FEATURE INSIGHT
Keeping the UK paid
Jerome Smail, freelance journalist, relays the views and opinions of industry luminaries confirming payroll means muchmore than just salary
T he world has changed rapidly over the last five or ten years and this is reflected in the advancements made in payroll. As Julie Dansie, director of payroll services at Moorepay, observes, the financial crisis made consumers more aware of every penny, every pound and the need to be able to have control of their expenditure. This, in turn, led to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) rethinking the way they had to give consumers a ‘real time’ view of their income; hence, the birth of real time information and payrolling benefits in kind. This means payroll has had to adjust, not just processes and procedures, but systems, people and the interaction and demands of clients. “Gone are the days of a nine-to-five service with no visibility of their payroll until preview reports were available, often only a week or so before the pay day,” says Julie Dansie. “We have had to change the way our systems can hold and produce information to allow early visibility and control for our clients.” To get the industry’s view of the view of just how the profession has adapted to keep the UK paid, and how payroll means much more than just salary, I spoke to Dansie and three other key players in the market: Mark Judd, vice president HCM product strategy EMEA at Workday; Glyn King, group managing director at Datagraphic; and Simon Parsons, director
of payments, benefits and compliance strategies at SD Worx. ...not just processes and
demand from clients is driving the need to have integrated HCM [human capital management] systems as a one-stop shop for all their needs. Mark Judd: The link between payroll and other forms of HR data is changing and expanding beyond the transactional. This is making the application of tech in this area much more strategic. In the last few years we’ve worked with a lot of organisations to help them make their HR system the central point for people analytics, bringing together all people data into one place and securing it via a single security model. In these organisations the role of the HR administration and payroll teams has been transformed. They are now able to help both the business and employees to plan more effectively: working with the business on things like workforce planning; and with employees to help them understand their total value to the business and tie it back to performance. Glyn King: The main purpose of payroll hasn’t changed. It still aims to pay employees accurately and on time. However, advances in technology and changes in employee expectations in the workplace have seen payroll shift towards pay and reward. Simon Parsons: Traditionally payroll has been centred around calculating salaries and handling the transactions. Yet the compliance obligations that fall on
procedures, but systems,
What have been the key changes in payroll over recent years? Julie Dansie: The payroller’s role is much more proactive than it has ever been. More emphasis is centred around helping clients to fully utilise the cloud-based systems, training clients to have ownership of their own data, and essentially be the ‘expert’ when needed to help explain and deal with the most difficult of calculations and tasks and work through the legislative minefield that is HMRC. Payrollers now have to be not only the clients’ comfort blanket to ensure the staff are paid on time, but also experts in auto- enrolment legislation, payrolling benefits in kind, systems usage, RTI submissions and often must have a good grasp of how HR systems, and teams, work as the people and the interaction and demands of clients
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward | September 2019 | Issue 53 42
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