Payroll’s part in the future of work
Work fromanywhere, for anyone With work-from-home now the norm for many industries, we are seeing an acceleration in multi-employer work. What was once viewed narrowly as gig work, is becoming the reality for work of all kinds. In the years to come, most of us will have a primary workplace, as well as a mix of secondary employment channels. Who we work for, and when and where we work, will be driven by our happiness, productivity and financial wellbeing more than the fading notion of employment exclusivity. Employees are the drivers of corporate policy Practices and policies once delegated down from the corporation to the employee are flowing in the opposite direction. The so-called ‘rise of the worker’ is now evident across geographic regions and industries. We see this in the requirement for diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace cultures, and we see it in on-demand pay. Our people have told us that these are non-negotiable corporate policies, and so they are. Whereas a positive employee experience was once relegated to a nice-to-have workplace perk, it is now inextricably tied to the basic resilience and sustainable growth of our businesses. Elastic hiring and workforce planning are competitive necessities In the not-so-distant future, we will work whenever and wherever we want. Multiple companies, multiple locations – wherever our skills allow us to add value. We see this happening already in pockets of the retail and hospitality industries. We will be able to go to any workplace, identify ourselves, verify our right to work, validate our skills and backgrounds, and get paid as soon as we’re done. As employers, we typically schedule labour two weeks out even though our ability to forecast labour requirements improves dramatically as we get closer to the workday. The batch-based workflows that characterise most workforce management solutions will fall to on-demand workforce management and improve workforce efficiency globally. Predictive intelligence is leading us In the same way our cars tell us where we need to go and our watches tell us how to improve our diet, exercise and sleep, predictive intelligence will guide our HR decisions and always stay one step ahead. By harnessing the power of thousands of customers – decisions made, and lessons learned – intelligence will lead us to new opportunities for value creation we never imagined possible. It will nudge us in the right direction and lead us to match people and work in a more intelligent way. The winners in our new reality will be our people. The way they want to work and the way they want to live will come together. And the forward-thinking businesses that lean into this on-demand, employee- led workplace will discover new opportunities for value creation and competitive advantage.
Brain Sparling ChMCIPPdip Senior manager - Global Payroll Operations, Ceridian
The future of work is already here. What could have taken ten years to materialise has happened in less than six months.
Any lingering questions of whether this future would eventually manifest are gone. They have been replaced by urgency to implement intelligent technologies that create value within our new reality. Payroll has a critical role to play in this new reality. Today, most employees are paid in arrears, which means they effectively lend money to their employers. And as a result, employees are typically cash-rich in the 48 hours following payday, and cash-poor for the rest of the period. Research tells us as many as 80 per cent of employees live payslip to payslip which creates financial stress and lower productivity at work and at home. This liquidity challenge drives people to high interest credit card debt and payday loans where interest rates approach 400 per cent per year. The notion of a fixed pay period is a relic of 1940’s batch-based technology which we set out to disrupt with Dayforce Wallet. Dayforce Wallet – live in North America and coming soon to the UK – allows employees to see exactly how much they’ve earned at the end of each day, net of all taxes and deductions. And it gives them the power to choose to get paid immediately. There are no direct fees to employees, no software charges to the employer, and it doesn’t change the way payroll teams process pay. Since Ceridian acts as a commercial lender to the employer, there are no changes to how payroll is funded. On-demand pay has now become a basic workplace requirement. We are now extending the same fundamental vision to disrupt the very nature of how, when and where people work. We imagine a future of work that is fluid, on-demand, and guided by data and intelligence that always stays one step ahead. A future that puts the physical, mental and financial well-being of our people first. On-demand everything In every other aspect of our lives, we expect instant delivery. When we buy something, we expect to receive it today. When a new show is released, we expect all the episodes at the same time. We don’t expect to wait, and there is no technological reason why we should have to. These are the base expectations of our lives, and soon it will be the same for our work. We will expect pay, scheduling, hiring, job searching, learning, and onboarding to be available on-demand.
This is the future of work. We can say this with confidence, because it is already here.
18
CIPP SOFTWARE DIRECTORY 2021
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker