breadth of what you guys do, because I do, I do want to make sure that people aren't lost as to. As to all of the capabilities that Timeforge has, because again, it's critical to understanding why Jen, Jen's tool and what she gets the privilege of doing is, is so critical to, to where workforces are at and what they want to do in today's labor market.

Really kind of a point solution game where they're they're having trouble hiring or with specifically with employee retention is especially a deal right now. If they are concerned that maybe they're not optimizing their schedules, meaning they're not meeting customer demand at peak times with the appropriate staffing, they need to find a better way to Share employees between locations in a more efficient way for payroll or for overtime tracking.

Without upsetting their entire process flow, they might come to us and go, Hey, what do you have? And we have great solutions for all of those things. But we especially if we kind of go back to basics, we especially get brought in just to help get everybody on the same page. I think any And Timeforge is really an operations tool. It does HR stuff, but it's for operations. Any effective operations tool is really gonna be a communication tool at its core. And that's what Timeforge does.

So we're making sure that whatever you're planning happening is based on good data or making sure that that plan is effectively communicated. Usually that's, that's going to be a schedule communicated over to the employees, and then the system's going to do whatever it can, according to your preferences as a business to make sure that that plan is what happens. And if something goes awry, Thank you. We're going to tell you what happened.

Are your sales higher or lower than you thought they would be? Did someone not show up for a shift? Is someone late? Can we block someone from clocking in too early according to what they're scheduled to do? All of those things are baked into the system, so it's really trying to make store level operations streamlined and have the managers focus on stuff that time clocks and robots can't do for them. Right. We want them engaging on the floor with customers.

And that's the whole point of the system is to get the managers out of the back office and make sure everybody's on the same page.

And, and I, as I said to you pre-show, I'm excited because I've heard a lot about this over the last few years and I can't, you know, can't wait for you to talk a little bit what is rain in general, and then, and then we'll, we'll tie the, the two together to, to say why is time for talking about rain and what is rain? You know, so why don't you tell a little bit a little bit. To our audience, what is rain instant pay?

And at some point in the near future, see, oh, wow, look at that. I worked 8. 1 hours. I made 143 in gross pay today. And my company's awesome. So they're offering this voluntary benefit to me. Should I need to access my own earnings in advance of my company's scheduled payday? And you know what I do, so I'm going to push the button on my smartphone in my app and instantaneously transfer my own earned wages right into my bank account.

Should I have some sort of emergency expense or Should I quite honestly just want to pay my bills on my bill cycle instead of on my company's pay cycle? Or if I'm someone from a younger generation that's just accustomed to on demand everything you know, I maybe want to access my wages as soon as I've earned them. So it's become all the rage in the past three or four years. It's gained a ton of traction and rest the restaurant space and hospitality.

were two of the industries that were really early adopters of of this benefit. So for your clients or the folks that are listening they probably have heard of, you know, kind of the, the surge of pay on demand products that are available and rain instant pay is one of the vendors in the space that provides these these benefits to employer partners.

hundreds of dollars in tips and every day I would get paid as a shift worker when I was in college and in high school, I would get paid and I would walk out and as a 16 or 17 year old, if I had a fantastic shift, I'd have a lot of fun because I'd have cash in my pocket. But as less and less people are paying with cash, more and more of these team members are getting paid on their paychecks, the tips that they would have gotten.

Do you think that's, I mean, is that, is that one of the bigger reasons why you think that there's been such a growth in this? Because I've seen it, you know, again, when I was working in restaurants, it was the, the, the Brinks truck or the, you know, the cash truck would have to show up and pick up cash every day. And in talking to some of our restaurant groups now, the Brinks truck, if they haven't.

Adopted a solution like what you guys have, or they haven't chosen to put them on, on their paychecks, the tips they're showing up with cash to give to the servers every day, which comes at an expense to the business and it comes at a pretty significant cost to both the service staff and to, to those people is that, I mean, I guess Jen, Jen and Audrey, why don't you guys take that comment and give me, give me, is it, am I thinking about it properly?

Is that kind of the reason why you guys think this is this has been such a big growth in the last couple of years? Thank you.

A separate problem is tipped employees who, who, many of which no longer have access. To their pay on, you know, a daily basis or their their tipped earnings Interestingly, I just want to make one comment about earned wage programs Everybody gets the idea that employees want access to their pay. Nobody refutes that in the restaurant space, right? Nobody ever says to me. This is a dumb idea We don't think employees will like it.

