Back to Instant Payments

Podcast Episode

Ep 11 Part 1: Randstad CFO Ben Elliott on the Importance of Paying 70,000 Employees on Time

Instant Payments··18 July 2026·18 min

About this episode

Host Tal Clark, CEO of Instant Financial, opens season two of the Instant Payments Podcast with guest Ben Elliott, U.S. CFO of Randstad, who leads the North America Financial Shared Services organization supporting $6B in operations. Ben explains how Randstad serves employers with flexible access to workers across industries and helps talent access jobs, skills, and reliable pay, noting Randstad puts 300,000+ people to work daily globally and 70,000+ in North America, split roughly 50/50 between commercial and professional staffing. He describes Randstad’s complex payroll operations across 40+ states, tracking timecards in near real time, running three weekly payroll cycles, and targeting accuracy. Ben discusses why Randstad implemented earned wage access with Instant in 2021, citing technology maturity, competitive demand, operational controls, and ease of enrollment.00:00 Welcome to Season Two00:45 Meet Ben Elliott02:22 What Randstad Does04:14 Randstad Scale and Staffing Mix05:27 Ben’s Career Journey07:49 Payroll Complexity and Systems10:18 Payroll Cycles and Tracking11:46 Defining Payroll Success14:04 Why Earned Wage Access16:47 Wrap Up and Where to FollowInstant Financial: instant.coRandstad: https://www.randstadusa.com/Connect with Tal Clark: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tal-clark-a60776b/Connect with Ben Elliott: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-elliott-0586202