With 2020 well under way, business leaders from every industry are quickly trying to figure out new ways to improve internal efficiency and create a more cost-effective infrastructure that will elevate employee happiness, improve talent retention, and help them build an amazing employer brand. These and many other key business objectives can help a modern brand grow in a competitive market, and allow business leaders and top-level managers to build brand authority and trust both internally and externally. While it might not have crossed your mind yet, consider the role that your payroll and HR departments have to play in helping you reach these and many other long-term goals.
These two departments are typically tasked with handing out paychecks and monitoring employee performance, but experience through leaders in both fields would tell you that this is a vast underutilization of their true potential. Today, we’ll be looking at several key HR and payroll trends that will help you create a more efficient and effective operation for 2020, and allow you to grow in the years to come.
The role of employee self-service
HR and payroll managers are often tasked with employee management on numerous fronts, ranging from shift scheduling and assignments, all the way to performance management and bonuses, and much more. While it is true that these professionals should oversee all of these crucial processes, that doesn’t mean that they should waste their time if an employee can have a certain level of autonomy and self-service.
The truth is that employees nowadays conduct a lot of their work-related activities over the phone, and by simply allowing them to connect to a smart platform that can be viewed by all relevant teams and leaders, they can easily manage their workflow and organize their shifts, view pay stubs and monitor their performance, or sign up to special training, programs, and much more. Needless to say, giving your employees the ability to manage such small tasks all on their own will take a lot of the pressure off of your HR and payroll staff, and allow them to focus on the key business objectives.
Payroll is becoming more efficient and cost-effective
We live in a digital day and age, and it’s high-time for the payroll department to transition into the 21st century by modernizing all legacy processes. For example, with personalization being one of the most powerful trends nowadays, business leaders are rapidly switching to personalized payroll cards that their employees can use to access their funds immediately, but also to eliminate extraneous fees such as bank fees and the costs of paper checks. These cards make it easy for payroll managers to automate the process while ensuring compliance and the safety of transferring funds.
However, it’s not just about making your employees’ lives easier, it’s also about making it easier to manage all of your account receivables and account payables. If your payroll department is also tasked with managing cash flow and ensuring that all invoices are paid, then you should integrate a smart invoicing solution that allows you to manage all recurring payment easily, optimize them per the client’s needs, offer numerous payment methods, and more.
Automation will drive payroll and HR forward
Now that we have touched on the subject of automating certain processes, keep in mind that one of the biggest trends for 2020 in HR and payroll is automation itself. The experts from both departments are commonly tasked with repetitive and menial tasks, which invariably wastes time as well as their talent that could be better utilized on achieving those crucial business objectives. Needless to say, this is not a good way to run a cost-effective operation, and the last thing you want is for your talented HR head to quite because all they do is fill out employee complaints and conduct monthly performance reviews.
These are just some of the tasks that you can easily outsource to AI-driven software, which will allow your HR professionals to focus on truly creating a thriving company culture. And the same goes for your payroll managers, which could focus on creating a more stable financial infrastructure if you simply automated the repetitive tasks.
It’s all about tracking the right KPIs in 2020
Last but not least, this year you need to focus heavily on data-driven decision-making, which means that you need to track your relevant HR and payroll KPIs on a regular basis. This is not the same as using AI to monitor employees and industry trends, this is about defining the key performance indicators that pertain to HR and payroll specifically, and monitoring them to see whether or not you are hitting your marks.
Some of the payroll KPIs you need to keep an eye on include error rates, stopped payments and processing times, average invoice payment time, turnover costs, and task overdue. In HR, be sure to track the average interviewing cost and time, average turnover rate, employee retention and happiness, average number of vacation days, and more.
Wrapping up
In the end, it’s clear why HR and payroll are two of the most important departments in any growth-oriented company, and why you should modernize them if you are to set the stage for long-term success. With these trends in mind, go ahead and make 2020 your most successful year to date.