Employer Solutions Blog | Sage HRMS

Strategic human resource management is the key to finding the talent your company needs, but it’s also how you will ultimately retain that talent and improve your return on employee investment.

According to data from the ManpowerGroup’s latest Talent Shortage Survey, nearly 49 percent of the 1,000 U.S. employers participating in the survey reported that a shortage in talent has impacted their ability to do business. That being said, there has been a significant improvement in closing the talent gap.

Last year, 49 percent of employers reported difficulty sourcing appropriate talent—a figure that dropped by nearly 10 percent in 2013. A large reason that more companies are finding better talent is a result of the increasing use of human resource systems and software to manage talent management initiatives that ensures employees are aligned and developed for maximum productivity and contribution to the business.

Changing Game Plans
Positions in the skilled trades and specialty professions continue to be the hardest positions to fill. As employers face job seekers who lack the technical proficiency required in the job, many are mixing up their strategies.

Companies are revising their talent strategies. In addition to implementing HR solutions to extend into untapped talent pools, 23 percent of businesses are prioritizing development from within by training existing employees in the skills they will need. Even more promising, businesses are recognizing that, even though a candidate may lack the necessary technical skills right now, hiring managers have begun to forecast an employee’s potential to learn and prosper in the workforce in the near future.

There are companies out there that realize that just because candidates may have everything lined up on paper doesn’t necessarily make those candidates a fit for the company. Quick thinking and personality tests are just some examples of how employers are assessing a candidate’s drive, versatility, and a willingness to learn and collaborate—intangible attributes that often matter as much as technical qualifications.

Retaining Your Dream Team
A recent CareerBuilder survey got a pulse on the ways employers are seeking to reward and retain employees on their payroll. Of the respondents in the CareerBuilder 2013 Hiring Forecast, a majority cited increases in compensation were the best way to retain employees. Nearly 72 percent of participants plan to raise existing employee pay, while 47 percent intend to raise starting pay to attract new talent.

An employee’s income is only a small sliver of the bigger retention pie. The survey also revealed that 58 percent of employers valued alternative forms of compensation, perks and add-ons that they found employees valued.

Yes, competitive benefits and opportunities for growth are major players. But one less tangible, but equally important, alternative perk is a positive work culture. Derek Irvine, vice president of client strategy and consulting at Globoforce, says he encourages HR professionals to stop thinking about retention in terms of perks.

Often, employers can create a positive workplace environment by showing employees how much they are valued with specific, relevant, and frequent recognition. Sure, a stocked refrigerator or a massage chair make for good talking points, but a reinforced positive culture at work is priceless, and it will become the touchstone employees return to in order to assess future opportunities.

To locate the talent you need and keep it takes a sound human resources strategy that is, perhaps, grounded with employee engagement ideas that reward the pocketbook as much as they reward performance.

Human resources departments are becoming increasingly savvy regarding their approach to information technology and social media as HR software continues to become more commonplace at organizations around the globe.

In the past few years, the value of social media and data analysis to HR processes has begun to surface, persuading HR and IT departments to join forces and collaborate in ways not seen before. Yet the increasing importance of human capital management and HR’s reliance on new technology has made such initiatives critical to an organization’s performance.

“[HR and IT collaboration] has not mattered in the past because people management has not been seen as essential to success as it is today,” John Ingham, HR technology consultant, told Computer Weekly. “What you have is a huge gap between what organizations are doing and what they could be doing, in one of the areas that is becoming the most important for business.”

The Year for Social
In order to make the most out of that partnership to benefit the company as a whole, HR has consistently upped its use of social media. Already, Forbes has heralded 2013 as the “Year of Social HR,” as organizations and individuals mine the business possibilities of social media and find innovative ways to integrate them into the fabric of their recruiting, talent management, employee engagement, and development strategies.

According to a recent study commissioned by SilkRoad, 75 percent of human resource and talent management leaders admit their organizations’ internal and external social networking technology is lagging behind.

Forming a Social Media Policy That Matters
A social media policy is a must for any organization, and there are a few major points that need to be taken into account when creating a social media policy that will be of genuine benefit to the company and the workforce.

First, social media isn’t going anywhere. Employees are already coming to the table with years of social media exposure and experience. As time passes and more people who were drilled in social media platforms at an earlier age cycle into the workforce, a common-sense social media policy is going to become more and more necessary.

