When HR processes like hiring, onboarding, performance management, reporting and compliance are estranged from your payroll practices, your organizational and employee data is disconnected, at risk, and potentially inaccurate. This can not only lead to issues with compliance violations, late payments, miscalculated PTO, and employee dissatisfaction, but also to wider reputational damage and difficulty attracting top talent in a crowded hiring market.
Fortunately, with integrated HR & payroll software, you not only connect data from across your HR and payroll processes, but also create greater cohesion among your workforce. Whether it’s an employee self-service portal that provides greater transparency about scheduling and PTO balances, or leveraging historical data to identify high-performing employees and departments, an integrated HR & payroll platform offers your entire organization a streamlined, mobile-friendly, and secure system to ensure consistency, accessibility, legal compliance, productivity, and a renewed ability to let your employees focus on their core job responsibilities.
In this article, we’ll explore the many benefits of an integrated HR & payroll software and how it can help your business return focus to your core business tasks while improving employee engagement and satisfaction along the way.
Consolidated Data – Consistency, Transparency, and Accuracy
Employers who use multiple forms of software to manage HR, payroll, benefits administration, and time & attendance as discrete processes inevitably encounter issues when all of that data needs to be evaluated and leveraged on a holistic level. Any discrepancies that occur must be manually analyzed by HR staff or managers, causing delays, redundant tasks, and inaccuracies in budgets, annual reports, performance reports, or employee information that could lead to a host of issues during tax season. This excludes basic but unfortunately common missteps like missed employee payments or missing employee e-signatures on important HR documents.
With all of your organizational, employee, and payroll data consolidated in a single platform with automated features, discrepancies across these processes are much less likely to occur and much more readily detectable by the software.
Beyond unifying your data, an integrated HR & payroll software keeps all of your employees connected, informed, and involved in important HR processes ranging from benefits enrollment, scheduling, PTO requests, interdepartmental communication, and much more. With your employees empowered to update their information or submit requests from anywhere, they enjoy an increased sense of trust, transparency, and access to important aspects of their employment while heightening the likelihood that employee data is accurate for your organizational recordkeeping.
This accuracy extends to payroll, which – when outsourced as a discrete process – can make simple employee requests about tax deductions, salary/wage increases, or W-2 edits a time-consuming and tedious process. With all payroll data easily accessible to your internal HR staff and synced with related HR processes, it’s infinitely easier for your employees to get quick answers to their questions or concerns while making HR management for your workforce far more streamlined. In an integrated HR & payroll software, processes like expense management and claims validation are easily aligned with (and checked against) employee records to ensure accuracy, eliminating the likelihood of delays, human error, or miscommunication across multiple systems/parties.
Improved Efficiency and Shifting Focus to Business Growth
An integrated HR & payroll software allows your HR, management, and accounting staff to bypass a wide range of manual processes, redundant tasks, and coordination with outside providers who may cause delays to internally determined timelines for onboarding, payment, and other key HR processes.
Since the automated features in most integrated HR and payroll systems can be tailored to flag discrepancies across HR processes and to comply with all local, state, and federal regulations that apply to your business, you can enjoy data entry validation in real time and in one consolidated system. This not only speeds up any payroll or financial processing, but also allows you to see any discrepancies or issues as they occur. They can be reviewed by any of your approved staff and, due to mobile, cloud-based access, issues can be resolved or addressed quickly.
By creating one space for benefits information, tax forms, payroll, employee information and more, workflow is streamlined for your HR, management, and accounting staff, empowering them to focus on more pressing or growth-oriented aspects of your business, including talent acquisition and perfecting your onboarding process to boost productivity and employee retention.
A Holistic View Across the Employee Lifecycle
Even small and mid-sized businesses manage a high volume of organizational, departmental, employee, and financial data that can be challenging to consolidate and analyze. An integrated HR & payroll software provides advanced reporting features that bring cohesion to this process. Whether it’s analyzing the performance of a particular employee, project, or department, or assessing time & attendance trends to consider modifications to work configuration (remote, hybrid, or otherwise), integrated software can offer valuable historical data that helps your business improve productivity, address recurring workforce issues, identify/promote high-achieving employees, optimize training opportunities, and more. Access to consolidated data and reporting can also help you improve overall processes like onboarding or benefits administration, finding creative ways to reduce cost-to-hire or increase employee engagement in benefits enrollment.
Security and Compliance Reassurance
Consolidating your payroll and HR processes into a single unified platform also mitigates the risk of data breaches from outside parties or through acts of internal fraud. With a single integrated software, you can enjoy advanced encryption, greater control over internal permissions for specific HR tasks, and delegate different stages of payroll processing. Employee and organizational information ranging from bank information to social security numbers is better protected within a single digital platform.
Additionally, a qualified HR & payroll software should include automated features that allow the system to automatically adjust to regulatory changes that affect deductions, pay rates, bonus policies, and more. Staying compliant with local, state, and federal regulations is easier with these automated features already embedded in the software, emphasizing accuracy whether it’s related to salary calculations or another facet of payroll or taxes. With automated features that keep your business aligned with changes, and capable of detecting errors as they occur, your business remains prepared and protected in the event of a legal dispute or audit.
Seamless HR & Payroll Integration with Payday
Simultaneously managing HR and payroll requires an intuitive software solution that consolidates your data and HR processes into a single system while keeping your employees engaged and your business protected. Our HR, payroll and benefits services are only as strong as our relationships. At Payday, we view our collaboration as a partnership – from initial consultation and planning to implementation and support.
Ready to streamline HR & payroll to improve productivity, gain insights from advanced reporting, and enjoy long-term legal compliance? Contact us today to let us know how we can support you.