I mean employees are crazed about it It's becoming it's gone from a nice to have benefit in the restaurant space to a need to have benefit And we now are working with employer partners that are saying, Hey, I should have launched this two years ago. Now I'm, now I'm launching this benefit just to be on par with what everybody else in the space is in the space is doing.

So nobody refutes that, but what's less intuitive are all of the employer benefits that are coming from launching programs like this. And we're seeing like major increases in applications for shift workers. When you, you know pump that you have this, you know, when you hype it, that you have this benefit available to the applicant pool, we're seeing major reductions in turnover from restaurants that are utilizing this benefit specifically with back of the house and hourly hourly staff.

But something you mentioned that I wanted to touch on, I also was a bartender. And I can remember that feeling of like having cash on hand every night. And I would think to myself as I was leaving my shift at Bruce Chris steakhouse, you know, on a Saturday night, and I would be walking with hundreds of dollars in my hand.

And I think, you know what, I was going to give up my shift tomorrow and go to the Titans game, but you know what, I'm not doing that now because this feels good to have cash on hand. And the earned wage access benefit has the same psychological phenomenon for employees. It actually causes them to show up for work and to work more shifts and to pick up more shifts because they know they're going to have access to that pay as soon as they've earned it.

And again, I appreciate you saying that, Jen, because that was a little bit of my assumption, because I've heard servers, you know, we'll talk about the benefits and the recruiting to the businesses, because I think that's also huge, because to your point earlier, but Audrey, I guess Talk to me a little bit about why you think it's been such a, such a need to have, not just a nicety and people are, are, are looking for it. It's part of what people are looking for when they go look for a job.

It's part of what restaurants are looking for when they're building out their tech stack that says, do you have an earned wage access solution that you can help me with? Why do you think over the last three or four years, it's grown so tremendously? Yeah, well,

And still from folks who were in the restaurant industry in the 80s still hear stories about how in the 80s it was very similar to the past few years as far as the labor concerns, and there was this extreme assumption everyone in the restaurant industry knew that wages were going to have to go up, that server wages would suddenly pivot to be increased because what the restaurant industry has always struggled with and probably will always struggle with is that For the specific skilled tasks, the

high skilled tasks of being a really good server or back of house employee, you can take that skill to another restaurant easily. And every restaurant always needs good people. And so what the restaurant industry struggled with then, and is struggling with Now, right, is trying to figure out how to make your restaurant differentiated from all of the other employer brands that are out there. And so we've gotten to see everybody get so creative.

And I love it because I'm always preaching employee retention is your primary goal and recruiting secondary. You got to get your culture under control first. And I think a lot of businesses. Who hadn't approached it that way over the past few years have learned that lesson and are now focusing on culture And I don't mean the fluffy fuzzy culture. I mean how things are done around here, right?

My simple the simple definition of culture and we're seeing we're seeing that happen and part of that culture is Every little process right? You've got to take a look at how are people accessing their wages. Are they? We've still got restaurants that we run into that are doing paper checks. They want direct deposit, right? At a minimum. And so if we can get that just incrementally faster access to those wages, that is a huge cultural impact. And, and we've heard it from our customers for years.

This problem of how do we get people to stick around and we've have lots and lots of creative solutions But this one has just latched on I think because the employees are driving it so hard

Because a brand, you know, Jen, you talked about Ruth Chris, like that brand should just attract high level people that want to come work there and you get what you get and you don't throw a fit like I tell my kids, like just get over it.

But at the end of the day, between the labor troubles of just acquiring good talent and then we're retaining good talent, as you talked about, Audrey, it's become something that with less you know, I guess work and it's, it's less difficult as technology has gotten more advanced and you're able to connect these two things together. It become a benefit that you guys can put out into the field.

Jen, as you, as you've gone out to employers, have you found it resonates better with the larger guys, better with the smaller, smaller groups, I guess, across the board, because in my mind I was like, Oh yeah, it'll work fine for Joe's. Pizza and bar down the road. He's got 20 employees and he's doing fine.

And, you know, but when I see it, you know, rolling out at a national scale at really high level brands where servers might be making six figures waiting tables, I was like, holy smokes, I had no idea that that was something that a server at Ruth Chris, that might be making a hundred grand a year or a bartender or someone. Yay. At a, at a fine dining restaurant might want to access those things. I'm like, ah. They're going to be able to wait two weeks for their paycheck.

