COMPLIANCE
Customer and client fulfilment
JeromeSmail, freelance journalist , presents the views of four industry luminaries
P ayroll is a high-stakes endeavour, whatever the scenario. But it could be argued that when the function is operating in a client/customer context, those stakes are raised even higher. To find out the secrets of success in client and customer fulfilment, I spoke to four key players in the industry: ● Stuart Price , head of payroll products, MHR ● Paul Thickett , payroll services director, SD Worx ● Karen Thomson , payroll partner, Armstrong Watson ● Abigail Vaughan , chief operating officer, Zellis. How have customer/client needs changed for payroll and human resources (HR) suppliers in the last decade? Stuart Price: There are greater demands and expectations from the customers’ systems due to evolving legislations and the need for the technology to keep
pace. Systems, rather than people, now manage legislation, and complex decisions are able to be made via technology and assist customers through a process. As a result, people in payroll now don’t need to know the ins and outs of the field, when a decade ago this wasn’t the case. This isn’t to say that the decision making has been completely removed from the person. How successfully a system runs a policy depends on the correct initial input of the user, as it can only do what it’s originally programmed to do. In more fringe areas, such as where councils and government departments need to issue orders for money to be taken from people’s pay, an initial decision, such as the type of deduction required, still needs to be made at the human level before the system can then guide them through the rest of the process. Paul Thickett: I believe that customers are looking for a digital-focused approach for key teams and employees. People want to be able to access payslips online or on
their mobile phones and payroll teams need to be able to work from anywhere, so the demand for cloud technology has grown significantly. Inputs are more efficient, and the quality of service delivery is more about core HR and payroll and its associated outputs working together and aligning to insights that contribute to effective policy decision making for the whole business. Karen Thomson: As legislation has increased and more responsibility put onto payroll and HR service providers, I have found clients want less interaction with both areas. Most clients are very happy to provide the minimal amount of information and leave the rest to payroll. I am finding many clients are viewing the payroll service as providing HR support, too. For example, I often have requests to work out holiday entitlement (not the pay side), work out redundancy entitlements, and so on. The landscape is changing significantly in my experience, with HR and payroll becoming ever closer. Abigail Vaughan: Although payroll and HR has significantly evolved, there are two types of customer needs that have been consistent over the last decade. The first is the need for the supplier to
...the quality of service delivery is more about core HR and payroll and its associated outputs working together...
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward | December 2020 - January 2021 | Issue 66 24
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