According to the National Automated Clearing House Association, more than 80% of Americans receive their paychecks via direct deposit these days. Of these people, about 97% say that they’re satisfied with this service.
Does your business currently provide direct deposit for employees? If you don’t for one reason or another, you could be missing out on a golden opportunity to make your employees happier with your company.
You could also be missing out on a long list of other benefits that come along with offering direct deposit for employees. Here are six reasons why your business should start scheduling direct deposit payments for your employees as opposed to continuing to hand out paper checks.
1. Makes Almost All of Your Payroll-Related Tasks Easier
At the moment, there are so many tedious payroll-related tasks that your business has to take on since you don’t offer direct deposit for employees. These tasks can force some of your employees to waste valuable time every single pay period.
Some of the tasks that we’re talking about include:
- Writing out checks and getting them signed
- Folding checks and stuffing them into envelopes
- Passing out checks to employees or putting postage on them and mailing them
It might seem like these tasks would be simple enough. But when your employees are doing them every two weeks or so, they can begin to become a real burden.
You can cut down on these payroll-related tasks by offering direct deposit for employees. You can still use a pay stub template to provide your employees with pay stubs once they’ve been paid. But you can cut out a lot of the other steps along the way.
2. Ensures Your Employees Always Get Paid on Time
Do your employees occasionally get paid later than they should because you’re manually filling out checks and handing them out right now? This is yet another great reason to offer direct deposit for employees.
Providing checks on time is of the utmost importance when you’re running a business. It won’t be long before some of your employees start to leave if you aren’t paying them in a timely fashion at the end of every pay period.
You can make this a problem of the past by scheduling direct deposit payments instead of handing out paper checks. It’ll ensure everyone gets paid on time every time.
3. Prevents Your Employees From Having to Leave Work to Cash Checks
If you’re still passing out paper checks to your employees, many of them might have to leave work to go and cash them.
Some banks have started to make it easy for people to deposit checks through their smartphones. But not everyone feels comfortable doing this. It’s why many of your employees are still making frequent trips to the bank with their paychecks.
By offering direct deposit for employees, you can prevent your employees from having to clock out in the middle of every payday to head to the bank. This will make them more productive while they’re at work.
4. Lowers Your Company’s Risk of Check Fraud
It’s not always easy for businesses to send checks safely in this day and age. If a check is ever stolen while it’s in the mail, it could put them at an increased risk of check fraud.
Offering direct deposit for employees will stop your company’s checks from getting stolen when they’re in the mail. It’ll keep both your company’s information and your employee’s information safe at all times.
5. Allows Your Company to Become More Eco-Friendly
Do you know how much paper your company is probably wasting by giving out paper checks to your employees at least twice every month? You might be shocked to see what a big impact it’s having on your business’ carbon footprint as a whole.
When you mail checks to your employees, you’re using a whole lot of paper, envelopes, and other supplies. Going paperless will prevent you from creating all of this waste to pay your employees.
There is a lot less paper involved with using direct deposit for employees. In fact, you might be able to do away with using paper to pay your employees altogether by sending out digital copies of their pay stubs.
It’s going to be hard for your business to run an eco-friendly operation when you’re still paying employees by check. This will reflect poorly on your company and make some of your customers think twice about working with you.
6. Saves Your Business Money in the Long Run
Some companies have shied away from offering direct deposit for employees because they’re under the impression that it’ll cost them too much money to do it. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
In reality, offering direct deposit for employees can actually save your business quite a bit of money in the long run. You’ll be surprised to see how much extra money you have at the end of every month once you start scheduling direct deposit payments.
As we mentioned a minute ago, offering direct deposit will mean doing away with all the paper products you’re using now to mail out checks. But it’ll also mean cutting down on the manpower that is necessary to pay your employees each pay period.
It shouldn’t take long to see the savings that direct deposit brings. It’ll make you wonder why you didn’t decide to use it so much sooner.
Start Offering Direct Deposit for Employees Now
As the owner of a business, you want to keep your employees happy, right? Of course, you do, which is why offering direct deposit for employees makes all the sense in the world.
But your employees won’t be the only ones to benefit from it. As you’ve seen here, there are also tons of benefits that you’ll get to enjoy when you offer direct deposit. Start offering it to your employees today to experience all these benefits for yourself.
Want to find out other steps you can take to improve your business practices? Browse through the articles on our blog to get more great business-related advice.
