FEATURE
follow so anomalies are clearly visible and can be spotted ● a skills matrix to track the team’s knowledge levels and how effective cross- training is ● having awareness of other business areas that hand off to payroll and those that transactions are passed onto. This can all be achieved by regular one- to-ones and giving your team feedback, particularly when processes are being adhered to and you’re confident in their abilities – so, feedback for doing a job well. You should also coach your teams, so they don’t always have to come to you for the answer – instead, they’re empowered to answer questions and have that consistent approach with compliance. Finally, delegation – mould future payroll managers within your team, build their capability and reinforce the behaviours you expect from them. MM: BDO rely heavily on training, technology and centralised processes and systems, alongside dedicated client management teams, to ensure we can deliver accurate and timely payrolls. We ensure our staff are trained to the highest level, utilising payroll assessment tools covering all areas of payroll, to enable us to build tailored training for everyone. Staff also gain recognised payroll qualifications, to ensure they have the expertise to deal with the multitude of complexities surrounding payroll processing. TS: Delivering a consistent service is all about having documented processes and procedures in place that all staff are working from. However, we cannot become complacent with this approach and need to continually improve our service offering with technological and operational innovations. In which ways can payroll professionals work with businesses in order to share knowledge and ensure compliance is achieved? DM: Have processes in place that are easy to follow, particularly for colleagues in the business who don’t have any payroll knowledge. Have processes as automated as possible, and make sure they can be audited to highlight where transactions are going wrong. Make it obvious when something stands out, instead of having to rely on that payroll ‘spidey sense’ when it just doesn’t look right. If you don’t have a risk register, set one up. Be on the front foot with operational changes in the business; be interested in the
operations managers on the frontline and their challenges. This gets you an early head- up on future business changes. Keep your team up to speed with changing legislation – the CIPP yearly updates in January and February are priceless for this. You must then take these changes and explain them in layman’s terms to colleagues. MM: Within BDO, we have a strong focus on the training and development of our staff, to ensure they remain up to date with legislation and compliance changes. This enables them to process payrolls correctly and to share their knowledge directly with their portfolio of clients. We appreciate it’s difficult for clients to gain clarity on the wealth of changes that impact their business, so we provide information in many differing formats for clients’ specific requirements. TS: We offer lots of avenues for interactions with our client base and potential customers on a whole range of topics from the payroll and HR world. These interactions include articles, blog posts, webinars and topic- specific workshops. These all help in knowledge sharing and educating the wider business community, by putting a subject matter expert in front of them to discuss our work. All these interactions can help us as a payroll bureau, and the wider community, adhere to best practice. How can payroll use its role in compliance to increase the profile of the function? LL: By building relationships and working with other departments across the business to provide and obtain relevant information in a timely manner. They should also consult with the business when changes occur, to inform of any additional costs, identify the risks of non-compliance and use key performance indicators, to support the business and ultimately, raise the profile of the payroll function. DM: Payroll needs to take the lead in ensuring processes and transactions are engineered to be as easy as possible to complete. This needs to take users in mind – moving processes online improves compliance and reduces submission error, but you also need to consider that some users aren’t tech savvy, so may need extra support. Build guides, produce crib sheets and, if necessary, video tutorials to help them. Payroll needs to evidence that audits and checks are completed, and colleagues understand what’s being audited and checked. Payroll should take a holistic view around compliance and, particularly, non-
compliance. This should lead to a more connected approach across the business, highlighting potential training interventions for staff where compliance isn’t being met. If it’s not being met in one area, is it just that section or are there issues elsewhere? Is there a high attrition rate in that area, or lots of absence in that team? Helping the business to look at the bigger picture of compliance helps use resources more effectively and definitely adds to the function’s credibility. MM: With the constant changes during Covid and the introduction of the furlough scheme, payroll professionals were pushed to the maximum in trying to understand the rules. There’s no doubt this raised the profile of payroll, as not only did payroll professionals have to manage these changes, but also had to continue working to ensure these rules were applied on the payroll each month, highlighting the pressure and importance of the role they carry out. This didn’t stop, because then there were changes to National Insurance and so on, along with the high level of staff changes across all business sectors, further impacting the payroll process. Due to the penalties and time attached to managing issues, payroll professionals work hard to ensure high levels of accuracy are achieved every time. This hasn’t changed recently, but it’s great to see that professionals are finally getting the recognition they deserve for all their hard work. Payroll professionals have a wealth of expertise and experience, and work with the data that not only typically controls the highest level of spend within any business, but that can help to assist businesses with future plans. This is particularly true in areas such as: ● workforce incentivisation ● business planning ● flexibility of resourcing ● staffing trends. All this information should be available from the payroll reporting, so with good technology and expertise, payroll is key to the future of a business’s success. TS: As payroll is a rule-driven practice, with changes being provided primarily from a single source and an active professional body that interprets this legislation into best practice, we’re in a prime position to extol the virtues of compliance to the wider business community. Also, what we do is something that affects every household in the UK, so we’re well-placed to confirm how important compliance is. n
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward | July - August 2022 | Issue 82 32
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