COMPLIANCE
Protecting your payroll: why every organisation should have a business continuity payroll plan
Russell Webb, Business Development Manager, Phase 3, encourages all business to ensure they have a business continuity plan in place specifically for payroll, to ensure workers can still be paid when disaster strikes (which it often can)
I had the pleasure of speaking at the CIPP’s Payroll Live South event on the topic of business continuity plans and payroll, and I wanted to take the opportunity to share some further insight on the topic. What is a BCP? BCP stands for business continuity plan,and most organisations above a certain size have these in place to ensure their business can continue operating during a crisis. These plans were thoroughly tested during the recent Microsoft outage, the Covid crisis and even further back, during the financial crisis of 2008. In the early 2000s, several studies and initiatives highlighted the risks for companies who didn’t have detailed BCPs and found that companies who had practised plans built into their processes achieved a competitive edge. From enterprises and Governments downwards, organisations of all shapes and sizes started to implement and develop business resilience and business continuity planning with the ultimate goal of having the ability to continue their operations in the face of the unexpected, and to
recover from challenges faster. In the years that followed, business continuity became so important that auditors even included it in ISO certification and procurement experts favoured companies with detailed processes. “An organisation’s people are always its most important asset, and if they don’t get paid correctly and on time they’ll soon be looking to leave” How does a BCP relate to payroll? In almost every BCP plan I’ve seen, the planning focusses on: ● sending people to work from home ● moving the service centre to another geographic location ● changing shift patterns of employees. Rarely do these plans account for
payroll challenges; they’re often business first, people later. But, as anyone who’s worked in payroll or human resources (HR) knows, a business cannot survive without its people. An organisation’s people are always its most important asset, and if they don’t get paid correctly and on time they’ll soon be looking to leave. So, I wanted to push for HR and finance departments to go further and to make additional planning for payroll. I call this setting up a ‘business continuity payroll plan’. Or BCPP for short. What should a BCPP look like? A BCPP document should: ● outline your entire payroll process ● highlight vulnerable points where challenges occur most often ● have practised countermeasures to ensure that, should a part of the process fail, a backup option or route is always available. Most importantly, it needs to be practised because there’s no point in having great documentation, but no way to deliver it in the case of an emergency.
What are the common challenges? To create a robust plan, it’s important
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward | July-August 2025 | Issue 112 20
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