For many people, the new year is a time to start fresh and work on themselves to improve themselves. New year’s resolutions are made and “New year, new me” posts begin to flood everyone’s social media feeds. Some businesses also take this time as an opportunity to find areas for improvement. Many organizations have planning sessions throughout the year, however, those sessions are generally geared toward broader company goals and may not necessarily apply to individual departments.
Oftentimes, payroll teams and processes are overlooked when it comes to process improvements and upgrades. After all, if employees are continuing to get paid, that’s really all most people tend to care about outside of the payroll team. This can lead to a lot of outdated and inefficient processes, which could increase the risk of error. Regularly reviewing, assessing, and updating the department’s policies and procedures could save the team a lot of future time and stress.
The year-end season tends to be one of the busiest seasons for payroll teams, but can also be a great time to look at ways to improve processes and find ways to make the team’s operations run more smoothly and efficiently. If regular audits of quarter-to-date or year-to-date data reveal issues that need to be addressed, look for any obvious patterns that might give any clues as to what the root cause of the issues might be. This could help the team prevent future issues from happening in the first place.
If periodic audits of payroll data aren’t being done, this might be a good time to start. The frequency of the audit can vary from company to company depending on a variety of factors, but the less data your team has to comb through at the end of the year, the better. The last thing any payroll professional wants to do is spend their time finding and correcting an issue from the beginning of the year in December, or possibly even sometime in the new year, which could require corrected tax filings and W-2 forms. Periodic audits allow the team to find and address issues early and fix them before they turn into bigger problems later.
Gathering feedback from the team and other stakeholders after certain projects can be very helpful in determining things that went well and what can use improvement during the project, to allow for better planning and execution of future projects. Keep in mind that these don’t necessarily need to be major projects, and feedback loops can be used as part of continuous process improvement efforts for routine tasks such as quarter- or year-end reconciliations or system updates and testing.
Assessing the team’s current process and evaluating the tools and resources that are available can identify any areas that can benefit from new solutions or redesigned processes. A team may be stuck using outdated systems or tools simply because they haven’t taken the time to see what else is available out there. Working with a provider such as Valor Payroll Solutions can help bring your organization’s HR and payroll processes up to date with our innovative and digital solution. Our team of experts can ensure that practices are always up to date and compliant, and help streamline your business so you can focus on what’s important. Contact us today and see how we can help take your business to the next level!