Providing employees with the technological tools and know-how should enable them to better perform, collaborate, and innovate—but that’s the easy part. While it is clearly beneficial to any business to engage social media, it is important employees operate within a known and clearly communicated framework to ensure the business benefits from facilitating social media interaction. Steps to take in working toward that goal could include formulating guidelines for social media communication, maintaining a professional code of conduct, and clearly outlining disclosure allowances over social media. Another point to keep in mind is time spent on social media. For example, how much time is healthy for an employee to spend engaging in social media platforms in an average day? Any guideline should operate as a forward-thinking, empowering policy for employees, not as a mechanism of control.

Second, when creating a social media employee handbook, invite and incorporate employee input into the drafting process. Employees are more likely to enforce and adhere to a policy they helped create. Evaluate your company culture as you go along and listen to what your employees are saying. If the majority of your employees frown at just the mention of a “handbook,” look for more innovative ways to make your policy interactive.

Incorporating conversational elements into an interactive policy platform engages both employees and clients. If it’s interactive, you increase the likelihood that people are being stimulated at a level they are accustomed to and perhaps expect from any thoughtful organization as a minimum.

How to Make Social Media Work for You
The recruiting power of social media has become, in many ways, common knowledge. But its potential to improve employee engagement has yet to be fully exploited by employers.

One of the most powerful tools inherent in social media lies in one’s ability to listen and monitor. Social media allows real-time, organic conversations to take place among employees, clients, and potential clients, conversations that can be observed in public for free, conversations that employers can join and interact with to improve business practices and perceptions.

To learn more, download our white paper “Social Media and HR: Friend or Foes?” from our Human Resources Best Practices and Tools document library.

This guest blog post is courtesy of Mary Anne Osborne, SPHR, and principal of the Osborne Group. Mary Anne is a people-centric HR professional and consultant with over 25 years of HR experience in telecom, finance, manufacturing, healthcare and higher education.  Mary Anne presents monthly on our complimentary Sage Refresh and Recertify Webcast Series that are approved for 1.00 recertification credit hours toward PHR, SPHR and GPHR recertification through the HR Certification Institute.

While there are numerous benefits to going paperless, there are a lot of questions to answer before you take the plunge and commit yourself and your business to a paperless software solution.

Businesses are increasingly being forced to address these questions because of a complete shift in how HR operates on a basic level. Using electronic records is efficient and cost-effective and quickly becoming a standard function. According to statistics cited by marketing provider iPost, an eight-employee company, is estimated to achieve annual savings of $10,000 after going paperless. For a 370-employee company, the savings are more significant—a whopping $1 million annually. The U.S. government predicts an approximate savings of $1 billion over the next ten years as a cumulative result of going paperless.

Yet before the larger issues are faced, simple questions about going paperless can be answered. Like: “Does it streamline workflow and cut costs in the long run?” The answer is a resounding yes.

An average four-drawer file cabinet holds about 16,000 sheets of paper, and approximate costs can total $25,000 to fill and $2,000 to maintain every year. It’s estimated that the average office worker uses 10,000 pieces of paper a year. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, organizations spend $20 on average to file a document, $120 to find a misfiled document, and $220 to reproduce a lost document. Of all documents, 7.5 percent get lost; 3 percent of the remainder get misfiled. You get the idea.

The weight, scope, and expense of using paper is staggering; understandably, businesses want to avoid those costs by implementing paperless solutions. Yet before rushing into a decision, there are several factors that merit consideration, and firms need to come in with an idea of what solutions will do for them and what the process will entail.

Know What You Want and What You Need to Do
Whether you are considering changing your existing software or are preparing for your first paperless venture, you’ll want to first ask yourself: What do I want to accomplish by going paperless? Yes, efficiency and cutting costs are great reasons. But there could be more, and, depending on the software vendor, you don’t want to miss out. Will your software allow you to create recruiting strategies more easily? Improve internal or organization communication? Build an integrated compliance strategy? In what ways can your employee evaluation process take advantage of technology to be more effective? Think about the critical components for your business.

What does your business or industry require regarding HR compliance? Document security? How and where are you going to store the electronic files? Is the archive searchable? Intuitive?

The questions don’t have to be heady, either. What’s your budget? What’s the timeframe? Who’s going to manage the system? Will you need professional assistance to implement and install the system? Will you need help converting old paper files to electronic ones? What hardware will such a system need to operate reliably? Is your corporate culture ready for the shift?

