Nine Tips To Help HR Leaders Streamline Their Payroll Systems
In an uncertain economy, delivering employee paychecks on time without a hitch is more vital than ever.
To reduce or eliminate payroll errors, leaders must provide their staff members with clear, concise and complete direction to assist them in accessing their payroll information.
It’s also essential that HR departments stay on top of government policies or leverage a global payroll provider that can centralize payroll information for employees living in different states or countries in this hybrid-remote work environment.
Below, nine Forbes Human Resources Council experts share tips on how other employers can begin to create a seamless payroll system.
1. Give Employees Access To Monitor Payroll Apps
Create an app that allows employees to find and fix errors before payroll submission. The app can be built to house every element of the employee experience, like PTO and benefits. Enabling employees to use the app may prevent errors from becoming costly mistakes, which is key. For example, a new poll conducted by Morning Consult for Paycom showed 58% of Americans would have difficulty paying bills and making purchases if only $100 was missing from their paycheck. – Jennifer Kraszewski, Paycom
2. Install An Automated System
Payroll is a necessary but complex task, so it’s important to simplify the often complicated aspects like reporting, taxes and managing a global payroll. This helps to ensure a seamless system. Removing manual processes by incorporating automation and self-service functionality helps to ensure that payments are on-time and accurate while also improving the experience for both employers and employees. – Rick Hammell, Atlas
3. Leverage A Global Payroll Provider
Partner with a provider to centralize your global payroll. Global payroll regulations differ in every country and errors are costly. Leveraging a global payroll provider that can centralize payroll for any country you have people in—and where you may open markets later—removes the compliance burden and harmonizes your payroll data, creating a seamless payroll system. – Bjorn Reynolds, Safeguard Global
4. Implement Multisystem Integration
Integrating your human resources information system, payroll and accounting systems drives seamless results. It also allows for the appropriate checks and balances to occur across all departments. You can leverage multisystem integration to cover all steps from automating onboarding to your pay period close and general ledger financial recording. Implementing cross-system automation also minimizes the potential for human error to occur. – JacLyn Pagnotta, Allied Partners
5. Assess Payroll Practices And Processes
Payroll systems can be complex and very sensitive to overcomplication. Thus, it’s imperative to keep it simple. Keeping things simple typically starts with your policies and processes. I suggest that human resources professionals look at how they process payroll to eliminate redundancy and find more time efficiencies in manual work. – Nakisha Griffin, Neustar Security Services
6. Educate Managers On State Compliance Regulations
Education, automation and process excellence are key to a great payroll system. It’s important for companies to design an automated process and remove manual interfaces. Educating managers on dates and compliance requirements in each state will provide them with a clear process that outlines what is critical to ensuring that employees are paid. – Rohini Shankar, Nations Benefits
7. Make The Process User-Friendly
When it comes to a seamless payroll system, it needs to be simple and provide clarity on the how and when of all related variables. When it involves your employee’s paychecks, it is of utmost importance to provide your staff members with clear, concise and complete directions and information as nothing impacts our employee’s well-being like a payroll error. – Omar Alhadi, Adobe Care and Wellness
8. Demonstrate Transparency
Be transparent with the workforce about how payroll policies are created and implemented. When mistakes occur around paychecks or tax withholdings, communicate the problem immediately and share the actions being taken to correct any issues. Employees should also have access to information about payroll processing and employee classification in the employee handbook, including an FAQ. – Niki Jorgensen, Insperity
9. Swap Support Between HR And Finance
Whatever your system is for collecting employee data, validate it before inputting it into payroll. Erroneous state taxes can impact payroll and employee engagement. It’s equally important to have good audit practices in place. HR and finance departments can support each other by swapping who inputs and who audits to avoid errors in real-time – Cat Colella-Graham, Cat Colella-Graham