But I guess, tell me what your experience has been as you're talking to different brands in the restaurant space.

And I perked up yesterday because one of the morning shows that she was listening to said, you know, it's a fact that 72% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, and that includes a large portion of earners that earn in excess of a hundred thousand dollars a year. Is America has America become too expensive to live in, and that was kind of the headline. And and that that's true.

I mean, people ask me all the time that I think the early stigma about what we do it rain instant pay and providing access to wages was, oh, that's for very low income. you know, workers who desperately need access to their funds. No, we see a significant amount of high income earners access their pay on a weekly basis. So, you know, it's largely removed the stigma. from, you know, from employers mind about, you know, well, I need this for my low income workers.

No, you need this because it's an expectation. We live in an on demand society. People can drive an uber and cash out five times a day. They can work for door dash and get money on hand. So it's also the gig economy jobs that have really fueled The change in thinking about what the average employee should have access to, right?

But in answer to your question about the large chains believe it or not It was the opposite in retail retail was one of the first Early adopters of this benefit and walmart jumped right in the deep end and launched.

Group, you know, gets on board and launches the scale, you know, a program more broadly, but we have seen the smaller franchisee groups be the ones to say, Hey, I need this as a tool to recruit and to retain and to drive employee engagement. So it's interesting in the different verticals, how, you know, how it's, how it's evolved in a different way.

And I always, again, thought it wasn't going to be something at a. 2 billion brand that has 200 plus stores across the U S would jump into something like this, but they, for 10 years in a row, they've been rated as one of those best places to work and you know, whatever, whoever does those, those surveys, I guess it sounds like it's becoming the expectation that people are just.

At a place where they have to have this Jen, you were talking about the fact that retail, you know, retail is like, it's almost a given and the restaurants are taking a little bit longer to get to that place. But do you, do you guys see this as something that is just going to be an expectation for one of those places? That's going to have the highest level of talent. Is that your, I mean, is that, is that kind of where you think it's going, Jen?

And I'll let you start and then, then we can let Audrey.

So now we're seeing employers that are launching this, you know, to catch up because they're losing, you know, to the McDonald's across the street that has a sign in their yard that says we pay daily work one shift and access your pay. So that's definitely the trend that we're seeing. And I think in, in the restaurant space specifically, that will certainly come to pass by the end of 20, 2024.

So Audrey, let's talk a little bit about how does this all work? It's all good and well, we're on the restaurant technology guys. It's all well and good. That says you earned this. You should be able to take it. I love the story. But call me a skeptic. Call me one of those people that says it can't be that easy. So why don't you talk us through the tech stack of how do I even know that I earned the 143 and I can take out some portion of that 143 as part of my pay today? Yeah,

making sure that we're vetting the right partners. And that's what happened with rain is it took us about 18 months to find the right earned wage access partner and really be sure about rain. And, and they were very patient with all of our questions. But ultimately what, what really makes the difference for people who are, for businesses who are using rain and time forged together is the integration.

So if we start talking about the technology, it's time forge is sending in real time, the employee information at your business to rain. It's also sending over those earned hours, what people are actually working to RAINN. So RAINN isn't guessing, like, oh, we think that they probably should be cashing out eight hours. That's not how it works in restaurants. Maybe they should be cashing out three, right?

We don't know, you know, without, without a partnership like RAINN and Time Forge together, the business doesn't know, and the earned wage access provider doesn't know. So it's really, really important if your listeners are shopping for an earned wage access provider to make sure that they've got the data to make intelligent decisions for their business because some of the vendors out there. Are providing more risk to the business than what we allow with our partnership

How do, Audrey's in the system and, and accidentally instead of putting her in at 15 an hour, I put her in at 150 an hour, and now that gets Push terrain. How do we deal with that? How do we deal with the risk of the fact that Audrey's going to take all of her money and not finish her shift and not, not do those things. You know, let's talk through that because I do think it's critical.

And when I talk with people about earned wage access, they always go, but, but these people, this one time, this guy, I paid him cash and he laughed and he, you know, whatever. So how does that work? How do, how do we ensure that the, the business Audrey used, you use the word that. While it's controlled, you know, chaos in the restaurants and many of them are very risky, there are also some that that are risk aversion.

