We all like being rewarded for a job well done right? It’s no secret that a company’s rewards and benefits scheme go a long way towards not only attracting talent but retaining the talent they need to keep a hold of most in the long run.
Pay forms a key cornerstone of any organisation’s rewards structure and is probably one of the most dominant requirements of employees when it comes to prioritising how they want to be rewarded for their hard work.
Unfortunately, it’s no secret that businesses across all sectors are contending with the challenges presented by widespread economic downturn and truncated growth. This has led to constrained budgets where there is very little scope to reward employee’s financially for their hard work. These restrictions have necessitated agility and creativity from organisations in thinking of new ways to show their appreciation to their people whilst also staying relevant to their needs, while not having unlimited wage resource to give everyone a much-needed pay rise.
Therefore this National Payroll Week it’s more important than ever that businesses take the time to think about their rewards schemes, particularly considering the emerging cost of living crisis. How do your benefits and rewards structures reflect the needs of your people and are they focused on putting their priorities first?
The importance of benefits and rewards
There is increasing evidence of the growing importance to have a clear structure around employee benefits and rewards in place within your organisation- a survey by Aviva found that 48% of people stated a desire for some form of wellness benefit when assessing an employer. Emerging into a post pandemic world, many people’s priorities will have shifted to place a greater emphasis on work-life balance and wellbeing. Your employee benefits structure is the perfect opportunity to demonstrate your organisation’s commitment to meeting these ideals.
Having a well embedded and widely communicated policy of employee rewards and benefits is one of the most vital tools in your arsenal for helping your employees remain engaged, motivated and ultimately, more inclined to stay with your organisation long term. It is also important to understand the need for benefits packages and reward structures to not remain static and to appreciate how the priorities of your people may have shifted over the past couple of years.
Research shows that a demand for wellness allowances is foremost in employee’s minds, with a focus on reward schemes that support mental and physical wellbeing such as gym memberships and mindfulness courses. 41% of people surveyed stated that wellbeing is a priority for them when determining the suitability of a workplace, ranking it evenly with salary. This is an important consideration for organisations, many of whom may operate under the assumption that financial incentives and rewards trump all.
The role of Payroll in rewarding your people.
With the cost-of-living crisis now a very real threat for so many, the need to have a benefits and reward scheme which works for your people is more important than ever. Many businesses won’t have the scope to reward their people in the more traditional ways such as through salary increases or bonuses, so how can they ensure their reward schemes remain relevant and sympathetic to the needs of their people?
Taking stock of the biggest challenges facing your people will offer the best foundation for restructuring your rewards programmes. Why not open a dialogue with your people and simply ask them what their biggest concerns are? Utilities are skyrocketing in price and it is likely that the hikes in energy bills represent one of the biggest outlays for your people and this suggests support will be most needed in helping soften the blow in this area. Businesses have already begun to take steps to support their people, with some actively paying the energy bills on behalf of their employees or offering a substantial stipend to alleviate rising costs. Not all businesses will have the resources or the inclination to take these steps, so working out what steps you can practically take and offer is of huge importance.
One of the chief responsibilities for businesses when focusing their rewards schemes will be to ensure they are communicating the support and opportunities available to their people effectively. Your HR and payroll teams will have a huge role to play in ensuring effective communication is pushed out to your employees, as well as acting as more personal touchstones for employees who may be feeling self-conscious about financial struggles.
A second cornerstone of emerging reward schemes, particularly in light of freezes on wages, will be the ability to offer flexibility in how you pay your people. Pay-on-demand is a form of employee payment method which allows people to receive wages as they earn them. Rather than being tied to the traditional model of weekly, fortnightly or monthly pay, pay-on-demand allows employees the ability to have their wages “streamed” to them as and when they work shifts- avoiding long stretches of time between pay periods where money might be tight.
Another element of pay on demand is allowing workers the possibility to have their wages still tied into a rigid cycle but to also offer them the flexibility to draw down early, a portion of their salary already worked in order to help cover emergency expenses or simply to cover a period of unusual spend (such as Christmas time or an MOT period for a vehicle.)
As a service, the flexibility offered by Pay on demand often means it is associated with lower paid, shift pattern work such as within the manufacturing and distribution sector. Whilst there are undeniable benefits in being able to instantaneously incentivise overtime within these industries, there is an increasing indication that all sectors, regardless of their makeup, are looking to explore how introducing an element of flexibility into their pay cycle can help transform their organisations.
How can Advanced Payroll help?
We created Advanced Payroll specifically to help tackle challenges facing payroll professionals day in and day out. We’ve taken on board the experiences of people working in the field in order to craft a solution which can free payroll teams from the burden of admin heavy tasks and allow them to leverage their skills in more meaningful ways.
We also appreciate that the transformation of your payroll processes is never a thing to be taken lightly, which is why we’re here to support you every step of the way and make sure you can hit the ground running with your new solution.
With Advanced Payroll, you get:
A choice- Advanced Payroll can be deployed in the cloud or on-premise, whichever suits your business more.
Real time calculations – instantaneous gross to net calculations for up to 10,000 employees in just 20 seconds..
Super speed processing – Calculate BACs in under 20 minutes
Pay on-demand – employees can draw down earned pay as they need it
Reporting – building your own reports has never been easier
Employee on-line access – data, documents and payslips at your people’s fingertips. Roughly 439,000 payslips are currently processed by Advanced Payroll each month.
Advanced Payroll offers you the scalability and flexibility you need to completely transform the way in which you run payroll, capable of working effortlessly across multiple sites and pay grades. Whether operating as a standalone system or integrated with our Time and Attendance, HR and Access Control solutions to form a comprehensive Workforce Management suite, Advanced Payroll helps you process payrolls efficiently.
Our solution gives you the comprehensive reporting, GDPR auto-processing and audit trail capability you need to have peace of mind that your payroll is being run accurately and in a compliant fashion month in and month out.
This National Payroll Week, take the time to consider how important it is that you are rewarding your people for a job well done and in particular, the role that your payroll teams have to play in ensuring that your benefits and rewards structures stay relevant, even during times when businesses are feeling the squeeze of financial constraints. If you think Advanced’s payroll software could help you help your employees, please get in touch with us today.