Payroll - Clocks & Crafts

The Unsung HeRoes

Payroll. Paperwork. Labor contracts. Absence management. Benefits. Vouchers. Discounts. These are the keywords that often echo when the HR function is mentioned. Although these represent only a sliver of what a typical HR team handles, let’s take a moment to appreciate the unsung HeRoes. These dedicated professionals work like clockwork, ensuring seamless service for all associates, leaders and the board. Their unwavering commitment keeps the organizational gears turning smoothly, making sure everyone's contribution is timely and correctly remunerated via the established compensation and benefits policies.

Abuse

Imagine a company where every payroll issue is met with finger-pointing and blame, regardless of the actual cause of the delays. Familiar? Complaints are often directed at the payroll team without considering factors such as late input from line managers, errors by external providers, or bugs and outages of the IT systems. While the payroll team is not responsible for every glitch, they are frequently held accountable for salary delays. Despite working long hours to ensure that payments are processed on time, payroll professionals often receive little recognition and are commonly not compensated for their own overtime.

The payroll team is also expected to resolve any discrepancies immediately, even when they lack the necessary resources or time, particularly during peak periods like vacations and holidays. Requests for additional staff or resources to handle an increasing amount of new processes, approvals, and internal controls are often denied due to concerns about overhead costs. Opportunities for training and professional development are frequently overlooked, which can lead to errors, dissatisfaction, and high turnover rates within payroll teams.

Too often departments do not promptly communicate critical information, such as changes in employee status, work hours, or deductions. Lack of communication can result in errors in paychecks, yet the payroll team is often blamed when expectations are not met.

Overall, payroll is more often than not sandboxed into a rigid calculation machine: gazillion parameters in, compensation out.

Use

Now, let’s step into a brighter realm, where the payroll team is truly connected with the organization, starting with the most valuable asset - people. When the payroll function is not treated as an end-of-the-line factory workstation, but works closely with the leadership team on strategic and people matters, it becomes an atomic clock, delivering precise, reliable service at 99.99% SLA for the ultimate stakeholder - our employees. But this isn’t just about ensuring timely payments; it’s about transforming payroll into a creative partner.

Consider incentive frameworks for extraordinary achievements. Rather than a mere transactional function, the payroll team can help design and implement bonus structures that reward outstanding contributions, boosting morale and productivity.

Health care support for medical cases are another area where payroll can shine and deliver custom-tailored support. They can ensure that employees facing health challenges receive their benefits smoothly and are being covered by special care packages, thus promoting equity (not equality through rigid frameworks) and reducing existential stress.

Benefit research and negotiation is another critical area. The payroll team can take a proactive role in researching competitive benefits packages, negotiating better terms, and ensuring new employees understand and access their benefits from day one.

Relocation assistance tailored to individual needs can also be a game-changer. Providing inbound and outbound relocation assistance can make transitions smoother for employees moving to a new city or country. This can include help with finding housing, coordinating moving services, covering legal and administrative paperwork, and offering cultural orientation sessions. In large organizations, these are often handled by dedicated and specialized teams; however, such compartmentalization often creates handover inefficiencies and increases the chance of errors. Further, expanding the scope of payroll experts in this direction gives them a wonderful opportunity for professional growth and impact.

Payroll teams can also serve as invaluable touchpoints for newcomers. Offering a warm welcome and soft onboarding into the compensation & benefit landscape helps new hires with orientation. Plus, they get a personal introduction to colleagues, who will support them on delicate matters when the need arises. Such touchpoints facilitate exchange of invaluable information about trends and developments in other companies? - often more insightful than the standard annual market compensation & benefit reports.

When equipped with the necessary HR analytics tools the payroll team can offer systematic analysis of compensation levels across positions, career tracks, departments, organizations, locations and countries. Reports, cross-comparisons and projections can then be assessed by the leadership team to keep track of trends or to evaluate scenarios. Investments into the right tools (beyond spreadsheets) pay off with significantly decreased error rate and manual effort, and increased speed and data consistency.

Larger companies often have a dedicated payroll team that focuses exclusively on payroll services, frequently offering standardized solutions across multiple countries. This approach enables large enterprises to achieve efficiency and economies of scale. However, it also encapsulates the payroll team, limits their professional development potential, and drastically reduces the flexibility and the potential of the organization. When the payroll team is viewed as part of the broader employee lifecycle and given the opportunity to expand its role, the payroll team can contribute to a wider range of adjacent and strategic topics, and step out of their operative box. When utilized properly the payroll function can be a powerhouse of reliability, creativity and care.

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