How the standardisation of payroll technology drives higher standards for your business

Standardising processes is common practice for most organisations who want to ensure smooth operations. Following the same set of rules and steps ensures the same high quality is consistent across the business.

So, when it comes to processes and tasks, many businesses proactively review their standards to ensure nothing is slipping between the cracks and everyone is following the same set of processes. Yet when focusing on technology, many organisations have a patchwork architecture of legacy technology that can undermines their rigorous standards procedures. This is especially true when it comes to payroll.

One of the biggest hurdles of standardisation of payroll technology is the fear of change. If your payroll isn’t broken, why risk changing it? Yet this leaves many companies with payroll workflows and data processing protocols that aren’t as efficient or accurate as they could be.

While it’s true, a huge transformation such as changing payroll technology will require a lot of effort and change for the everyone involved, it’s the only way to achieve resilient, future-proof payroll for years to come.

As HR, payroll and finance leaders know, standardising processes can help you significantly reduce risks and increase efficiency within your teams. Therefore, standardising technology by using a modern cloud-based Payroll and HR solution or outsourced payroll service will lead to a more efficient, resilient, and stable environment for your teams to thrive in – now and in the long run.

Let’s review some of the benefits of standardising technology:

Issues with salary and benefits, including incorrect calculations and late payments, are the top reasons for employees to leave an organisation, according to research by SD Worx.

As your organisation scales up and works with larger volumes of data, the margin for error increases.

Companies that use multiple systems to gather, send and receive data often have vast amounts of data in different formats. This creates a lot of manual work for payroll professionals to make sense of and correctly process the data. Naturally, this can lead to human error and inaccurate calculations. 

The solution? Invest in one single solution that can handle your flexible payroll needs, allowing you to scale up or down depending on your requirements.

A cloud-based solution can automate and standardise your payroll data while providing real-time insights to empower your reporting. This helps to increase payroll accuracy, as you’ll have the right outputs first-time, and it reduces time spent on manual data entry. A result of accurate payroll is happier employees who no longer waste time querying incorrect payslips.

Not to mention, a healthier bottom line for your business. 

Policy and legislation changes often, requiring businesses to have a robust and modern solution that can handle the pressure of constant updates. A legacy payroll system simply won't cut it. 

Failing to apply the correct legal compliance can lead to incorrect calculations and payments, and even fines and penalties administered by HMRC.

A modern cloud payroll system ensures that any legislative changes are applied automatically without the need to re-enter calculations and running the risk of being non-compliant.

This guarantees compliance to legislation and policy updates and ensures your payroll is accurate.

The pandemic has taught businesses the importance of agility. To thrive in an uncertain, volatile, and complex environment, businesses must be able to adapt and pivot when needed.

Businesses using multiple systems or legacy technology will never have the flexibility required to be agile. If the pandemic happened again, would your organisation survive using legacy systems? 

By investing in modern payroll technology, you can streamline processes, integrate multiple solutions into one consistent experience and have access to more accurate, real-time data which can be accessed from anywhere to guide strategic decision making.

This allows business leaders to get a complete overview of the workforce in one place to make accurate data-based decisions from payroll and HR insights, therefore increasing business agility.

We’ve touched on how standardised technology can increase accuracy, compliance, and agility, but one of the biggest benefits is the impact it has on efficiency.

Time is easily lost due to keying data into multiple systems, re-entering information and re-doing calculations due to human error. Imagine how much time could be saved by opting for technology that automatically performs many of these tasks for you.

By increasing payroll accuracy, you are automatically increasing efficiency by reducing the number of corrections required to set things right and reducing the amount of queries the HR and payroll team need to respond to. This allows payroll professionals to focus on more important and meaningful work enhancing the employee experience.

Standardising payroll technology is a digital transformation project that requires significant investment in time, cost, and resources. Your payroll may not be broken, but its worth investing in a modern solution, or work with an experienced outsourced provider, that can streamline and standardise your payroll data and processes.

By doing so, you can achieve outcomes such as increased efficiency, agility, accuracy, and compliance to name a few, while contributing to the wider business objectives and creating a more positive employee experience.