CIPP FUTURE OF PAYROLL REPORT 2019
Earlier in the report, it was mentioned that the future technology trend will all be about adopting emerging technology faster especially when it comes to the digitalisation of workers. Adopting new technology in payroll always comes with a degree of risk, if something goes wrong people don’t get paid! The CIPP recognises that this contributes to organisations keeping payroll systems for a number of years, and ultimately using legacy systems which may not be as effective and efficient as technology can now enable us to be. Another factor could also be the financial outlay and therefore, quite often we save money and stick to a system which works in payroll. Whilst the CIPP understands this, emerging technologies can reduce the time taken for current manual processes which could be automated, ultimately freeing up payroll professionals time and saving the organisation money, or meaning a better work/life balance for payroll professionals who will work until their employees are paid! System implementation can also be successfully project managed to ensure that employees are paid, even if something goes wrong. This is something that the CIPP can advise on through our consultancy arm, and software companies have significant experience in implementing software and ensuring that employees still get paid. How satisfied are you with your existing payroll software? Of the 370 people who responded to this question, a resounding 74.87% stated that they were either ‘extremely satisfied’ ( 18.38% ) or ‘satisfied’ ( 56.49% ) with their existing payroll software. The other respondents answered ‘dissatisfied’ ( 16.49% ) and ‘extremely dissatisfied’ ( 8.65% ). How long have you had your current payroll software solution? You could have concluded from the above that these were fairly brand-new solutions, but actually 57.84% of the respondents stated that their current payroll was five years and older ( 32.16% between five-ten years and 25.68% being ten+ years). As for the other choices, 14.05% said ‘less than two years’ and 28.11% ‘two-five years’. When are you looking to replace/upgrade your current payroll software? 66.3% simply answered this with ‘not in the immediate future’ with the rest stating 16.3% ‘within the next year’, 8.15% in the next ‘one-two years’ and 9.24% in ‘two-five years’.
You might think that even though there were a lot of people using older solutions, that they were still happy with what they had and there wasn’t a desire to make any changes i.e. “if it isn’t broken then don’t fix it” mentality.
Fortunately, there were some additional questions that follow which shed some light on the fact that they should be.
How effective does your software enable you to be compared with how effective you would like to be? Great question; you would assume that all is right in the world based on the above answers, however, 49.73% stated that they were ‘slightly less effective’ ( 29.17% ) and ‘a lot less effective’ ( 20.56% ). It would be interesting to understand how much time and cost is currently against this 49.73% , and why this again isn’t being put into a business case to upgrade or change their existing solution/s? Incidentally, 18.06% responded by saying ‘a lot more effective and 32.22% said ‘slightly more effective’. Hopefully, you are starting to draw your own conclusions at this point, but there are more factors to consider, including should payroll be interfaced/integrated with other systems and is there a consistent theme?
26
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker