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November 8, 2022

Yann Le Floc h, CEO & CO-Founder for Stairwage, tells FinMag how he came up with the idea of creating a solution to democratize access to advance payments in companies.

By Marie-Ange Nodar

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Introduce us to Stairwage? What motivated its creation?

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I ve been an entrepreneur for nearly 15 years, and in my first venture I was more product-focused. In this new adventure, this time I had the desire and the will to focus on service and the human element, which had become a priority for me. And it was while talking to entrepreneurs and HR managers that I realized that there was a gap to be filled in terms of managing employees financial contingencies.

To date, there are only 3 options for dealing with financial contingencies:

• Asking family or friends for money, which is rather embarrassing.
• Going overdrawn, with all the attendant costs: today, we re talking about 7 billion euros in bank charges and agios that are paid to banks every year, when they could be reinjected into the economic circuit, and this is all the more damaging in the current context of eroding purchasing power.
• The advance payment system, completely unknown to the French: it s important to know that the advance payment system is a legal one, enshrined in the French Labor Code. Quite simply, it s the advance payment of a portion of wages already earned.

Our surveys, notably with OpinionWay, have shown that:

• French employees have little or no knowledge of the existence of this advance payment option; 52% of French employees have never heard of it.

And the remaining 48% don t really know the difference between an advance on salary and an advance on salary, even though these are two totally different concepts, which are not treated in the same way in legal or even financial terms.

• Employees feel very embarrassed to ask their employer for an advance on salary, as this will lead to a face-to-face meeting with the employer, and the employee will find himself having to mix the professional with the personal, which is often very unpleasant for him.

We came to the conclusion that it was possible and necessary to build a solution that would improve the financial well-being of employees.

So we launched Stairwage with this well-defined mission of improving employees financial well-being, to restore the financial flexibility that seems necessary today in the context of inflation and declining purchasing power that we re experiencing.

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Who is the service you offer aimed at? Can all companies integrate your solution?

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Today, we re more focused on ETIs (mid-sized companies) and large corporations. Stairwage is currently deployed in various sectors such as hotels and restaurants, healthcare, services... but it s aimed at all sectors, because the need exists for all populations, and it s likely to grow with the current rate of inflation.

We re seeing a strong acceleration in the deployment of Stairwage lately, probably linked to companies desire to provide solutions that have a concrete impact on the well-being of their employees, and Stairwage fits in with companies quality of working life strategies.

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What difficulties do you come up against?

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In companies in France, even though it s legal, it should be remembered, employees are still unaware of the possibility they have of accessing an advance payment once a month without needing to justify themselves and without the employer being able to refuse.

The difficulty for us, at the outset, was to make sure that both companies and employees were aware of the system.

Companies still don t communicate enough on this subject, for the simple reason that the process is still very rigid because it s managed in an archaic way, often manually.

We bring real flexibility, through technological innovation.

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What are the benefits for companies? And to employees?

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Employees gain greater autonomy in managing their salaries and budgets.

The benefit, both for the company and for the employees, is that the financial flexibility this brings to the employee makes him or her less stressed financially and that a financially relaxed employee is more involved, his or her motivation is greater, his or her absenteeism rate

because they are simply happier at work and more satisfied with their situation, when they are less worried financially.

Stairwage provides everyone with a tool, a solution, to make the process faster and simpler. Everything is automated.

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Why Stairwage and not another application?

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Our fiber is resolutely social, and theStairwage application is a social application.

Beyond a very robust and comprehensive technical solution, at Stairwage we re truly focused on people.

And it s with this in mind that we have become the exclusive partner of the leading mutual aid platform, Cresus, enabling us to provide very concrete support to employees who may be under financial stress, or experiencing significant financial fragility, and to help them, for example, to renegotiate consumer credit interest rates or repayment schedules.

We want to go even further, and are currently working on various modules, to continue to increase the "reste à vivre" of French employees.

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Future projects? Future plans? Development?

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We re recruiting a lot in various fields, and our aim is to equip more and more companies in France, Spain and other European countries as quickly as possible, because the need is strong, and we need to deploy quickly to support as many companies and employees as possible who need it.

If you d like to find out more about Stairwage, you can visit their website at: https://www.stairwage.com/ or follow them on https://fr.linkedin.com/company/stairwage

Written by Marie-Ange Nodar

Based in the South-West of France, she deciphers financial news for you.

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