The COVID-19 outbreak thoroughly tested the Australian enterprises, but it is the resilience of the organisations and integration of cutting-edge technology that has enabled them to overcome the challenge. Now with the resumption of operations, it is time for the Australian companies to rapidly scale up and to offset the loss of business in recent times. It is a known fact that in this new normal - organizations need to be leaner, faster, and more efficient. For instance, the HR and Payroll management personnel need to perform several additional tasks pertaining to employee engagement, ensuring that the remote or office workforce have adequate tools of collaboration and information, etc. In such a dynamic scenario, there is one area of HR operations that is prone to suffering greater challenges than ever: Managing the payroll system.
Even though offices have reopened now, we are witnessing a hybrid mode of working wherein part of the workforce is still working from different locations and if the company is an Australian multinational company, then it might have offices all over APAC and beyond. Thus, managing the payroll details can become a major challenge that can be resolved with the help of leading payroll software. The power of an international cloud payroll software can enable HR to seamlessly take care of the additional tasks without spending long hours on processes that can be automated. Depending on your preferences and needs, whether you choose a payroll software to be used by your company HR or go for payroll outsourcing altogether, there are certain incredible benefits that a payroll solutions provider will offer you. For instance:
- Online payslips - Employees can view payslips online from anywhere at anytime
- Automated tax calculations - The system can automatically and most importantly accurately calculate taxes for each employee
- STP compliant - Leading payroll software offer compliance with STP and STP 2
- Create rules based on modern awards or Enterprise Bargaining Agreements (EBA)
- Cloud integration - enabling access across geographies (scalability) and time
- Local tech/support team - Specialised team based within Australia to ensure service quality
- Transfer of current payroll and staff data - No loss of data when switching from old payroll to the new payroll system
- Regularly updated in line with local regulations - automatic updates and compliance to any regulatory changes
The right payroll outsourcing firm like Ramco Systems will offer you the latest technology platform that integrates advanced AI, Data Analytics, IoT, and process automation features. The cloud-based payroll will not only be able to take care of all the Australia specific payroll needs but also act as a multi-country payroll with the following features:
- Creation of organization-specific rules
- Ability to define your business logic for Earnings, Deductions, Bonus, Arrears, Leave and Attendance
- Ensuring compliance to standardized practices across all geographical locations
- Accounting for the variations between individual and local geographies
- Ability to deal with multi-element, multi-decimal, multi-currency, and multi-country payroll requirements
The best thing about a good payroll software or payroll outsourcing service is that they won’t just focus on processing the salaries and benefits of your employees, but also enable HR to take care of various core HR functions. For instance, it will allow you to record and digitally store details of all your employees across locations. One of the most common payroll processing challenges comes when an employee moves from one location to another or gets promoted to a different position and pay-scale in the middle of the month. If handled manually, the payroll team has to collate data from the previous office and synchronize it with the new pay-scale, and accordingly adjust all the deductions or additions. This could be quite complicated and error-prone. However, the automated payroll system would easily consider the differences and process accurate payroll without any discrepancy or delay. Further, the software would most likely come integrated with an expenses module to help in taking care of employees’ travel expenses, etc.
Another major post-pandemic challenge is to keep a fool-proof time and attendance record of all your on-site and remote employees across locations. This is where the cloud-payroll system offered by the payroll outsourcing company would be able to integrate various types of popular 3rd party time and attendance management systems including swipe cards, biometric, NFC, and facial recognition systems.
While defining HR functions in the new normal, we need to consider the fact that HR today is no longer about hiring, managing, and paying personnel. In the current context, HR personnel need to be more people-centric and must focus on ensuring employee engagement, mental wellness as well as work-life balance. This is where the ability of professional payroll software can be a game-changer in freeing up the valuable HR time for such employee-centric activities.
