Efficient Payroll: 5 Tips for HR Professionals to Follow

Fair compensation paired with excellent workplace culture is a match made in heaven for any industry to ensure employee retention. HR professionals, however, need to know exactly how to optimize the payroll process so that employees can feel valued and respected, and not experience any stress when payday comes.

Here, we’ll discuss a few key components for any HR department to include in their payroll strategy for better employee experience and smoother operations.

1. Embrace digital transformation

Hybrid collaboration models aren’t new, but they’ve become much more commonplace and widely accepted during the pandemic. During the past two years, more companies have started embracing HR digital transformation to be able to keep up with the changing collaboration models.

Companies are hiring, testing and onboarding digitally, setting up employee self-service platforms and creating digital payroll protocols to simplify global compensation for their workforce.

If you haven’t done so already, it’s time to revise your payroll and HR processes to see what you can digitize. Digital invoices, pay slips, documentation, contracts and other details can all be managed online securely.

2. Set up a long-term compensation plan

Transparency is the name of the game when it comes to HR’s communication with employees, especially in terms of compensation. Your teams should know what to expect in terms of bonuses, pay raises and other monetary perks.

Communicating all of those details clearly and transparently is one of the key HR best practices that will reshape your entire payroll process. When people in your organization know when to expect their income to increase, they’re far more likely to focus on improving their performance.

• Make sure your employees are familiar with all the essential payroll protocols implemented in your company for the long haul – and train managers on how best to communicate this protocol to their teams.
• Setting up a long-term compensation system will help simplify the entire payroll system and automate a wide array of processes (more on automation below).
• That also means that you’ll always be able to track inclusivity and equality in the company’s compensation system, but also make sure that new hires get optimal compensation, and always be aware of the budget you’re working with.

3. Keep all payroll matters internal

Privacy is an integral part of any company culture, and as such, it should be used as the key premise when handling all payroll matters. That said, privacy is one of the greatest perks of enabling a dedicated HR intranet, hence the need for more companies to leverage this private, secure communication setting for their payroll processes.

It serves as a private, communal hub for employees only, where you can share payroll information, news, and updates, enable employees to ask questions privately and make sure that everyone is in the loop.

Plus, it’s also simple enough to revoke access when someone leaves, and still have your safe space to keep talking about all things payroll. You can also use your intranet to connect all your automation software and collaboration tools safely with your payroll and keep an eye on all transactions within your organization.

4. Don’t shy away from automation

Working with a global workforce, setting up hybrid collaboration environments, and working with people on a project or contract basis as opposed to full-time hiring, all have payroll-related repercussions.

However, with the right HRMS software in hand, you can automate and streamline all vital (and time-consuming) payroll tasks to avoid human error and wasting your time. From tax calculations to keep you compliant and operating legally, all the way to automating recurring payments, HRMS software can free up hours of your time every single day.

Ideally, HRMS software should also automate other HR processes alongside payroll. That means onboarding, processing job applications, employee training, expense management and much more. It all depends, of course, on what your business needs, so be sure to look for tools that cover HR processes you’ll use the most.

Here are a few things to look for in your payroll automation and HR software:

• An intuitive, easy-to-use dashboard where you can manage access for each team member
• Clear compliance protocols to prevent legal issues
• Built-in security
• Multifunctional features allow you to automate pay for full-time as well as seasonal, irregular, project-based and other types of workers
• Attendance tracking to measure team performance
• Handling perks and benefits
• Customizable schedules that you can still automate
• Reporting to help you further improve your payroll system

These are all essential features, especially for multi-location businesses that handle hundreds of employees across different countries and time zones.

5. It all begins and ends with security

Last, but certainly not least, security (both on-site and cybersecurity) is an integral part of payroll management that will give your employees peace of mind. With hybrid work becoming more prevalent than ever, the notion of what enterprise security should be is rapidly changing – and you need to keep up.

Knowing that your employees want to feel secure when you’re handling their paychecks and that their identities and most sensitive information are being processed with the greatest care, you need to look into all the elements of elevating your security.

For instance, in the retail world where physical stores are inextricably linked to online stores and payment protocols, a comprehensive retail security solution should help protect your HR processes, payroll included. Alarm systems and video surveillance, paired with impenetrable cybersecurity protocols make a significant contribution to your company’s ability to avoid break-ins, financial loss and any subsequent pay cuts and payroll hurdles. Focusing on overall security is an important step in preventing such issues.

To sum up

HR teams are the backbone of every business, empowering companies to build a great culture, but also ensuring that employees are treated fairly, with respect, and taken care of.

Efficient payroll can help support retention, transparency in your culture, and allow employees to focus on their work instead of being stressed wondering if they’re going to get paid on time, in full, and if they will receive all their necessary perks and benefits.

Through automation, digitalization and ongoing optimization, you can improve the efficiency of your payroll system. The listed ideas should enable you to cover all the essentials and start 2023 with a stellar payroll process in place.