A payroll team is one of the most crucial departments in a company. They are responsible for processing payroll and ensuring the accurate and timely payment of employee’s salaries. In addition, they may need to collaborate with the accounting and HR departments for proper deductions and tax remittances.
Getting a payroll team onboard can help alleviate many time-consuming payroll tasks while ensuring compliance with payroll and employment regulations. Aside from having the right people on the team, you must maintain a highly efficient payroll system to keep your payroll team up and running.
Here are some tips for building your payroll team.
1. Create a standardised Payroll System
When establishing a payroll team, begin by creating a standardised payroll system. Standardising payroll can be a huge benefit for companies big and small. Aside from increasing efficiency and reducing the cost of maintaining a payroll system, it provides better data that can help human resources and finance function. With a standardised process, the management will have clean data to rely on, allowing for a more informed and reliable decision.
One of the biggest challenges for a company that conducts individual country implementations is the repetitive process of providing information to various local offices. But if you standardise your payroll process, you won’t have to repeat the process for every payroll. One of the most effective ways to standardise a payroll system is to use a global software solution that you can configure to consolidate data and processes across different countries and payrolls.
The first step is to standardise the collection of payroll instructions and implement control measures. Next, process payrolls on a single system to remove country-specific nuances, resulting in a single view of payroll for proper analysis and sign-off.
2. Update Payroll Software
You must ensure your payroll system is updated. Having an outdated system can hurt your business. So, forget about spreadsheets and manual payroll processes since they can cost your company time and money, not to mention spending more money to hire more employees for your payroll team. Invest in software that can perform multiple payroll tasks and make your payroll department more efficient.
Payroll software is not only a medium to process salary payments and carry out HR functions. It is an integral aspect of hiring, managing, and retaining employees. In addition, modern payroll systems are flexible and compatible with many other company applications. An updated payroll software allows you to perform several tasks, from generating in-depth reports to measuring trends and allowing workers to access real-time information on their compensation.
For instance, the software can gather insightful statistics, such as the average wages of employees, giving you an idea of whether you are paying your staff industry-standard wages, which is crucial if you don’t want your employees to move to your competitors for better salaries.
Payroll software is becoming more innovative by integrating machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Using these technologies in payroll can help automate tedious HR tasks, anticipate what employees may want from payroll, and manage compliance more effectively.
3. Work with Specialist Recruiters
After sorting out your payroll system, it’s time to bring in the right people for your payroll team. Thankfully, a specialist payroll recruitment company can help you build your payroll team by finding the most relevant candidates within your sector.
Sourcing the right talent for your payroll team can be arduous and even more challenging if you work in a niche sector or industry. In this case, consider seeking assistance from a specialist recruiter with valuable expertise in your sector. Their expertise and industry knowledge allow them to find the right people for your company. In addition, they can offer tips on market trends like salary expectations, new payroll technologies, and employee expectations.
Specialist recruiters can help you cut down on recruiting costs, which can be beneficial for startup companies. Hiring a specialist recruiter can save you money by cutting out the time involved in the recruitment cycle. Also, it minimises the cost of using in-house recruiters to hire a payroll team. You’d be better off spending your resources elsewhere.
4. Understand the Law
It’s crucial to understand payroll laws and stay updated on any changes in the regulations, from local to federal and state levels. The last thing you want is to be penalised for non-compliance, which can have severe reputational and legal damage. Companies must stay updated on the various compliance rules and regulations. Failure to meet deadlines and missing certain forms can have catastrophic consequences, especially for startups and small businesses.
Employment laws on payroll can change anytime, and companies must remain updated, allowing them to update company policies and keep up with these changes. Failure to comply with employment law can lead to significant financial losses, costly lawsuits, and damage to the company’s reputation.
Updating company policies to comply with the latest employment laws can help ensure consistency in company decision-making. It also helps ensure that employees are aware of their rights and privileges.
5. Keep Your Data Secure
Another crucial aspect of payroll is ensuring data security. When working for your company, your employees should feel confident that their sensitive personal data remains safe, especially their bank accounts, social security numbers, pay slips, etc. Therefore, one of the crucial steps for building an effective payroll team is implementing payroll security.
Implementing payroll security requires integrating specific measures to protect confidential data about the employee’s payroll, benefits, and compensation. Employee data is sensitive, and companies must include as many safeguards as possible in their payroll strategies to protect the data from potential leaks, hacks, and breaches.
Investing in payroll security systems is one of the most effective ways to protect employee data. These tools are encrypted to ensure the safe management of payroll. You can use the system to store, manage, and process payroll data to keep it secure. Aside from ensuring data security, the system can perform several tasks, from tracking the number of working hours for each employee to calculating taxes and deductions.
