Nurses are waiting for wages boost to meet the cost of living

Wellbeing, overall, has become a significant conversation across many industries and businesses as we move through the pandemic, into the new normal. There’s been much emphasis on the need for employers to take responsibility for, and contribute to their workforce’s physical and mental health. The benefits are multiple, including employee satisfaction and buy-in, a healthy team culture, and greater productivity. 

Now with the rise in the cost of living, and the challenges of making ends meet, some of the focus needs to be shifted from the social, mental and physical wellbeing, to ensuring that our workforce are experiencing financial wellbeing, and this is where healthcare leaders and organisations have new opportunities to make an impact. 

Financial Wellbeing as a Benefit

Sure, superannuation, the main contributor to financial wellbeing in the long run, is a given, but that’s not helping the day-to-day management of the finances that people, including our nursing professionals, are enduring with lofty energy, food and fuel prices exacerbating the budgeting issues between pay cycles. The trend to move to monthly pay cycles also heightens the challenge. 

Accessing Buy Now Pay Later services and payday loan schemes is on the rise, as many Australians look to bridge the gap financially in emergency situations, or even managing the bills. These risky facilities are a band-aid approach that can cause greater financial woes if repayments aren’t made, due to a lack of clarity and insufficient financial management support. 

Healthcare leaders and managers can offset these risks to their valued workforce, by empowering them with intuitive programs, initiatives and tools that allow their workers to relieve their financial stress, while demonstrating their place of business as an ‘employer of choice’, to attract new healthcare professionals. 

Real-time Remuneration (RTR) facilities and technology, such as CashD, are fit for healthcare practices and facilities that engage full-time, part-time, contract, and casual staff. Offering and improving the transparency of work hours and rosters, so employees can understand what they are likely to earn in the upcoming period, can provide a better basis for them to plan and budget ahead. 

Instant and secure access to money already earned within those paycycles, can allow healthcare employees, particularly casuals and shift workers with fluctuating wages, to manage their cash flow and to meet costs that may not align with their paycycles, or deal with life as it happens.

By integrating an RTR platform with payroll, workforce management and HR solutions, healthcare managers and leaders can offer controlled access to a portion of the employee’s accrued pay on a daily basis, without the need for loan contracts or the threats of defaulting repayments. It’s a win-win benefit that can form part of an extended remuneration package, and there are no contracts or lending involved, fees can be absorbed by the employer or shared with the employee depending on how packages are structured.

Offering RTR facilities through healthcare organisations can add value for nurses and other frontline staff as a meaningful and sustainable benefit, and therefore have a visible impact on the organisation. It’s reported that up to 93% of employers believe that empowering employees to manage their finances via RTR models boosts retention, and research suggests it can actually speed up recruitment by 27%.

RTR is an innovation for the business, and a wellbeing support tool that can have an impact on the financial and confidence issues confronting our nurses and frontline workers, and the healthcare landscape. It offers a demonstration that management values employees, and it fits the modern framework of digital tools we all access. 

Healthcare managers and leaders need to rise to the challenge, and employ innovative solutions that can make a difference. Real-time Remuneration access offers a boost to the organisational culture, and more critically, the welfare of our valued healthcare employees.