When was the last time your organisation reviewed its payroll function for efficiency and effectiveness? Too often payroll is a set and forget back-office function to which management take a conservative approach. To make the business case for change, here are the signs your payroll function needs an upgrade.
Why is your payroll review important?
An organisation’s payroll function is often its largest expense. At the same time, Australian employers have to navigate major regulatory changes like STP Phase 2, annualised salary reconciliation, one of the world’s most complex industrial relations systems and the ever-present cybercrime threat.
In this environment, a modern, tailored payroll system reduces the risk of increased compliance costs, inadvertent wage theft, employee dissatisfaction and even criminal fraud.
Do you see these danger signs?
- Are you using an essentially manual system with technology that requires significant workarounds for your team?
- Is your payroll process documented? Does it rely on a single or handful of staff?
- Are you confident that you have not over or under paid employees in the last 12 months? i.e that you’ve correctly interpreted awards and enterprise agreements?
What’s your payroll review mission?
If you’re in change of a payroll solution, what are you doing to improve payroll processing speed and accuracy and minimise compliance risk?
Can you answer these payroll performance questions?
- How much does each pay run cost you in employee hours and wages?
- How many errors are made each pay run?
- How many requests for assistance does your payroll team receive each month?
- Does your payroll solution give you a single source of truth for essential employee data?
- Does your organisation’s payroll function have KPIs?
What does payroll success look like?
We know from experience that our market seeks a single payroll solution that reflects their business goals. This might be to save time, reduce costs, improve compliance, and drive employee engagement. To achieve these ends, they invest in automation and self-service to improve employee productivity, and cloud-based solutions to free them from ICT overheads.
How good is your payroll technology?
- If your HR system is cloud-based-how do you interface with the other elements of your finance system?
- What security protects your payroll data in storage and transmission?
- Do you have access to an award interpreter tool?
Upgrading your organisation’s payroll solution takes time and money to research, negotiate and implement. Make sure that your payroll review project has strong support from the perspective of finance, governance and controls, IT and HR functions in your organisation.
Read more: see our blogs on improving your payroll strategy, Five Signs It’s Time For A Change and Payroll – Why It Pays To Buy Local.
