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Highlight: Integration isn’t a luxury; it’s a requirement for managing your team. You’re not alone if you’ve had enough of utilizing numerous HR and payroll services at once and are ready for a change.

 If you’re tired of working with various systems that don’t communicate with one another, an integrated payroll system makes sense. Separate HR and payroll systems not only take longer to maintain, but they can also result in payroll delays and errors, putting your staff at a disadvantage. 

When you use an integrated HR payroll system, you just have to enter employee data once. Payroll, time and attendance monitoring, and other onboarding tasks may all be done on one platform. As the future of HR evolves, so will this aspect as HR and finance continue to work closely together.

Paying employees correctly and on time is critical for a variety of reasons. Software interfaces, which assist streamline the combination of HR and payroll, are one approach that many firms utilise to limit the risk of error. To begin with, payroll errors such as missing overtime or paying the wrong number for hours worked may be costly for both the employee and the company, as well as time-consuming to remedy. Secondly, inaccurate payroll can cause a significant drop in productivity as well as have a bad impact on your corporate culture.

Some benefits of having an Integrated System

An integrated HR and payroll system enables you to manage your entire workforce, giving you a more true and clear picture of employee data while employees have improved access. Here are some benefits of having such a system in place: 

Consolidated Reporting – With an integrated system, HR and payroll data are simply linked, so you don’t have to waste time looking for missing information. You can make smarter decisions affecting the workforce if you have more personnel information at your fingertips. Instead of generating a payroll report that merely includes the employee’s name and total wages, you may include information like the employee’s manager and most recent performance rating, and use the report to aid your performance review process.

Smoother Updates – An integrated system serves as a centralised repository for employee information. When an employee is paid for overtime or when they go on paid leave, the change is recorded in their time and attendance records. Employees who leave the company and receive their last salary will also have their status on headcount and benefits reports updated automatically.

Enhanced Employee Experience – An integrated system allows you to provide employees with accurate information sooner, resulting in a better employee experience. Employee self-service capabilities allow employees to access their employment information at any time, day or night, eliminating the need for them to come to you for copies of pay stubs, W2s, or other forms.

There are tons more benefits when an Integrated HR Payroll system is put in place, but it is important to keep in mind some pointers when coming up with a system structure for your company.

What to keep in mind when integrating HR and Payroll

1. Data Portability – The first piece of advice is to double-check that your HR system can export the data your payroll system requires and that your payroll system can accept the file types your HR system can offer. Basic file formats like. .CSV will be easy to import and export by most payroll and HR suppliers. 
2. Up-to-date employee records – The second tip for ensuring that your HR and Payroll departments function in tandem is to make sure your HR records are current and accurate. Many businesses centralize their HR systems so that they can integrate up-to-date, accurate employee information into their other systems. You can set reminders to verify and update this information on a regular basis if you have the relevant employee contact information and salary information.
3. Have an error correction and data validation tool – Make sure you have a data validation procedure in place as the third and final tip for developing a cohesive HR & Payroll ecosystem. The bulk of mistakes will be caused by human error if your integration is correctly set up. You must have a mechanism for validating data and a procedure for addressing any potential inaccuracies. A high-performing payroll team is able to recognize and handle problems early on, or even predict difficulties.

Some other small details that work well in an Integrated HR payroll system would be dashboards for data analysis, transparent pricing policies, built-in reports for compliance filings, and a cloud-based employee service accessible by all. 

HR and payroll systems contain the most sensitive information, from compensation data to social security numbers, and an integrated platform increases data security. Businesses may considerably lower the risk of data breaches by combining these two solutions into a highly secure HR management platform.

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Highlight: The introduction of remote work in the workspace was not the easiest to adapt to. But it looks like it has some promising benefits to offer.

Before the pandemic hit us, if you told any manager that they should allow their employees to work from home for the entire month, they would probably laugh it off. As popular belief would have it, people thought you can’t possibly reward the work of someone who works remotely equally as someone who spends his time in office. 