Converting Paper Files
This is probably the most challenging period during a company’s paperless transition. The conversion of old files is a task that requires a heroic amount of work, and most companies make the mistake of misjudging how much time and labor it will actually take to complete. It’s important to understand the benefits your business will experience during this stage of the process. Once digitized and archived, your files will be searchable, electronically shareable, and modifiable—all within seconds.

Once a document is scanned, it needs to be labeled, indexed, and placed in an appropriate database. If done right, this will consistently save time and money and significantly reduce misplaced or lost files.

It is generally recommended to take baby steps, converting one department or section of the office at a time. Some companies perform a pilot test first on a small scale to work out any bugs and equipment needs as well as gauge employee reactions.

Once You Are Paperless
After your old files are converted, you’ll need to answer a new set of questions concerning your business. Clients, vendors, and customers will continue sending paper documents—and some tax documents cannot be converted electronically—so you’ll need to decide how you are going to assimilate these hard-copy documents into your paperless system. How and when will employees be trained using the new system?

You’ll also need to evaluate how your system will be backed up. Do you have an emergency power supply or plan of action? In regards to document security, will you need user authentication? Digital signatures? Data encryption? Are your servers robust enough to support your business activity?

The transition to a paperless work environment isn’t as easy as it sounds, but once you make the choice to change and select a software vendor, your business will begin to save time and money, and before you know it, you won’t be able to imagine how you did business without a paperless solution.

For more information about going paperless register for our upcoming webcast Paperless HR: Prepare Your Business for Efficiency. As an added bonus, this webcast is approved for 1.00 recertification credit hours toward PHR, SPHR and GPHR recertification through the HR Certification Institute.

Not all stress is created equal. There are healthy levels of stress that can be highly motivating and push employees to rise to workplace challenges. But too much stress produces diminishing returns in the long run. In a quickly evolving working environment, employees are confronted daily with increases to their workloads, changes to teams and promotion structures, ineffectual or unsympathetic management, and various day-to-day elements of working life—which can all lead to stress.

This is especially important for HR professionals to recognize. High stress leads to low productivity and strategic human resource management aides in alleviating some of that stress—like ensuring employees are not too pressed on deadlines—will turn out to be beneficial to the employee, the manager, and the business, which will see the financial results in the long-term.

The Economics of Stress Management
For many HR professionals, stress is recognized as a serious wellness issue. In a December 2012 survey conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), stress and mental illness were identified by HR professionals as their top employee health concerns.

The impacts of workplace stress are numerous. Stress has the potential to cause headaches, anxiety, substance abuse, high blood pressure, obesity, exhaustion, heart disease, and diabetes.

It is no secret that stress and depression are linked, as research suggests. Stress is both a mental and physical phenomenon. When we are overstressed, the body releases chemicals that compromise the immune system. It comes as no surprise then that stress, depression, and other mental illnesses are the primary causes of workplace absences, according to SHRM.

Factors like low job control, job insecurity, a lack of social support, work-family conflicts, and high-job demands have all been identified as potential causes of stress and depression.

According to SHRM, stress is the number-one cause of long-term absences—more than physical injuries such as neck pain, repetitive strain injuries, and acute illnesses like cancer and heart attacks.

Additionally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 18.8 million American adults—9.5 percent of the adult population—will suffer from depression or a depressive illness. In any three-month time period, an employee struggling with a depressive condition will miss, on average, 4.8 workdays, resulting in 11.5 days of significantly reduced productivity on the job. It is estimated that depression will cause 200 million lost work days each year, costing employers between $17 and $44 billion in lost productivity.

There are many other impacts besides this staggering loss in productivity. High-stress levels lead to other negative, less tangible side effects, including employment disengagement, apathy, and high turnover and attrition—which all have economic consequences of their own.

When human resource planning involves employee engagement ideas that combat depression at its source, it will not only save the company money in lost work days, but also motivate employees to work more efficiently through the support and aide of colleagues and supervisors—helping the business to achieve a larger return on employee investment.

What Can Be Done About Stress
There are certain occupations that are associated with more demanding workloads and higher levels of stress. HR professionals need to prioritize stress management in those industries, especially the service industries. While reducing the workload may not be an option, there are a number of stress management options companies can pursue to improve their employees’ quality of life, reduce stress, and save money.

Many companies establish some form of wellness program. Typically, these programs include resources employees can access that promote healthy living habits such as dietary suggestions, exercise programs, and discounts or incentives at a partnering gym. Such programs enable employees to manage their own time and schedules and juggle the demands of various workload responsibilities.

