Payroll contributes to positive company culture

It will come as no surprise that company culture affects every aspect of business, from the public’s overall perception of a brand to employees’ job satisfaction. Company culture entails many important elements, including company vision, values, communication, work environment, management style and much more. However, there is one other element, which often doesn’t get much attention. Despite it playing a foundational role in shaping how the company operates payroll is often ignored. Add in a global workforce and payroll takes on an even greater role in company culture.

So, here we highlight how payroll plays a vital role in company culture…

Reputation

Payroll couldn’t be more critical to building a company’s reputation. Preventing fraud, maintaining compliance and submitting critical documentation to strict deadlines are all key. But making sure your company’s name is upheld in a positive light is critical. Any fraudulent activities or pay issues can rouse a great deal of negative chatter that can spread rapidly. It’s not just current staff, but prospective staff as well.

Your payroll processes should be efficient and streamlined, and managed vigilantly. If there’s less chance for errors or suspicious activity to occur, you’ll drive a better company reputation. Placing employees in other international countries carries immense legislative and compliance risk. Reputation within a fledgling international expansion strategy can prove be problematic if you don’t get that right.

Making International employees feel valued and happy

Staff expect to be paid on time, every time. A payroll team that can be trusted to pay their employees on time puts minds at ease and makes the team feel valued. Internationally employees to know that their payroll team can assist swiftly with any issues or queries that arise, knowing that everything is in capable hands. Don’t forget international employees work on different timezones. Effective international payroll relies on simple but effective HR communication software between employees, managers and the head office controlling payroll.

When staff are not paid on time, payslips are consistently late or overtime has not been included, they begin to lose faith in their company. This can even lead to employees questioning the finances behind the scenes. Trust can be quickly lost with overseas employees. Having no faith in their company can mean poor morale and poor performance from employees. After all, if payroll isn’t being done properly, why should the employees put in the extra effort?

It provides all-important compensation

Employees want recognition for the hard work they put in day to day.  Their monthly payslip compensates this. Whilst your employees may love their job, the bottom line is, they work to get paid. And employees who are compensated for their extra effort or new skills feel valued and respected.

Flexible payroll means your staff are compensated exactly in-line with their performance as a whole. With performance-based pay models, employees get compensated for their commission and target-based bonuses, meaning employees are satisfied that their pay is entirely accurate. Internationally compensation and benefits are different within each country. Employing people can prove difficult if the package is wrong. Worse still in country employment legislation means employees not handled correctly can result in sizeable fines.

Better use of resources

Having a reliable payroll operation takes away the time-consuming tasks involved with managing employee’s pay, which in turn allows for a better use of resources. Internationally payroll is complex for every country you choose to place employees. It can be a real drain on resources. Added to that trying to keep up with the myriad of international legislative changes can be a nightmare.

And in a changing working environment, where flexibility of working arrangements has been at the forefront of a millennial population, the ability of international payroll to react to quickly changing circumstances, and report back trends at strategic level can be critical to a company’s success overseas.

A version of this article by Gary Webb, IRIS FMP  first appeared in The Businesswoman December 2018