Companies should use the end of financial tax year that is around the corner as an opportunity to re-evaluate their existing payroll solutions.
And, while it might very well be time to adopt the mantra ‘new year, new solution’, decision-makers must closely scrutinise what their strategic objectives are when it comes to payroll. This is according to Ian McAlister, GM of CRS Technologies South Africa.
Payroll and human resource (HR) departments have evolved over the years and are a far cry from the number-punching silos of old. Today, the digital workforce requires a vastly different approach to how employees are managed. This is essential if the business is to remain competitive, retain its employees, and have them work efficiently while ensuring customer satisfaction.
Too often, traditional Payroll solutions do not have the level of integration with the rest of the organisation required to provide a comprehensive view of what is required. These stand-alone systems were designed to do just that – manage the payroll.
However, human capital management (as HR is referred to today), needs solutions that encompass all aspects of HR. Furthermore, they need to provide organisations with the ability to implement them in modular fashion or using a phased approach.
The ideal solution should provide the business with a platform to manage the entire employer-employee lifecycle in one place. Of course, given the rapidly changing regulatory environment, any payroll solution must be compliant with legislative requirements.
Payroll should also integrate realtime business intelligence that can provide insights to things like remuneration and employee costs, attendance and sick leave, expenses, overtime, and even manager feedback on the value of the employee.
Companies should not forget that a digital environment requires cloud-based capabilities as well. This extends to the payroll function that needs to be accessible from anywhere in the world. This also enables employees to benefit from self-service functionality, for example checking leave days remaining, tracking performance, and so on.
An integrated payroll system ensures that management can focus on delivering on their strategic mandate while the solution takes care of much of the traditional administration-heavy tasks. This automated approach improves turn-around time on queries and provides a more transparent way of reporting any HR-related concerns and issues.
But perhaps even more important than all these elements, is the need to have a completely configurable payroll solution. This means that it is not the organisation that need to fit in to the solution but the other way around. Every business is unique and has its own set of challenges.
Why then should a payroll solution attempt to ignore this and offer a one-size-fits-all approach? Instead, being configurable means that companies have all the benefits of customisability without the exorbitant costs typically associated with it.