It’s true when they say that payroll professionals are the unsung heroes of the workplace. From calculating payroll and managing taxes, right through to making sure your team is paid accurately and on time, they play an integral part of keeping your business running smoothly and efficiently.
However, with changes to employment law, payroll compliance and tax regulations occurring on the regular, it’s important to recognise and prioritise their professional development – so they can keep themselves and the business on the right side of the law.
But it’s not just changing regulations – advancements in tech are calling for upskilling on a regular basis, and training and development initiatives provide a great opportunity for employees to continuously improve themselves and optimise processes. And we all know that investing in professional development for your team can improve productivity, performance and the bottom line of the business.
With all this top of mind, the writing’s on the wall – empower your team to better themselves professionally and both them and your organisation will thrive. We’re sharing our top tips for how you can nurture professional development for the payroll professionals in your team.
Current challenges payroll managers face when upskilling
Staying across changes to payroll compliance and regulations
Payroll compliance is one of the most important (and stressful) parts of any payroll professionals role. Changing tax requirements and legislation mean that every small change is essential to be across.
However, choosing the right payroll software could be your golden ticket to automate legislative changes and calculations. Although it’s currently a common pain point, the opportunity to boost your payroll compliance confidence could be solved with the right cloud software.
Access and control of payroll information
Whether you’re working in a firm or in-house, chasing up people for payroll data is time-consuming and frustrating. No wonder it was cited as the number one challenge by respondents in our State of Accounting report. Whether it’s sending emails, requesting payslips or chasing employee data, it’s a manual process that happens frequently.
Using dedicated payroll software that allows for employee self-service can give your clients or employees more visibility of pay runs and progress without having to email for updates.
This shifts the workload from payroll professionals to the employee, reducing the administrative burden. The result? Less time spent chasing people for payroll information, allowing more time to focus on other important tasks.
Keeping up to date with changing technology
In a fast-paced environment where technology and business transformations are relentlessly taking place, it’s a real possibility that current skills may no longer be relevant in a matter of months. That’s why staying up to date with learning new skills is an ongoing challenge.
When it comes to payroll, many professionals rely on technology to process payruns, manage timesheets and expenses. However, chances are there’s still many that are completing it all manually or inefficiently.
With the rise of AI and advancements in technology, there are countless ways of making your way of working more efficient and effective, and online learning platforms can help your team stay on top of skills gaps.
Employment Hero’s Learning is a fully functional online Learning Management System (LMS) that allows you to build, manage, assign, track and report on all your learning and training needs, from induction right through to professional development and leadership skills.
Having one single source of truth for information
There’s no denying that there’s a wealth of information online these days – but how do you know where to look or who to trust? Finding a trustworthy place or organisation where you’re confident you’re getting the correct information is one challenge faced when upskilling payroll professionals.
Strategies to foster professional development
Provide access to training and educational resources
It should come as no surprise that giving your team access to training and educational resources is the best way to nurture your payroll team’s professional development.
Whether it’s having your team attend accounting conferences, seminars or payroll workshops, these are useful ways to broaden knowledge and expertise. If you’re looking to invest even further in your team, offer learning budgets that can be used towards postgraduate study or further accreditation.
Utilising technology for efficiency and accuracy
In our recent State of Accounting report, we found the vast majority (94%) of respondents were using cloud technology. However it’s important to note that using technology isn’t just a set and forget solution – it’s an ongoing process that should be reviewed regularly to find opportunities to streamline your processes further.
Interestingly, we found that while the data from our report suggests that the adoption of cloud software is high, those offering payroll processing services could be optimising their use of technology further. Less than 50% of those processing payroll are currently automating pay rates and increases, leave requests, tax deductions, timesheets, termination calculations and more.
This shows that there’s a huge opportunity for payroll teams to benefit from, and improve efficiencies by changing to a more automated cloud software, or upskilling with their current software. Although we can see this opportunity, it could be that time is a barrier to upskilling and automation, with 20% of respondents wanting to participate in training of technologies but stating they are too busy.
If your team falls into the category of being too busy to upskill with the technology or software of choice, take this as a reminder to offer them time to invest in their professional development. (Hint: We love time blocking).
The benefits of upskilling for individuals and organisations
Boost staff retention and reduce recruitment costs
We all know that hiring a new employee is an expensive exercise. According to a study by The Australian HR Institute, it costs on average $23,860 to hire an employee. Not to mention the time it takes to get them up to speed on how their role works and being efficient in their day-to-day.
By having your team happy and fulfilled in their role, they’re more likely to stick around for the long game, in turn boosting staff retention and reducing those ever-growing recruitment costs.
Boosts productivity and performance
Employees who have all the skills to perform their job to the best of their ability show both quality and quantity in performance – leading to less wastage of time, resources and money.
What’s more is that companies who embrace employee training and upskilling of their team have a 24% higher profit margin than those that don’t, proving that it’s not just good for your employees, but also your bottom line.
If we take a look at the advancement of technology in our lives, it demands continual upskilling of teams on a regular basis. It also provides the opportunity for employees to continuously improve themselves, encouraging innovation, a willingness to take risks and optimise processes. All these improve an employee’s productivity, performance, and the bottom line of the business
Helps you stay competitive
By investing in your team and prioritising upskilling, there’s a huge opportunity to broaden your services and stay competitive in your field. This is one of the easiest ways to create a path to an easy way to future-proof your business. Happy employees can lead to increased morale and better performance.
Assists with closing skill gaps
When employees don’t receive necessary or relevant training, this can create skill gaps. It can frustrate and demotivate employees who aren’t able to excel at their jobs – especially if it’s a lack of understanding around payroll requirements or processes.
We all know that payroll compliance is constantly changing. That’s why upskilling your team in the changes and investing in their education is essential to staying on the right side of the law.
Start with a professional development plan
What is a professional development plan?
A professional development plan – also known as a career development plan – is a personal roadmap containing the skills, strategy, and education your team members need to further themselves in their career. It includes the steps they need to take to reach their goals and a structured outline to develop professionally.
For payroll teams, be sure to include specific training for everyone including specific regional professional associations such as:
Looking to get started with a professional development plan?
Download our professional development plan template.
Knowledge is power in the future of payroll excellence
Investing in the development of your payroll team can be one of the best investments you’ll ever make. Empower them to develop professionally, give them the tools and resources to stay across changing regulations and you’ll create an award winning team.
