TECHNOLOGY
KB: Some people cannot work from home, for various reasons. It could be anything from their home set-up to their mental health. As a manager, you have got to try and identify if people cannot cope at home. SM: The other side to consider is remote workers. It is difficult not to let the office- based workers dominate the airways and ensure remote workers get to contribute. Often, people will return to work if they want their voices heard. LS: Firms need to have policies in place to adapt for those issues. For example, if any of the team are not present in the office, the whole meeting should happen online. We are going to have to see more of a conscious effort of how WFH works. GC: The good thing about the pandemic is that it has accelerated attitudes to WFH – but you would still be surprised how many companies are insisting on five days a week in the office. That is a tough sell to candidates on the market right now. Key Skills The top five skills respondents were looking to develop in the future were leadership, technology automation, remote working, communications and data analytics. Do you agree with this list as the priorities for payroll professionals? SW: I do not think the individual needs a skill of technology automation. You need to understand it to a point, but if you understand it too much, you become a developer. Payroll is more about the people-focused elements of the role. SJ: If you constantly rely on a provider, it is going to come at a cost. Understanding the system and being able to adapt it to change is how you get value out of both the system and the team. MP: Fifteen years ago, payroll was all about customer service. It has been forgotten for a few years but is coming round again. MS: It does depend on the team. I cannot imagine my team not delivering great customer service because that is the standard we set. But I recognise there is really bad service out there too, where errors aren’t corrected, and employees have no contact with the payroll team. RGi: Is it because the resource in payroll has been squeezed that we have moved away from customer service? Return on investment cases are often based on the reduction of the size of teams. SW: Or is it because payroll teams are
own process. Trying to sell to users is difficult because you are often working at stakeholder level when the users who implement the software have not been the decision makers. SW: We also need to be careful of buzz words throughout, such as integration and automation. You need to have auditability of what these words do. SJ: Throughout implementation projects, assumptions happen by the provider and the teams, creating results that neither party wanted. If payroll get involved earlier, they can ask the detailed questions sooner rather than later. KB: The challenge for payroll is that we only trust technology when we test it. SW: You must trust technology otherwise you will never step forward. The technology should be telling you it thinks something is wrong and flagging for you to check it. KB: Payroll teams also need to have fundamentals and not just rely on the system. We are the ones that need to give answers to employees. Flexible Working 67% of respondents saw an increase in flexible working requests and 82% allowed teams to work from home. How will flexible working impact the future of payroll? WJ: Crucially, you must have the option. For example, removing start and end times or allowing heads of departments to decide where their teams work. If someone does their job in twenty hours rather than forty, that is them being efficient. Employ with trust and all employees must do is keep it. RG: It is a double-edged sword. In the pandemic, we saw two different things.
Certain people stepped up their outlook, productivity, and their attitude to work. Others did not. WFH enhanced that vision of what happens in an office. SW: It’s not a will, it’s a skill. Without that communication and collaboration work in the office some people really struggle. Companies need to teach employees how to work from home, educating about how not to burn out, how not to always be online. MP: Equipment and environment is also important. People had to set up desks and chairs. Some were working on their dining room table, others in studio flats with partners. There have been some really challenging working conditions. SM: It has been really difficult over the last eighteen months, and we should avoid talking about who has done nothing. We have all faced personal challenges with home schooling, mental health and the logistics of WFH. Employers should be careful about saying who has been a superstar and who has not. SJ: The pandemic has given us an opportunity to experience WFH. Each business now needs to decide, based on its own culture, what is right for them. Employers must be aware they could create a flight risk if employees want to continue to work remotely or in a hybrid fashion and it is not offered. Companies should not just look at technology – they should look at their own process.
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward | November 2021 | Issue 75 42
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