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Country Fair cuts employee turnover by 22 percent with ZayZoon
How ZayZoon saves Right At Home 10 hours per month on payroll processing
About Right At Home Westside
- Location: Los Angeles, CA
- Industry: In-home senior care
- Employees: 250
Payroll tasks can be time-consuming for human resources teams. Depending on the number of employees at a given company, this work can take a few hours or a few days to complete.
If there are different factors or special requests, such as a pay advance to an employee, that inevitably adds more time and details to consider, and can take away productive minutes and hours.
For healthcare businesses like Right At Home in Los Angeles, pay advances add a few extra hours of work per employee. Sergio Cortez, Human Resources Manager at Right At Home, wanted to find a solution for this work. He wanted to know if there was another way for employees to manage their finances without having to go to their employer for it.
Problem
Right At Home is a non-medical home care agency regulated by the Department of Social Services in the U.S. The global franchise takes care of seniors in all sorts of capacities such personal care, task management and appointment management. There are 250 active caregivers at the Los Angeles Westside branch of Right At Home at any given time, and Cortez processes payroll for around 110 of them.
Cortez has issued pay advances to employees but it’s not a sustainable long-term practice. Each advance can add two to three hours to payroll processing because there’s a lot to discover about the employee to ensure it’s something that can be done at all.
“When someone’s asking for an advance, I need to make sure they're working and have an ongoing schedule. You know, we have to trust them. It’s a lot of investigation—a lot of backend work I have to do on my end to make sure we can advance the money.”
Solution
An alternative solution for people who need pay advances is earned wage access (EWA). With EWA, employees can access a portion of their wages ahead of payday without having to notify their employer.
To manage current or any upcoming requests for pay advances, Right At Home started using ZayZoon. Cortez decided to introduce ZayZoon staff as a solution for any payday advances and be part of a holistic benefit offering to future employees.
“I try to stay competitive in the pay that we offer but I'm always looking to see how we can get better benefits overall for employees, too,” he says.
Why ZayZoon was the right partner for Right At Home comes down to ease of use for both employees and Cortez.
“ZayZoon takes a load off of me,” he explains. “I’m thankful that if our employees don’t have gas money they can just use money from their earned wages available on ZayZoom instead of contacting their employer to borrow money. They can just go on and take out what they need, knowing it's being deducted from their paycheck.”
Results
10
Hours saved on payroll processing per month
40%
Employees using ZayZoon
Right At Home saw results with ZayZoon. Before, the healthcare business spent a few hours per employee on issuing payroll advances. Now, employees have the ability to access their earned wages before pay day, limiting additional time Cortez spends on calculations for payroll.
Caregiving does have a lot of turnover regardless of the options and benefits to help reduce it. That's the nature of the work. It's very hard, and the burnout percentage among caregivers and healthcare providers is still extraordinarily high, according to data from the National Institute of Health.
Many businesses are diversifying their employee engagement strategies to ensure their employees stay and remain engaged. A key way of doing this is offering retention-driving financial wellness and benefit tools like ZayZoon.
“Benefits like ZayZoon help us get there. I talk about ZayZoon during our interview process, and they're excited to hear about it. Why wait till payday, right, when you can pull out whenever you want? Caregiving is very difficult. I’ve been in this industry for 12 years. I’m always trying to support employees where I can.”
About Country Fair
Country Fair is a convenience store chain with over 70 locations in three U.S. states. Its mission is “Country Fair Cares—For its Employees, its Customers, and its Community.”
To meet and surpass their company mission every day, Country Fair partnered with ZayZoon to address high turnover rates and offer the best benefits to its employees.
- Industry: Convenience
- Headquarters: Text
- Payroll platform: Text
- Number of employees: Text
Challenges
High turnover and financially stressed employees
The convenience store industry has notoriously high turnover rates. The National Association of Convenience Stores reported turnover rates for full-time and part-time employees in the industry averaged 141 percent in 2022.
Driving employee retention was a priority for Country Fair, whose customer-oriented mission was negatively impacted by the operational burdens caused by high turnover.
While Country Fair’s turnover rate was much lower than the industry standard, at close to 60 percent, the high costs associated with hiring and training new employees still presented the company with a challenge.