Don't a little bit about how you guys manage that and how you guys mitigate that risk. through technology, through punching in and punching out and sharing the hours and all of that.

And Jen, Jen can talk a little bit about RAID and how it

In fact, you're picking up a couple of days on the float, on the backend after we've successfully, you know, withheld our reimbursement and then you're disbursing payroll. So really the liability rests with us because we're the vendor that's floating the cash, right? So we have some protections in place for ourself to make sure that we're not making too much money available. which again, the importance of the time forge rain interface and relationship is paramount. There are earned wage.

We're not the only earned wage vendor in the United States. There are vendors. that have less sophisticated connections that are making more mistakes and, and I guess entering, there's, there's more risk associated with their programs. Our data is coming to us from TimeForge in, in nearly real time. We're also capturing missed punches and updating the records as the pay period goes along. So, it's a pretty robust.

and that makes us very com risk associated with depl But in addition, we have for ourself. Like as a, f to have both the clock in in order to make any mone employee doesn't push, yo then start seeing a balan We make money available to them and we only make 10 hours available as an example. So let's say it looks to us like they worked an 18 hour shift. We assume that was a missed punch and they punched out the next morning when they came in. We only make 10 hours of that 18 hours available.

So we have some some things on the margin that help us, you know, to, to not overdraw an employee's paycheck. And in the event that we do, which is extremely rare, and it usually has nothing to do with the timekeeping data or an approved punch, usually has something to do with something like an an abnormal garnishment that an employee has on their paycheck, right. That we couldn't have seen that they had.

four or five child support liens that were going to hit their paycheck and they were ending up with a zero paycheck anyway. That's not data that we're collecting on an employee. In that event, we pause the employee from the benefit and we just roll forward that recoverable balance to the next pay period. We can also see if an employee's active or they've been terminated.

But if an employee's worked hours during the current pay period and they get terminated, they're still going to get a paycheck. And we're only making 50 percent of that gross pay available to them to begin with, because they also have to be protected for taxes and garnishments or benefits withholding information

You don't do it on a paycheck, but people like for whatever reason, in my conversations with people that earned way to earned wage access, they go like totally off the, off the rails. As you in payroll. There's always risk in this. You guys don't let them take out a hundred percent of it. You hold back some for taxes and the like as an employee before we talk about the case study, Audrey, that I know we talked about pre show as an employee. What is my experience? How does that work for me?

So I'm now working at the shift role. I'm a cook at the, at, you know, Ruth Chris Steakhouse and. Ruth Chris has rain and I want to be able to go access my shift pay the 50%. What do I have to do? What's that? You know, how easy is it? What does it look like to me as an employee? Because I think when we talk about the employer, when we talk about this case study, we'll dig super deep into that. But as an employee, what does it look like?

So Jen, if you, if you wouldn't mind, why don't you take that, take that on for

They're going to put in some data elements, create their own account, password, protect it. They're going to sign some terms of use that say, Hey, I know if I take advantage of this benefit, I'm using this third party vendor rain. To access my funds. I know that they're going to my employer is going to be sharing my data through timeforge with rain, and I'm also authorizing rain to get repaid on my scheduled payday by doing a payroll adjustment out of my upcoming paycheck.

So they sign those terms and conditions, and then boom, instantaneously we're, start bumping their data up to what we're receiving from TimeForge. And if they've worked any hours during the current pay period, they literally see a cash balance that quickly. And the cash balance is simply, you know, the number of hours that they've worked multiplied by their wage rate. And made available to them at a 50 percent rate.

And if they want to access those funds, they can push a button and insert their checking account and account and routing number or insert a 16 digit debit card to instantly transfer funds into an account. And they go through a confirmation screen that says, yep, I definitely want this to come out of my upcoming paycheck, but I need it today. Boom, done.

So the entire experience, creating a RAIN account, linking yourself to the employer partner, accessing the TimeForge data, and making a transfer into your actual bank account is less than two minutes. And I've timed it many times. Oftentimes I get a notification from my region's bank here in Nashville, Tennessee, that says, just received a deposit into my checking account. It's a really slick experience.

How does that whole thing work? Is that something time force deals with? Is that something rain deals with as an employer? I always get, you know, employee and as an employer, how do I, how do I, how does that whole thing balance itself out?

