REWARD
“UK businesses face a ticking time bomb in the form of an engrained overwork culture that is burning employees out and undermining productivity, retention, and bottom-line performance”
down organisational performance across multiple fronts: 38% of overworked staff say they are less productive, 29% operate under excessive workload pressure and 28% report overlook is damaging their relationship with their manager. Most alarmingly, one in five overworked employees plans to quit within six months. The opportunity for payroll These factors contribute to increased turnover, engagement, productivity, and quality problems that severely impact a company’s ability to remain competitive. They also mean organisations spend too much on overtime and lose some of their control over financial and resource planning. In contrast, several of our European cousins – Denmark in particular – rank among the top ten most productive countries in the world, while also working the lowest number of hours. The less employees in these countries work – or, more importantly, the better their time is managed – the more productive and fulfilled they become. The crux of the issue is this: if you help your workforce to operate effectively, people shouldn’t need to be working overtime. Good business today means operating in such a way that people can work effectively, which is more productive for the organisation as whole. Payroll has an opportunity to seize this issue and elevate its profile as a source of insight and expertise that can help to redress the balance and influence better workforce management. Here are some ideas to make that happen. Understand the issues The first step for all parties, payroll included, is to recognise that management of overtime is not just a financial planning issue. In the modern business environment, HR and leadership teams must work together to deliver core business “If you help your workforce to operate effectively, people shouldn’t need to be working overtime”
objectives relating to productivity, based on employees’ mental and physical wellbeing. Firstly, payroll professionals need to understand what these core business objectives are, proactively meeting with heads of departments across the business. This will put them in a strong position to propose insight and guidance from payroll as a key part of developing the solution. More frequent analysis and use of data Payroll’s trump card is the data it holds – not only on overtime worked, but also other key areas such as use of flexitime, absence, leave taken and attrition. There aren’t many other departments that preside over such vast sets of employee data. In many cases, however, the potential of payroll data remains largely unexplored because it’s usually collected, used for payroll processing, and then forgotten. At best, most organisations only analyse their payroll data once a year. More regular weekly, or even daily, analysis would give organisations a far better understanding of the issues impacting their bottom line – for example, when overtime peaks in certain periods (even in business that are not seasonal), when people typically take time off in lieu and how that might impact overtime peaks and troughs that hit employee productivity, as well as the bottom line. Currently this data is not analysed or used. Payroll professionals should push for it to be so, framed by their understanding of the business’s objectives and challenges and the underlying causes that analysis would help to address. Organisations would be far more inclined to use this insight to their benefit if this was the case. Automate to free up time Of course, analysis of the data will take time that some payroll operations can’t afford. Even in this digital age I still meet
with payroll managers who spend around 15 days in their month preparing the payroll, working through spreadsheet after spreadsheet where people input time sheets manually. This process can be automated to bring the time spent on this task down to one or two days at most. Remember, overwork is the big issue we’re addressing – driven by inefficient processes. By addressing this issue within their own sphere, payroll professionals can free up the time they need to provide the analysis required to start improving efficiency, productivity and time management right across the business. End game To address unrealistic workloads and the impact of overworking, the end game is for HR to partner with operational leaders to put in place better processes and policies to accurately forecast work, align it to realistic capacity and ensure fair distribution, along with greater work flexibility. That latter point is important. I’ve seen many instances where flexitime leads to better working hours and those better working hours lead to increased productivity. For this approach to work, leaders must equip managers with the right time management and planning tools to manage employee expectations of flexibility with business delivery. Ultimately the aim will be to reset expectations, role model healthy boundaries and implement policies that better respect work-life boundaries and prevent burnout. Organisations also need to reevaluate training, technology, and managerial processes to boost oversight, communication and support for workforces. Insight from payroll can be the starting point of the conversation that leads to this transformation. And if payroll plays its hand well, in the long run it will have a greater say in identifying the issues, systems and processes that will help to address not only this issue, but the full range of workforce management and employee engagement challenges. n
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| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward |
Issue 103 | September 2024
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