“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”  — Walt Disney

Until the recent past, payroll has seen incremental innovations at best – while processes in HR, Finance & Accounting had undergone considerable metamorphosis, payroll somehow lagged behind. However, new age payroll has come a long way. From the Victorian era of keying in data manually, articulating around multiple spreadsheets to using technology enablers to build a robust payroll landscape – Global Payroll has indeed come a long way!

Transformation in payroll technology has contributed to several enhancements in payroll processing and has also introduced newer methodologies to payroll professionals helping them conduct payroll effectively and efficiently. Technology has further armed companies to streamline the processing of data across multiple locations, identify and address factors that cause employee grievance and facilitate better reporting & analytics

Employee Experience and Global Payroll Technology 

As Susan Peters, Senior Vice President, Human Resources at General Electric says, “We define employee experience simply as seeing the world through the eyes of our employees, staying connected, and being aware of their major milestones.” Several forward-looking companies have created senior roles that focus on enhancing employee experience, taking into account the physical environment that employees work in, the tools and technologies that enable their productivity and help them achieve their best at work. This forms an integral part of nurturing an organization’s most prized asset – the employee!

So how does employee experience tie into global payroll?

The journey towards global payroll transformation starts with the stakeholders’ adaptability to change – more importantly that of an organization’s employees. There has been increased focus on employee experience which has contributed to advancements in payroll technology, right from printed pay slips to accessing their own payroll on their mobile. Here are a few aspects to consider when you are looking to enhance your employee’s experience through a process that is often considered to be highly transactional – “Global Payroll”.

An intuitive UI-UX design: A solution interface that is engaging to the user will help employees self-navigate without ambiguity. Simplicity is truly the essence here and an uncluttered design providing information on a need to know basis helps to accomplish this goal.

A predictive helpdesk: A new survey by Redshift Research has revealed that nearly 50% of all HR enquiries are related to payroll, preventing the valuable time of qualified staff from focusing on other areas. A wise man from Neeyamo keeps saying “The best helpdesk ticket is one that is never raised” – equipping employees by predicting information that they could be seeking has proven to considerably reduce the volume of tickets raised. This can be done by analyzing FAQs and creating an interactive knowledge repository that will help employees resolve their own queries. Creating awareness of trending queries could help preempt questions that employees could have and leave them with a solution at their finger-tips.

Knowledge is wealth – so drill it down: Not every employee is a finance or tax expert and in most cases – reports and policies around taxation tend to leave most employees baffled. Simplifying these to provide a layman’s view will avoid conceptual queries being raised. Giving an employee his payroll & tax information in a language that he understands – would result in him spending lesser time in the transaction and giving him a contented experience of having found what he exactly wanted.

Net-pay simulator: This is a feature that is present in most payroll platforms – it assists employees with filing their taxes. The simulator helps an employee assess his year-end taxes at the beginning of the financial year by taking into account various investments made, some of which could contribute towards tax levy. This in-turn would help an employee to plan better at the start of the financial year to avoid huge tax implications. I for one am very grateful that my organization helps us with this feature.

Mobility: Having payroll information available on-the-go, will certainly help anyone – be it one’s payslip, tax reports, knowledge repository etc. In a world where a wealth of knowledge could easily fit in the palm of one’s hand – why should access his payroll information be any different.

Technology will be the game-changer that will open newer doors for organizations who choose to work towards enhancing employee experience – be it in payroll processing, training or any other process that helps them to create a better connect with their employees. Imagine a time when an employee can process his payroll at the click of a button?