And it gets loaded during the pay run and it's all just kind of handled. Anything you want to add, Jen?

partnered You know with ADP with UKG with with all of the common ones and any other vendor in the space is probably going to tell You something similar what's not traditional Is to be capturing punch data from employees in real time What most companies do what every company does in in america is at the end of the payroll cycle They're taking the time forged data and they're dumping it into ADP right before they process payroll to deploy a great experience for employees with an earned wage access

provider. They have to be capturing that punch data further upstream. And that's something that's entirely new earned wage access really created the need for that. And so just if you take nothing else away from this podcast today, as you're looking for an earned wage access vendor. You should be looking at who they're partnered with on your timekeeping side, not necessarily who they're partnered with on the payroll side.

And minimize the risk for the restaurant. And so Audrey, I promise you, I promise you twice. Now we can talk about this case study. So why don't you dig in and let everybody know about this case study that, you know, kind of, kind of benefits and, and what you guys saw between time, forge and rain with this latest customer profile that you have. Yeah,

It's they primarily have grocery stores, but they also have restaurants and C stores. So they're a little all over the verticals that time forge primarily serves. And so they actually went with a different earned wage access vendor

I have so many horror stories, and I'm sure Jodi will be happy to also tell anyone who wants to know their horror stories, but but we, I actually learned a lot from what she did and didn't like about communicating with that other earned wage access vendor, but what she was looking for in a partner, and so it was really good feedback, and I went, okay, good, because here's RAIN, and they're not going to do anything that you just listed off that you hate. Thank you.

What Bowie was doing pre reign to try and take care of their employees needs for, for earned wage access. They've been doing it for a long time. They have basically an employee loan program that they manage internally, like, or were managing internally. Yeah. That's a lot of work. Okay. And, and stuff comes up. You know, so if you're working in a grocery store or restaurant, stuff comes up, you get, you know, your kid breaks a leg or whatever, and you just need a bill comes due.

You need access immediately. They were doing an employee loan program. And they never said no to their employees when they needed that, that time. And it was. Administratively cumbersome is the nicest way I could possibly phrase that. But that's the kind of dedication that, that RF has to make taking care of his employees, was he was, he was going to eat that administrative burden. And so rain. Has been amazing for them.

So the case study on buoy foods within the first two weeks of rain being rolled out with the time forge integration, 37 percent of the buoy foods employee base adopted rain. Two weeks, isn't

You know, happen to be running a small business myself and we have done personal loans to our team members when a kid breaks a leg or when they have a tire go out and they can't afford, you know, a couple hundred bucks for tires and they can't wait until their paycheck comes through, you know, family medical thing, just whatever it is, life happens.

And as an employer and as an employer that care also cares about our team members, that's, it's, it's probably such a a need that's out there that we don't even recognize. And so I love that you're able to talk about that, Audrey, that it was such a high percentage. And I can only imagine, you know, that there's a little bit of a honeymoon period, but but you know, I'm certain.

That that that type of type of thing people then get used to it because they're used to who the earned wage is getting there and they're used to being able to pay bills on the time that the bills are due, not on the time that they get paid because, you know, Citibank and Chase don't really care when you get paid. They want their money when they want their money regardless.

The landlord doesn't care that you didn't get paid on the day that, but, you know, so I guess we're running up against time and I know that typically around the 35 to 40 minute range, people start to bounce off. So, Audrey, tell me how people get, you know, get access to learn more about what you guys are doing at Time Forge, how they can learn more about Time Forge, rain, the integration that you guys have built.

I'd love to, you know, love to let our audience know how can they learn more and, and figure out if this is something that they should be doing for their team.

To our listeners out there, guys, if you haven't already looked into this earned wage access, please, please, please not only look at what these guys are doing at time, fortunate rain, but as Jen gave you guys caution earlier, like it's, it's not just everybody can do it. You know, you there, there's a lot of parts and pieces that go into it.

And at the same time this partnership makes it simple It's pretty seamless for the restaurant to implement and you know get this type of stuff without putting themselves at risk similar to what What bowie foods did with this other provider that they went with that didn't have the integration and it ultimately ended up being More of a burden for them. Maybe they wanted to go back to their their personal loan programs before that And before her before audrey walked them into rain.

So to our listeners guys We know that you guys have got lots of choices. So we appreciate you guys. Joining us. If you haven't already subscribed, please do so on either YouTube, on your favorite podcast player, or once a month, we send an email out about all of the episodes we have. Audrey and Jen, thank you so much. And to our listeners, make it a great day.