Jim Scott, Head of SageCover

You don’t need me to tell you that HR and payroll is a major concern for businesses. That’s something your employees will do if you get it wrong! But you might not know that seven out of ten small businesses have needed to seek advice on HR and payroll issues that have impacted their business. 

The challenge for small businesses is the speed that the legislation changes. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) identified that twenty significant changes have been made to the UK employment law since January this year.

Barometer for British Business

During May we carried out our Sage UK omnibus, this surveys 1,500 of our 800,000 customers to get a better picture of the challenges facing UK firms and provide a barometer for British business.

The survey found that only 22% of firms employ a dedicated specialist to deal with HR and payroll issues. But for the majority it’s a huge challenge to find their way around the complex legislative landscape by themselves.

Understandably, many are seeking specialist advice such as our HR Advice service.

Working with our SageCover team also gives me a clear idea of the issues facing businesses. This team provides help to our customers in the day-to-day running of their business, and they’d certainly agree with the survey; there are a large number of businesses struggling to get to grips with HR and payroll issues.

Critical to business success

There is no question that HR and payroll is about far more than pay, rewards and policies. It is about knowing your employees and understanding their needs in order to establish a long-term and productive relationship. Getting your company’s HR and payroll right is critical to the success of the business.

Firms need to be in the best position to take advantage of every new opportunity as we emerge from the recession, and having a highly committed and motivated workforce underpins that. People understandably have a low tolerance when it comes to errors in things so personal as their pay or paternity leave, so making sure your business has the correct procedures and support is vital to maintaining a competitive business.

Staying up to date with HR and payroll issues can seem daunting if you’ve not got dedicated resource in your business, but here are some things you can consider:

Getting to grips with legislation

Legislation affecting payroll changes regularly, so make sure you are always up to date with the latest developments by dedicating at least one hour a month to reviewing the HMRC website. The HMRC also runs EmployerTalk forums, which take place every week across the UK.  The sessions last for half a day and include three half-hour presentations on relevant topics and an ongoing exhibition.

If you’ve got SageCover with your Sage 50 Payroll software then you’ll already have access to expert HR Advice. But, if not, then you might want to consider signing up for our free HR legislation alerts or join our comprehensive HR Advice service.

How much is employee absence costing you?

According to the CIPD’s 2009 survey, the average cost of absence per employee per year is now £692.  Capturing your company’s HR information using software will help you to monitor absences and spot trends. This can help you identify potential gaps and plan ahead. You can also work out the cost of absence to your business and identify if this is an area that needs to be addressed.

Jim Scott, Head of SageCover

Paul Tooth, Sage HR and Payroll

One of the most positive outcomes of the recession is that the importance of cultivating and retaining talent has become too large for organisations to ignore. In today’s knowledge economy, a business is only as good as its people and reliance on the feature-set of their products and services is not enough. Firms must invest in their people by engaging their workforce and developing their skills sets if they are to maximise corporate performance.

Technology: HR’s right-hand man?

HR departments are embracing technologies that will enable them to become more streamlined and respond quickly to new opportunities. Scalable software that can manage the employee lifecycle and carefully track the talent, knowledge and career development of their workforce, not only helps remove the administrative burden for HR but ultimately increases motivation and commitment amongst the workforce by letting employees know that the business cares about their development. Indeed, with businesses beginning to look beyond short term survival, it’s those companies that provide clear progression and talent management that are seen as good places to work and are most likely to succeed.

HR software

HR software was traditionally considered to be a tool used by HR departments to reduce cumbersome administration; and in that role it has never failed to deliver. Holding core data on employees, software not only helps HR teams to automate processes and carry out tasks quickly and more efficiently, but also enables more proactive decision making through better access to accurate and real time information. The time and efficiency savings this gives the HR function are indisputable. Yet with HR technology rapidly evolving to meet the requirements of today’s diverse and flexible workforce, these benefits do not end there.

Talent Management

HR software has advanced to store vital information around the knowledge, critical skills sets, leadership qualities and career development paths within an organisation’s workforce. This escalates a business’s knowledge of its talent pool and can help an organisation to more accurately forecast and plan how its total operation will perform based on the resources and expertise that can be consolidated from across the company.

Looking forward

Many organisations are focusing their efforts toward re-evaluating HR processes and making the necessary software investments to reduce administration, become more streamlined and cultivate talent. Making these changes today will not only improve competitiveness and provide the operational clarity required to maximise corporate performance, but will also help to retain talented employees and prepare the organisation to exploit future economic growth.

Top tips for implementing HR software

• Understand what the business needs and ensure that this is documented and understood by any potential supplier
• Be pragmatic about the role that software will play within the business. Needs evolve and change in line with the system itself, as users realise the capabilities and functionalities it has. It’s important to have a core system in place but ensure that there is scope to extend or refresh it in any way
• Phasing implementations in the right way is critical to ensuring that the foundations are in place to allow the system to evolve as the business needs it to
• Knowledge transfer is key. It’s important that vendors provide refresher courses to maintain a broad knowledge and understanding of the system across the workforce
• Customisation of an HR system can prove beneficial, but needs to be carefully considered.

Paul Tooth, General Manager, Sage HR and Payroll

Gary Ging enjoying a well earned break

By the time you are reading this our new Payroll and HR 2010 products will have just been released and the R&D team will be all sitting around and relaxing with our feet up. Actually, that won’t be true because as soon as those products are released focus switches to our Payroll Year End project – there’s no time to rest for us…

But I digress, what I wanted to talk about was a couple of new features we’ve put into our 2010 products that I think a lot of people will benefit from.

One area we’ve looked at in our Payroll product is how you deal with the statutory payments for employees, such as sick pay, maternity and paternity pay. In Payroll 2010 it’s now a simple matter of entering one or two dates and the program will immediately tell you whether or not the employee is entitled to a payment, and if so, how much, and more importantly, if they aren’t entitled then why. Our Customer Services team say that processing statutory payments is a common theme on the helpline and they think that the improvements we have made will help a lot of our customers.

One of the many new features in HR 2010 is the ability to record employee holidays as a number of hours, as opposed to days. It’s a simple, straight forward, feature but this was the number one item on our customer wishlist and improves what, I think, is an already great product.

 We really do listen to and appreciate your feedback and suggestions and while there are a lot more great new features in both products please keep on telling us what you want to see in future versions, or, and this is just as important to me, what you don’t like in the current products – just because something is the way it is now doesn’t mean we can’t change it in the future if it means it will make better.