With over half of January remaining, more than 50% of us have already spent our entire December salary and one in five of us see a gap of over five weeks between our pre-Christmas pay day and when we will finally receive January’s salary. Off the back of the findings, one company is helping its staff who might be feeling the financial effects of an early December pay day by introducing a unique staff benefit – it’s paying them twice in January. Ready10, a PR agency based in London, offer all staff 13 pay days throughout the year with its Goodbye Skint January scheme (GSJ), rather than the traditional 12, with the extra payment hitting staff accounts today (Friday 13th January).
The study, which questioned 1290 workers nationwide also found:
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55% of people received their December salary earlier than usual, with 88% of them being paid prior to Christmas day.
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23% of British workers got paid on December 23rd, the last working day before Christmas.
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7% say they had spent their December salary within for 10 days of being paid,. whilst a third (34%) spent their December pay packet within 15 days.
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Brits are also having to wait a while for their January salary, with 52% of people waiting over 31 days between December and January pay cheques. One in five of us (21%) have to wait longer than 35 days.
When these stats were broken down by age, it indicated that 18 – 35 years olds are hit the hardest, with 28% of them having to wait longer than five weeks between pay cheques. It also found that 58% of under 35s will have spent their December salary by Friday 13th January. The Ready10 initiative gives staff the option to receiving 50% of their January salary early and assist them with money management following what for many has been a month of high expense over the festive season.
David Fraser, MD of Ready10, said of the findings: “These figures show that the festive season really takes its toll on our finances and that by early January the next pay day can seem a long way away. We recognised this and wanted to help our staff by offering unique benefits that no other employer was prepared to do. GSJ was straightforward for us to introduce and the feedback from staff is that this will really help and that it takes into account their needs. Particularly for young people, I don’t believe there has ever been a harder time to enter the workforce than right now and hopefully initiatives like this really tackle some of the challenges our staff are facing. This is part of Ready10sq, our staff benefits package of more 100 perks which includes a number of things like letting staff control their holiday allowance and the agency paying for everyone to gain a qualification, along with some smaller but useful things like phone insurance and cinema tickets.”
The survey was of 1290 UK adults, conducted by Late Modern/Poll Fish, between 5th and 7th January 2017. Ready10 was launched in 2016, with the aim of creating dual-purpose campaigns that deliver on a brand’s PR & SEO and clients include Europcar’s Ubeeqo app, Voucherbox, travel company Holiday Pirates and the Free Postcode Lottery. The agency currently has ten staff. If you want to read our exclusive interview with David Fraser on the implications of the GSK scheme, you can do so right HERE.
