March 28, 2024
You’ve probably heard about standard businesses using pay cards as an alternative to traditional paper checks. If you own an agricultural business or work in a related setting, you might consider the benefits of implementing such a system for your business as well. Here are a few ways your agricultural business could benefit from using pay cards.
Free Up Informal Workspace
If you work in a traditional agricultural operation, your “payroll office” is likely a cramped, informal space that’s overflowing with paper products. While payroll cards won’t eliminate the need for paper items entirely, switching over to plastic is one way to free up some space in your office and start switching over to a more digital medium.
This is also an effective way to keep better track of who you’ve paid since funds issued on a pay card don’t need verification or a physical hand-off. Similarly, you can cut down on the number of hours you spend waiting on employees to come pick up checks. That way, you have more time to focus on more demanding tasks.
Eliminate Payday Lines
In line with the above notion, pay cards will help your business reduce the number of people in the payroll line each payday. This is helpful both for your company’s productivity and workflow in the office itself; the less time employees spend in your office, the fewer distractions you’ll have.
Another benefit of minimizing paper check use is that employees won’t need to commute out to your office to pick up a physical check; instead, you’ll simply load the pay period’s wages onto their respective cards. You’ll still need to provide pay stubs in either digital or paper form, but employees will feel content picking these up at their leisure.
Cater to Your Employees’ Needs
One of the most applicable uses for pay cards lies in the number of employees who don’t use banks. Between eight and 15 percent of people in the United States are “unbanked” employees, meaning that they don’t have a traditional checking account. Given that percentage, chances are that you have some unbanked employees on your payroll. Offering a pay card to such employees often provides a far better alternative than cashing checks or withdrawing funds from a fee-heavy ATM.
Since the percentage of unbanked employees increases in industries such as agriculture, your processes might become significantly more streamlined when you implement a pay card structure.
Another pay card aspect that sincerely outweighs traditional checking is the ability to shop online. Between pay cards’ debit-like functionality and enhanced security features, shopping online and setting up recurring payments will appeal to many of your employees, especially if they’re used to shopping in-person out of necessity.
Improving your employees’ relationship to their income (e.g., improving their access to it) will provide you with happier employees overall, so the pay card method is worth consideration.
At Abacus Payroll, we’re determined to help you keep your business as modern as possible. For more information on how pay cards can improve your agricultural endeavors, call us at (856) 667-6225 today!