Payroll departments face ‘dangers’ every day, from many different angles. Legislation, staffing, compliance, errors, time frames…these are just a small portion of the potential perils a payroll department must face. And trouble in any one of these areas will have a flow-on affect that can be felt throughout the business.
Do you know what symptoms to watch for when gauging how well your payroll is doing? Here are some of the warning signs to keep an eye out for.
A payroll team that is stuck in a repetitive cycle of spending too much time trying to fix last pays mistakes, when they should be spending their time preparing the next pay run. This is a situation which breeds trouble, as it is hard to break the cycle. Too much time spent fixing errors means there isn’t enough time left to prevent errors occurring again in the next pay, and so on and so on.
Missing deadlines, or having to scramble madly to meet them at the last moment. Effectively planning ahead to be ready for pay run deadlines, superannuation deadlines, tax deadlines and the like is absolutely essential to running a successful payroll office.
The company is growing faster than the payroll team can keep up with. If the size of your team doesn’t match the size of your business, the added pressure and stress on the payroll department is likely to foster problems. According to the Australian Payroll Association’s 2016 Benchmarking Study, the average number of payroll staff per 1,000 employees is 2.75 for a weekly pay or 2.29 for a fortnightly pay.
Loss of faith in the payroll department. Once a payroll department’s reputation within the company starts to slide, it can be very difficult to get it back. The flow on effect from this is that people will begin to doubt, question and worry about their pays. Queries will escalate, along with the time spent dealing with them. It can also add to employee unrest within the company if they don’t feel confident that their payroll is being handled right.
Do any of these warning signs look familiar to you? If so, don’t wait, act before the problem gets too big to fix. Talk to Payroll HQ today to see how they can help on 02 8096 9159.