Especially in a South-Asian work setup like ours, where people believe in the hustle culture so much that to earn success you must spend your blood and sweat. This is the reason why freelancing and other remote work options were often frowned upon by the Indian population. 

Then came the pandemic and brought with it a paradigm shift in the way we perceive workspace and work in general. The new remote work culture or as corporates call it these days, work-from-home culture, has not been the easiest to adapt to. Overnight many workers were told to stay home, some lost employment because companies refused to pay the same amount of salary to a remote employee.

The remote work setup blurred the lines between work and life. However, after having adapted to the remote work setup over the past year, people are showing keen interest in this setup, and looks like it is here to stay even after we bid farewell to this pandemic.  

As the remote work culture completes almost two years, the future of the work paradigm shift continues to accelerate. Remote working options are proving to be more sustainable, humane, and equitable which might suggest that it is here to stay long after the pandemic leaves. 

Also Read: Bolstering Financial Wellness Programs for Remote Employees

How is the remote work culture is helping employees?

Remote work appears to be the way of the future as many employees state that they prefer working remotely at least some of the time if not all. This could be due to the factors mentioned below.

#1 Alleviate Employee Burnout

Widespread workplace burnout is one of the evils of the growing corporate culture. This is because corporations strive for a hustle culture and thus give very little regard to the emotional, physical, and mental wellbeing of their employees. However, this changed during the pandemic. 

A report by Catalyst.org showed that offering remote work options lowers employee burnout rate to a significant level.  Added to this, if empathy is practised by the respective managers, employees experience a further drop in the rate of burnout.  

Source: https://www.catalyst.org/reports/remote-work-burnout-productivity/

#2 Increased Innovation

The same Catalyst report also pointed out that employees were 63% more likely to report often and perform innovatively in the workspace when they were offered remote working. 

Creativity and innovation are important in the office because it gives corporations an advantage in permeating markets faster and procures a better relationship with emerging markets, which can lead to greater opportunities, especially in rich countries.

#3 Increased Work Engagement

The report shows that Employees are 75% more likely to show up or always be engaged with the company. It also states that remote work strengthens the organisational commitment of an employee. When offered remote-working, employees showed 68% enhanced organisational commitment. Both these qualities can be of extreme importance to a company. 

This is because while a greater engagement of the employee ensures better and faster results on projects, organisational commitment ensures the overall loyalty of an employee towards the company. 

Some extra benefits of remote work 

In addition to the above qualities, remote work also proved to be beneficial for working women who have child-rearing responsibilities. Due to the availability of remote work women now do not have to choose between having a home and focussing on their careers. This factor is responsible for 32% of women being less likely to leave the job for maternity leave.

In fact, due to the factors represented above, there has been a 30% fall in the number of people likely to leave their jobs in total.  Apart from the above benefits to the companies, remote work also provides employees with an ability to control their workspace, save time and money on commutation, higher autonomy and less office intervention. It also helps them reduce their carbon footprint. 

Conclusion 

Looking at the advantages above, it is no shock that the world is accepting remote working with open arms. Even as offices gear up to open in a phased manner, opting between an in-office work setup and remote work has now become a choice, unlike the norm of a conventional workspace as it used to be before the pandemic.

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Highlight: Employers have started to look beyond what the employees bring to the table towards a more holistic approach concerning employee welfare.

Until about a decade ago, companies focused only on one thing, the capital their franchise generated. This could come at the cost of the employee’s wellbeing and their emotional, and physical health.  But the companies couldn’t care less. Then came the revolution in Human Resources, and with adequate new reforms, the growth of the company started running hand in hand with the employee wellbeing

Today, the scenario has changed a lot. It has become a norm for HR managers to ensure that their employees are supported throughout their careers in the company. However, HR trends keep evolving, and now there are new questions to be answered as the pandemic has forced employees to perform under immense pressure. 

Also Read: What Will HR Look Like in The Next Decade?

Is it just enough that HR companies get away with doing the bare minimum in the twenty-first century? Isn’t a more holistic approach required to support employee wellbeing and needs, and not just the bits that are related to work? Let’s discuss.

