Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Payroll workload & work ethics during recession policy executions


Recession and its impact of business bottom line will lead companies to make changes in its operating cost. Payroll cost will be the obvious the target for different business reasons.
This focus on payroll cost brings lot more stress on payroll work. In this situation it is very important to maintain few fundamental principals of payroll:
1. Never dilute the ownership on the input which will stay always outside payroll. This will ensures there is optimal level of ownership on movement of data and related employee experience.
2. Look very carefully at any new changes you plan to make into payroll process or payroll system with very legal perspective. I am not referring to statutory deduction or calculation. I am referring to how well these changes reflect in your lawyers fact file if an employee files a case in labor court.
a. Avoid out of pay slip calculation which will end up as single amount in pay slip.
b. Avoid short cuts in executing recession driven comp and Benefit policies.
c. Payroll is not a statutory expert ….contact your legal department on final decision.
d. Execution approach which works in one country may not work in another from future legal risk mitigation perspective. Be very mindful of this.
3. Crete at least 2 layers of checks and balance while processing these cases to avoid any over payment or underpayment. Both can lead to very bad press and or attention from regulatory bodies.
4. Never attempt any sort of short cut in calculation, execution or communication.

Good Cultures & bad attitudes


One common rather very common topic in payroll is “cultural issues”.
I hate this negative term which puts a beautiful thing called culture in a negative shade. I am very much for discussion on cultural differences…..it make sense and it is real. But no culture can be an issue. Cultures are beautiful, they have history, they are embedded in every festival of the country, they have parental value, they are spiritual, and they are more long term…..
But what we get hear is 3 folded:
1. Personal attitude issue, we get carried away those few people we meet during our project or work.
2. If Culture X is issue to Culture Y …than Culture Y is also an issue to Culture X.
3. Cultural requirements and professional requirements. Concerned stake holder never attempt to differentiate these 2 especially in a environment like payroll which encompasses personal .