Over a third of HR directors (HRD) believe their companies’ senior leaders team is not doing enough to solve the impact of their businesses’ inaccurate, late and non-compliant payroll practices.
Zelis found that 36 per cent of HRDs think senior leaders are not doing enough to address these problems. Nearly all (94 per cent) of decision makers understand the problems created by this issue yet only 58 per cent are actively implementing strategies to solve this.
Over half (56 per cent) of HRDs see the use of automation as one of their top payroll priorities this year. The other two being developing a stronger compliance strategy (34 per cent) and improving how they communicate with employees to receive accurate pay and benefits information (34 per cent).
HRDs have said they find it difficult to collect and analyse data from their payroll systems and 24 per cent said senior leaders do not consider payroll to be strategic enough to discuss at board-level.
Nearly a quarter (24 per cent) feel that the Finance department should have some shared responsibility for payroll performance and 16 per cent said that the responsibility should be shared across HR, Finance, and Operations.
John Petter, CEO of Zellis, said:
The ongoing coronavirus outbreak highlights how important it is for HR teams to be prepared for major workforce change, especially as the rate of employee absence has increased and complex emergency payroll legislation has been introduced. Payroll must be reported on at board-level to help build an appreciation of key challenges, and so that the appropriate collaborative actions can be taken to maintain high standards of accuracy, efficiency and compliance.
But these findings suggest that many HR leaders are struggling to do this due to issues with collecting and analysing impactful data. Developing strong analytics capabilities will become essential in helping them to understand and respond to payroll challenges as they emerge. Not only this, but by marrying together payroll and core HR data, organisations can develop a fuller picture of the wider trends and issues shaping their workforce during these challenging times.
Zelis surveyed 250 HRDs at large companies to obtain these results.
Darius is the editor of HRreview. He has previously worked as a finance reporter for the Daily Express. He studied his journalism masters at Press Association Training and graduated from the University of York with a degree in History.
