To retain workers, consider paying them more often
By Rosalie Murphy | NerdWallet
When Kaustubh Deo, president of Washington-based Blooma Tree Experts, bought the company from its retiring owner, he inherited a weekly payroll system and quickly learned to appreciate shorter pay periods.
“If you give somebody a raise, they feel that [increase] like three days after you tell them about it,” Deo says. And payroll errors can be corrected faster, too: “It’s one thing if it’s to wait two weeks or four weeks for that to get resolved, but if it’s next week, employees aren’t that worried about it.”
The bulk (63%) of American workers are paid biweekly or twice a month, according to a February 2023 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics survey. But around 27% of workers said they were paid weekly. And technologies like earned wage access are giving more workers the option to draw on their wages between paydays.
For employees, less time between paychecks can increase feelings of financial security, says Karen Burke, a knowledge advisor at the Society for Human Resource Management.