The issues of the quintessential  “Work-Life” balance 

We have come a long way from the description of humans as machines or “hands” (As described, in Hard Times by Charles Dickens) in the 19th century. With the advent of human resource management in organizations, there has been a special focus on work ethics and culture,  and employee wellbeing. 

However, if there is one thing that the pandemic has taught us, it is that employers need to have a more holistic approach towards the condition of their employees and employee wellbeing.  It is no news that the employees have struggled with severe mental health issues and burnout during the pandemic. Digital overload was on the rise as work from home became a necessity, merging the personal and professional somehow.

While employees claimed that their productivity had remained the same or maybe slightly higher over the past year, this productivity came at the cost of employee wellbeing that no company should have appreciated. In a study by Microsoft:

• 62% of the Indian workforce reported that companies asked too much of them in terms of working hours and workload. 
• 13% say their employer did not care about their work-life balance.
• About 57% of Indian employees felt overworked, and 
• 32% of those surveyed felt exhausted due to workload.  

The youth in the workspace is hardly being able to withstand the brunt that the pandemic had put on them. This made one thing obvious. An approach is needed that goes beyond the quintessential ‘work-life’ balance beyond the bare minimum and focuses more on employee wellbeing.  

Also Read: HR and Finance: Working Better Together

What lies beyond the bare minimum?

The pandemic has blurred the lines between home and work and is here to stay. The whole”work-life balance” concept has become chaotic and needs to be redefined. One must have a supportive household to have a holistic workspace. So if companies want their employees to give their best, they need to give some attention to their personal lives.

Focusing on employee families, companies have started to note that it is not just the treatment in the workspace that influences an employee’s productivity. Many other factors influence productivity, and one of the most important ones is family. One can give their full attention to work only when they are supported by family. In addition, familial issues tend to divert employee attention to other matters, leaving little attention span for concentrating on work. Nobody can perform well in a workspace if they are already stressed due to other issues. 

From Work-life balance to Full-Life balance

Looking beyond the boundaries demarcated by the concept of work-life balance means that a company needs to focus on an employee’s familial needs if they want their employees to give their hundred percent. Different companies took different approaches towards tackling the added pressure pandemic put on their employees.

Some companies found that during the pandemic, there was a steep rise in the number of employees whose partners had lost employment.  They also noticed that there were employees with children struggling to go to school. This undoubtedly put them under immense stress causing them to fall back on the work. 

What followed was help. These companies made their learning and development platforms open and available to their employees, in the hope of giving the households the resources they needed to progress during the tough period. As education shifted towards the digital front, a major chunk of children suffered. Not everybody had the privilege to own a personal computer. To tackle the problem, the Access Group in the U.K made spare laptops available to all their employees’ kids. 

Other organizations reflected on the pressure pandemic had put on the personal relationships of their employees. With several employees going through separations, the pandemic had put excessive pressure on the family dynamics.  These companies, in return, came up with therapy sessions for employees and their partners to cope with the additional pressure that the pandemic was putting on them.

Losing employment was one major problem employees faced during the pandemic. Some companies even helped their employees navigate through these tumultuous times. Kimpton, a chain of hotels located in San Francisco, California had to shut a number of its locations when the pandemic hit. However, the company made sure that the onus of this abrupt closing did not fall on its employees. The company worked at a swift pace to help furloughed Kimptonites find temporary jobs at companies that were gearing up, such as Amazon and grocery chains. (In several cases, the applicants didn’t even appear for an interview but got hired on the recommendations alone.) In another company CarMax—where 99% of employees were fired during the pandemic have since been brought back—one employee wrote that “they appreciated that executives took a pay cut and that the board of trustees did not receive any compensation.“

Conclusion 

The above scenarios exemplify how employers have started to look beyond what the employees bring to the table- shifting the paradigm in the working industry where employees are looked upon as more of an ‘asset’ than humans. This, in the future, will help other companies to look beyond the bare necessities of workspace and provide an appropriate environment to employees to maximize their productivity. 

At Fibe, the objective of our corporate employee benefits program is simple – we aim to revolutionise credit access for salaried professionals by introducing the concept of an instant digital salary advance. Our corporate tie-ups for employee wellness programs are the most compelling options available in the market.