“We're always looking for ways to improve that turnover rate. We do that by finding vendor partners and offering products and services to our employees. This was just a really good opportunity for us to add something to our arsenal that we thought would help us retain folks.”
–Steve Seymour, Director of Personnel Training & Development, Country Fair
Financial stress among employees was another significant challenge, contributing to absenteeism and productivity issues. This is common for most workplaces today, as ZayZoon’s State of Employee Financial Wellness Report found that:
- 35% of employees are stressed about their finances daily
- 63% of employers said that financial stress negatively impacts employees’ performance at work.
Employees who experience financial stress are likely to not show up for work or have productivity issues during their shift. This affects the consistent and high-quality customer experience Country Fair strives to provide.
Country Fair needed a cost-effective solution that drove retention and supported employees’ financial wellness.
Our solution
Earned wage access (EWA)
To help decrease employee turnover rates and manage hiring and training costs, Country Fair worked with ZayZoon to introduce earned wage access (EWA) to its employees.
When considering competitors, ZayZoon’s people-driven product, no-cost-to-employer model, and quick and easy onboarding process was the obvious choice.
ZayZoon’s emphasis on employee well-being, with features like fee-free early wage access through gift cards and bonuses, aligned with Country Fair’s commitment to supporting its team members. This was a key factor for Country Fair in choosing ZayZoon over other EWA providers.
ZayZoon offers fee-free gift cards that encourage employees to get early access to their wages via bonuses for gas or groceries that actually give them more money than their regular paycheck.
“When we vetted other companies, they wanted to charge for this, that, and the other thing. But our employees love the idea of the gift card purchases, especially with the add-ons on the gift cards. I mean if you think about this a minute, a $100 Walmart card, maybe 110 because of a 10 percent advantage on that card, that's ten dollars that might be a dinner at somebody's house one night.”
–Steve Seymour, Director of Personnel Training & Development, Country Fair
Results
22% reduction in turnover with ZayZoon
The impact of ZayZoon’s partnership with Country Fair was immediate. A year-long analysis comparing Country Fair employees enrolled in ZayZoon compared to those who weren’t found remarkable results: employee turnover was 22 percent lower among employees who used ZayZoon.
This is a significant reduction in turnover, which directly contributes to better customer service offered by Country Fair. Reducing turnover means that Country Fair customers aren’t impacted by the gaps in customer experience that can sometimes occur during periods of hiring and training new employees.
Reduced turnover also reduces hiring and training costs, positively impacting Country Fair’s bottom line.
ZayZoon helps Country Fair employees manage their financial wellness
Country Fair integrated ZayZoon into their employee orientation, ensuring new hires were introduced to EWA on their first day of work. This process boosted adoption rates to 37 percent, helping over a third of their workforce access immediate financial support.
Country Fair employees found that access to ZayZoon’s EWA helped them manage financial emergencies. One employee’s car battery stopped working on his way to work—a nightmare in the tough winters of Erie, PA. Because this employee had access to ZayZoon’s pay on-demand, he received an immediate pay advance that helped him fix the issue and get to work.
Other employees didn’t have gas money for the week, but by using ZayZoon’s gift cards, they could make it to their shifts.
ZayZoon’s earned wage access helps Country Fair employees manage instances of financial stress, enabling them to be more present at work.
“I think [ZayZoon] helps our company in that [it helps] people to come to work," says Steve Seymour, Country Fair's Director of Personnel Training & Development. "Call-offs hurt in a convenience store because customer service is lost when you’re short-staffed. So for people to be able to get access to their pay to get fuel, a new battery, that’s kind of a big deal.”
Empower your employees with earned wage access
ZayZoon’s earned wage access made a difference for Country Fair because it provided a meaningful benefit that helped employees close gaps between paydays. By doing so, ZayZoon directly improved employees’ financial wellness and job satisfaction while decreasing costly turnover and absenteeism rates. It's a win-win for employers and employees!
If your organization is dealing with financially stressed employees or turnover and engagement issues, give your team an impactful solution with ZayZoon.
Contact us for a free demo with a real live person who can walk you through our seamless, payroll-embedded EWA solution today.
“You try to bring programs in and see how they do for your company. Some programs go by the wayside. I have a feeling [ZayZoon] is gonna stay a good while.”
–Steve Seymour, Director of Personnel Training & Development, Country Fair
