In all areas of society, technology, such as payroll automation, is advancing exponentially. For this reason, organisations cannot afford to remain stagnant in their practices. Payroll processing and communicating pay and benefits information are no exceptions.
Organisations need to embrace the shift towards digital transformation. In doing so, they can take advantage of the benefits that technology offers to payroll departments.
Business automation and, more specifically, payroll processing trends can help achieve efficiency gains in several ways.
For many teams, payroll software now routinely automates standard calculations of pay and deductions, reporting and payment processing.
Another big win when automating payroll tasks is eliminating the manual creation, processing, and sending of payslips, P45s, P60s, P11Ds and rewards statements. Fulfilling these printed documents can be incredibly time-consuming and repetitive for payroll teams.
Therefore, you can completely automate payroll processing with a strategic approach to specialised payroll automation software. In turn, you can optimise related tasks and resources.
Before you decide to kick start your payroll automation project, let’s look at what it entails and the benefits that follow.
What is payroll automation?
So, what is automation payroll?
Payroll automation is where organisations use software solutions to streamline procedures and increase efficiency.
Automated payroll tools can help optimise business procedures, such as creating payroll reports, calculating tax withholdings, and processing salary payments.
Without payroll and HR automation, these routine, laborious tasks would take much longer to complete, especially when you have many employees on your payroll.
Aside from calculating pay, deductions and benefits, there are further opportunities to automate within the payroll department.
Multichannel employee communications software transforms manual processes involved with printing and posting copy documents, such as payslips or pension statements, to offer digital documents to employees.
Benefits of payroll automation
Any business automation project can reap significant benefits and overall improvements for your organisation and enhance the experience of your employees.
Here are just a few:
Saves time and energy
Automated payroll processing and communication tools help to reduce the number of manual processes your in-house payroll and HR teams undertake.
Rather than tying your employees’ valuable energy up with repetitive manual payroll tasks, you can automate the operation in its entirety. Integrating compatible software solutions to support the payroll process end-to-end is key to achieving this.
For example, document automation technology can interface with existing payroll processing software to save time in producing payroll documents. In terms of real numbers, some organisations have reported a 98% reduction in payslip distribution time each month following automating payroll documents.
The University of Salford deliver a 100% paperless service via Epay
During the pandemic, the University of Salford implemented our Epay portal to provide online payslips and P60s to its employees.
The payroll team could stop manually printing and pressure sealing over 3,000 payslips a month by switching to a paperless process. In doing so, amongst other benefits, the team saved almost one whole day every month in administration time.
Boosts staff morale
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) technology requires fewer employees to carry out repetitive and manual payroll tasks.
Naturally, removing the routine manual tasks seen as a chore each month will reduce the workload of payroll & HR teams. As a result, payroll automation can boost general staff morale by freeing time to focus on more work of greater strategic value.
Improves employee experience
It won’t be new news to hear that payroll automation aids the day job of the payroll team.
Transforming payroll using digital tools can furthermore help to elevate the overall employee experience. Staff are free to take back control over their information and personal documents by viewing and downloading pay and benefits information from their chosen device.
Employees can gain greater insight into their pay and deductions without submitting a formal request to payroll or HR teams. Should they need a duplicated document for an urgent query, it’s available as an instant download.
Cuts costs
‘We’re considering an automation project’ can be a phrase that sends fear into stakeholders.
Fundamentally, most organisations aim to turn a profit (or to spend public funds wisely), so they strive to do so by becoming as efficient as possible. Stakeholders may not see changing a well-oiled process may as a priority.
In the long term, however, automating payroll processes can drastically help cut costs.
With technology in place, payroll teams can operate a leaner structure or securely outsource the production and distribution of payslips.
Remember that no capital expenditure is needed to integrate an employee communication platform with an automated payroll system. And once it is up and running, teams can bypass these labour-intensive tasks in the future.
Reduces human error and improves consistency
Finally, HR & payroll automation is excellent at reducing the margin for human error and improving consistency throughout organisational procedures.
Payroll technology software can complete all of the necessary payroll calculations, like tax deductions or overtime pay, within seconds. Solutions can process payments in record timing and ensure deadlines are met efficiently.
Once the employees have been paid, digital employee communications portals can distribute documents such as payroll, HR, reward and pension information as digital documents.
There are no limitations from physical delays in delivery; users can access their information as soon as it is uploaded.
For those who would like printed payslips or statements, systems with in-built automated printing and mailing functionality offer a choice. It is, therefore, a fully automated multichannel experience.
Final thoughts
It’s vital that organisations embrace payroll robotic process automation to its full extent.
Adopting practices like automation in payroll procedures can inherently increase your organisation’s productivity and optimise business procedures. As we’ve already discussed, however, it can also elevate the morale and experience of your employees.
Datagraphic’s employee communication platform, Epay, is a secure electronic online payslip portal that allows organisations to communicate through a multichannel experience.
If you’d like to learn more about our Epay portal and payroll printing solutions, don’t hesitate to contact one of our experts, who will be more than happy to talk through options that suit your needs, or you can request a demo.