Highlight: Learn how HR executives and companies may improve employee mental health and well-being, as well as why these issues have become significant priorities since the pandemic began.

We’ve known for over a year that this pandemic has had an impact on mental health and well-being. It’s all over the news, and many papers have been written to investigate it. 

According to research, pandemic-related mental health difficulties have impacted people differently, with pandemic stress disproportionately affecting various racial and ethnic groups. It is natural for people to be concerned about their jobs from time to time. Perhaps they were looking for a raise, or perhaps there were rumors of layoffs. Things like this could act as a catalyst, causing a cascade of circumstances that lead to mental illness.

HR and mental well being

Mental Health can be a very complicated and personal subject in the workplace, and HR employees must grasp it completely in order to not only recognize when someone is struggling but also to know how to manage the situation delicately and effectively. We spend billions on ‘health and safety,’ but we seem to overlook the ‘health’ aspect and focus solely on physical security. Even if the mental health of a workforce isn’t prioritised enough, a company should at least recognize that our supply chains can only function if people are able to wake up and go to work every day.

Mental Wellbeing in a workplace doesn’t mean diagnosis and treatment

A widespread misunderstanding about promoting positive mental health and wellbeing in the workplace is that doing so entails diagnosing, treating, and psychoanalysing your employees. To help your employees’ or colleagues’ mental health and welfare, you don’t need to diagnose them; all you need to do is be aware of their typical behaviours and be alert to any changes. You don’t have to figure out what’s wrong if something doesn’t feel right, but you should definitely address it.

And this is the part that many employers appear to be afraid of: dealing with the problem. There appears to be a notion that discussing mental health can exacerbate the situation.

So, if you want to make a modest impact on your employees’ mental health and well-being, what should you do? Start by removing those Sigmund Freud images and simply attempting to learn how your staff is performing on a daily basis. From there, you can expand it. 

Roll out programs to understand your employees

Of course, it’s unrealistic to expect to be able to ask every single employee how they’re doing each day if you run a company with thousands of people. It’s also unrealistic to expect you to get to know each employee on a personal basis. That isn’t to say you can’t do something to assist your employees. However, there’s one common issue that seems to be plaguing all workers alike since the pandemic started and it is employee burnout, especially for the remote workforce. Here’s how you can recognize and manage employee burnout at your company.

Moreover, Leena Nair, Unilever’s Chief Human Resources Officer, began her efforts to improve mental health and wellbeing throughout her company by implementing a programme to assist employees to better understand one another. Unilever sent 3,000 employees through their mental health championships programme to assist the company’s efforts, but not before they’d assisted the majority of their employees in starting a conversation with one another. This not only helps the employees understand their colleagues better, but it also brings about productive discourse related to several sensitive issues in the workplace.

HR in Health: Some Important points to remember

1. One size doesn’t fit all – There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution, at least when it comes to mental health and wellbeing programmes. A single programme cannot simply be taken out of a box and expected to function across the board. While you may want to direct the broad ideas, you’ll need to let local leaders adapt them to the people they’re responsible for.
2. Upper management needs to be involved – You can’t do this as a side project and expect the needle to move; you need real personnel and real resources, which means bringing in the top table.
3. The evaluation of results is important – If you want to keep having an impact, you need to track the results you’re getting. Whether it’s measuring employee engagement through your Employee Assistance Program, documenting employee feedback during your yearly survey, or simply monitoring general productivity and engagement across the company. Results measurement will help you gain more buy-in and will become an important aspect of your HR strategy.

When it comes to combating mental health in the workplace, how crucial are HR and its functions? In a nutshell, it’s absolutely fundamental. Employers today have a legal as well as a moral obligation to care for their employees, whose well-being is inextricably tied to a company’s success.

HR professionals will directly contribute to a decrease in the number of working days lost each year due to mental ill-health by having the correct level of understanding during recruitment, monitoring, and absence of employees. They will also save employers money, and most importantly, will result in a content workforce.

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