Calhoun Management Improves Its Wendy’s Employee Retention Rate with DailyPay

• US Headquarters: Clemson, South Carolina
• Industry: Quick Service Restaurants
• Number of Employees: 2,327
• Payroll Platform: Paylocity
• Time & Attendance Platform: RTI
• Pay Card:  ADP Wisely

Calhoun Management, founded in 1997 as a Wendy’s franchise in the southeast U.S., currently has over 3,000 employees in 90 Wendy’s locations in Georgia and North Carolina. The company prides itself on the quality, service and cleanliness they deliver in the quick service restaurants (QSR) space, and it values treating its crew and management like family, believing them to be the most powerful asset of the company.

Sandi Shaw is the HR Director for Calhoun Management Corp, managing benefits, unemployment claims, vacations, employee loans and government reporting in addition to payroll. She recently met with us to talk about implementing DailyPay after a nightmarish partnership with another on-demand pay provider. This is what she had to say:

We had been struggling with retention and recruiting efforts since many of our competitors offered their employees on-demand pay as a benefit. We also faced other challenges in our business including cash shrinkage because our employees helped themselves to cash from the register whenever they needed it and it was difficult to track down offenders.

Another Wendy’s franchise was using an on-demand pay solution and we adopted the same program. But that was a nightmare. We ended up with two pay cards, the ADP Wisely card and the on-demand pay provider’s card. We couldn’t have salaried people on the program or anyone with deductions, and those who did enroll had to use the provider’s pay card. We had actually considered transferring everyone to that card once we were up and running, but that provider proved to be a nightmare. We had to fund all the payments ourselves and half of our people wouldn’t get paid. There was a lot of manual work on our part and customer service was completely unavailable. I had to send an email and pray that they would respond to me.

So I spoke to my ADP Wisely representative who set me up with another on-demand provider, but I couldn’t even get past negotiating with them. They had a standard contract and we needed some tweaks. It took two months to hear back from them and it still wasn’t right. They said, ‘Just sign it and we’ll fix it later.’ By that time I had zero confidence in them.

I went back to my ADP Wisely rep, and he told me about DailyPay. I spoke to the DailyPay sales rep and from that point on, I knew I was in good hands. He really cared about our needs and was going to get us to our goal.

I was reluctant to offer on-demand pay initially. I wanted others to experience it first, but then I realized that this is the wave of the future and we just had to jump in and go with it. And DailyPay was so easy! It wasn’t cumbersome. There were no restrictions on who could use it. Employees didn’t need a card. We never hear any complaints from employees. With our previous provider, I was the administrator.

The partner portal is very user-friendly and it gives me all of the information I need. Everything is available on the employee’s profile. With our previous provider, we had to download a report and sort it out to see what ‘offers’ employees took. It was tedious and time-consuming.

There is no comparison between them and DailyPay. DailyPay gives us all the information we need. If an employee asks me why their paycheck is this amount, I have all the information right there to see what they transferred before payday. It’s very easy to understand and use.

There also are no changes to our payroll process. We spend some time helping employees understand the program and educating them, but DailyPay’s marketing materials are great.

Employees simply love DailyPay and cannot live without it. In fact, there has been 40% enrollment in DailyPay since we launched the benefit. DailyPay found that our employees who use the benefit stay nearly twice as long as those who don’t! If they run into any glitch in the system, employees reach out to DailyPay’s Customer Support team immediately. Employees typically use DailyPay during critical times when they need gas money or to pay their utility bills. We’ve also noticed an improvement in positive employee behavior, which is wonderful.

Even in these crazy times with the pandemic and all, DailyPay is helping us to attract and retain employees. We’ve had two acquisitions and a payroll conversion since we started with DailyPay. People who use DailyPay tend to stay longer than non-DailyPay users and, according to DailyPay’s data, there has been a 28.5% decrease in turnover rates among users.

Prior to DailyPay, we would give cash advances to employees from the register. Then I had to manually reconcile all those advances before I could process payroll. With DailyPay, that’s over — I don’t have to do that manual reconciliation anymore because we don’t need to offer cash advances.

We heavily advertise DailyPay in our recruitment efforts and have used the marketing materials we receive from DailyPay to drive awareness. I definitely think it’s helping.

We are so happy with DailyPay. I have account reps who know me and I know them. They are like coworkers. I have never met anyone who isn’t top-notch at DailyPay. From my sales rep to my implementation team to my account reps, they are always there for me and my team. The support team is exactly what I want and expect from a partner. Everyone is personable and we get to know each other. We’re a team, we’re partners, we work together.

This is a real selling point and it’s so important to me. We were able to change to a new payroll company and not lose DailyPay. Employees didn’t have to sign up again. It was seamless for them. I hold every other company we deal with to DailyPay’s standards and they don’t even come close. The DailyPay team is awesome. I haven’t had a bad experience with anyone!

I tell my peers, don’t waste your time shopping around. In the end, you’ll be better off going with DailyPay. I tell them about DailyPay’s professionalism. It’s on point. They know what they’re doing. Their customer service is phenomenal. I have spoken to several other Wendy’s franchise groups about DailyPay. I’m always willing to get on a reference call with anyone.