By Philipp Buschmann, co-founder and CEO of AAZZUR
For staffing and recruitment agencies, loyalty is an increasingly expensive thing to lose.
A worker who leaves does not just create another vacancy. The agency loses the investment made in sourcing and onboarding them, while recruiters have to start again. In sectors such as logistics, hospitality, healthcare and social care, where workers can move between agencies with little friction, the relationship can be particularly fragile. That makes the traditional definition of an employee benefit worth revisiting. For many agency workers, the most valuable benefit may not be another discount scheme or wellbeing webinar, it may be having more control over their money.
Earned wage access (EWA), for example, allows workers to access some of the pay they have already earned before the normal payday. When integrated directly into an agency’s payroll, rota or workforce-management platform, it becomes more than a standalone financial product. It becomes part of the working relationship.
Loyalty starts with removing friction
Consider the experience of a temporary worker. They might accept a Friday night shift, work it, submit their hours and then wait until the following week, or month, to receive the money. Meanwhile, the car needs repairing, rent is due or the cost of getting to the next assignment has increased. The agency may have done nothing wrong, but from the worker’s perspective, it is still the agency that controls when the money arrives.
Integrated financial services can change that dynamic. If a worker can open the same app they use to view shifts and see how much they have earned, then access a portion of that money when needed, the agency is providing something tangible: control.
UK logistics company, Clipper Logistics, provides a particularly useful example. The business found that some agency workers were reluctant to move into direct employment because doing so meant moving from weekly to monthly pay. It introduced earned wage access partly to remove that barrier. Within three months, nearly 1,000 employees had used the platform, with take-up reaching 40%, and the company saw a significant increase in agency workers moving into direct employment. If that isn’t loyalty, I don’t know what is!
Agencies can turn pay into a retention tool
For agencies, this has a second-order benefit. The most valuable worker is often not the person who registers. It is the person who keeps accepting shifts.
Financial services can become part of that engagement loop. If workers can see that taking an additional shift means an additional amount of accessible income, the financial value of accepting work becomes much more immediate.
Research into earned wage access supports this connection. A 2025 study of hospitality workers found that 60% said seeing potential earnings per shift encouraged them to pick up open shifts, while 57% said EWA helped them avoid borrowing from friends or family.
In the UK care sector, fintech Level reports that its on-demand pay proposition is being used to support shift coverage and workforce stability, with its care-sector customers reporting lower turnover, fewer unfilled shifts and less absenteeism. The precise results will vary by workforce and implementation, but the principle is compelling: when financial visibility and flexibility are connected to the work itself, the incentive to remain engaged becomes more immediate.
Integration is what makes the difference
There is, however, a trap for agencies. Adding another app is not the same as embedding finance.
If workers have to register separately, manually submit hours or wait for payroll data to be reconciled, much of the value disappears. Worse, the agency creates another administrative process for recruiters and payroll teams. The better approach is to connect financial services to systems the agency already relies on timesheets, rota management, payroll and worker communications. This is particularly important in the UK, where agencies have specific responsibilities around PAYE and National Insurance for workers in relevant arrangements.
Integration therefore needs to be about operational reliability as much as user experience. The worker should see a simple financial benefit; behind the scenes, the agency needs accurate hours, clear controls and clean reconciliation.
The future of agency loyalty may be financial
None of this means agencies can buy loyalty with an app. Workers will still care about pay rates, reliable shifts, respectful treatment and whether recruiters actually answer the phone.
The agencies that benefit most will be those that stop thinking of financial services as a perk and start treating them as part of the worker proposition. A worker who can see what they have earned, access it when necessary and manage it intelligently has a reason to keep the agency’s app on their phone and, more importantly, a reason to keep taking its calls.
