Business Continuity and Payroll

In the challenging times we are facing now, Employee Experience is one of the most important factors to act upon, according to many executives in the industry.
What is the wellbeing of our employees and how do we keep aligned with our objectives, remain efficient and productive, and
maintain a good work-life balance?
All very relevant topics which we need to take care of, or have embedded into our people strategy.
But what if your payroll will not run, what if your employees will not receive their money on time?

Payroll history in a nutshell

When payroll first saw the light, there were many discussions around it. But in the status as we know it today, it started during the first industrial revolution. This payroll was manually used for all employees, but not documented at all. The next step was getting payroll automated, in short terms: a technology solution.

Fast forward to the era we are living in now, Cloud Payroll is the way forward. A fully integrated Payroll and HR Solution, which enables you to focus on strategy instead of controlling, with pre-built in mechanisms which increases the Experience.

Why do we need People?

As this pandemic hit our world of today hard, we were all faced with the same challenges. In short: working from home, no travel, stay at home if you feel ill. So, what does it mean for your payroll if you must work from home, or stay at home if you feel ill?

Still in the world of today, Payroll is key. Sometimes being recognized as a commodity, but a necessary commodity to keep our employee experience as high as it can and, of course, getting our employees paid… at the right moment.

Many organizations around the world are still running their own payroll on-premise, whereby the payroll administrators hold the knowledge of both legislations of specific collective labour agreements, as well as company policies.

Being around for more than 10 years in this industry, I can tell you, this requires a lot of knowledge. Payroll professionals need to keep this knowledge up to date and need to be able to translate all changes directly into your payroll solution.

What does it mean if you cannot work from the office, or worse, if your payroll administrator becomes ill, or both, to make this scenario the most drastic version?

Will Payroll still be a commodity we expect to work, and paying our employees at the right time, to make sure they will be able to pay their respective bills by the end of the month?

Technology

If we talk about technology related to payroll, from my objective, cloud is the way forward, just because of the benefits it will bring you. And not only in challenging times as these.

Commodities are mostly recognized as repetitive work, which can be overtaken by Intelligent Technologies.

With having or transforming to cloud payroll, it will put your organization in a more controlling and tactical position, rather than executing.

What we mean by this; with the capabilities of Cloud software and Intelligent Technologies embedded, such as Payroll Control Center, it allows you to be more pro-active anywhere and anytime.

This will help spread and keep the balance within your organization, by still having the valuable knowledge of your people focusing on payroll administration.

Employee Experience contains Payroll in challenging times like these much more.

This will be the moment to take a look at your current payroll solution and ask yourself if Intelligent Technologies could benefit your organization in becoming more pro-active.

Author:
Mike Muurmans
Head of Customer Advisory for
HR | Finance | Supply Chain
SAP The Netherlands

This article is featured in the Payroll & HR Magazine: Cloud Edition. Get your copy now!