One possible benefit from employing such a system is the ability to offer flexible work arrangements—by far the most significant factor in reducing stress. Some companies already offer flex time options, or “being there” time—a time management strategy that recognizes an employee’s obligations outside of work. Usually, flex time comes as a set number of hours that can be used at the discretion of an employee a few hours at a time, empowering him to attend his child’s school play or ballet recital. HR software solutions allow employees to log their own hours and track projects independently. Not only does this reduce stress, it improves productivity and employee engagement.

Time Management Leads to Stress Management
There are myriad ways a business can implement a flexible work arrangement, and the demands of a specific business will dictate the type and amount of flexibility that is available. Whether they organize a weekly lunch outing to destress employees or provide greater flex time options, effectively managing time will translate to a happier, less stressed employee—which in turn means good things for the business itself.

By changing mindsets about how a workload is distributed and tackled by employees, businesses can dramatically reduce stress by restoring control to an employee’s life—a trust that many employees will be grateful for and work hard to maintain.

For HR professionals who are recruiting for a new position or looking to fill an existing opening, you will inevitably be confronted with the task of writing a job description—the first impression a prospective employee gets for both the position and the company.

Compliant Job Descriptions
It is important as you draft each job description that the posting is in full compliance with federal regulations such as the Equal Pay Act of 1963 or the Fair Labor Standards Act. To ensure the job description is fully compliant, employers needs to write descriptions as directed by a number of legal standards.

For example, the FLSA stipulates that employers will need to analyze the proper classification for the position they are recruiting for to determine if it is exempt from overtime pay. Compliance can sometimes be a complex issue. Descriptions with vague wording or gray areas may end up being violations of federal laws such as the Equal Pay Act or the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. A good job description may not eliminate all of these discrepancies or involuntary omissions, but the goal is to minimize them as much as possible.

As part of your human resources solution, it may be easy to get distracted by legal compliance issues and forget about the tonality of the job description. It’s important that a balance is struck so that compliance is achieved and the description also falls within the cultural life of the brand and the company. A dry, off-message job description might be fully compliant but lacks the versatility and life that inspires and attracts top talent.

The Black Hole for Job Seekers
According to a recent study conducted by TheLadders, job seekers spend less than 60 seconds reviewing a job posting before deciding to apply or move on—a figure that HR professionals ought to pay attention to when drafting job descriptions.

The online job-matching service conducted the survey in March of 2013 employing eye-tracking technology to determine not only what information job seekers prioritized as they perused potential job listings but how they read them.

“Job seekers and hiring managers alike share a problem with job listings—job seekers apply for jobs they don’t fit, leaving hiring managers with applications that don’t fit the bill,” said Alex Douzet, CEO and cofounder of TheLadders. “There is so much finger-pointing in the job search, mostly by job seekers who think that overwhelmed recruiters and faulty application software are the factors behind them never hearing back. However, our eye-tracking study shows that job seekers simply need to take a better look in the mirror—and better understand their competition—before they even think of applying to that next job.”

The survey revealed that even though job seekers self-report spending ten minutes assessing each opportunity, only 10 percent of that time is spent evaluating the job description. Of that percentage, the most time was spent focusing on the title of the position, the company name, and the details of the job, such as salary and recruiter contact information.

As an HR professional, that’s important information. Go into the job description drafting process knowing what job information is a priority for a job seeker. You have 60 seconds to make an impression. Make it count.

Writing a job description can be a tricky thing, navigating both the legal world and that of the prospective employee. The key is in striking a balance between legality and language that is as inviting as it is clear.

Stay ahead of the curve and avoid costly employment issues with HR Essentials Career Enhancement Training Library. The library includes 29 HRCI certified courses and over 70 others handpicked by Sage to support HR organizations on key topics such as interviewing, hiring, background checks, performance reviews, and termination.

I’ll bet you think you know what words are coming next; but you’d be wrong.

About twenty-five years ago I was working for a company where the CEO was a wild man. I don’t mean a Robinson Crusoe, beard down to his belt, living on a tropical island-kind of wild man; I mean a guy who expressed some great ideas in the most unexpected ways. And among my favorite of his expressions was the following:

“If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly.”

Now on the surface of it, that might not seem like a terribly wise business mantra. But let me give you some background as to when and where I initially heard it said.

It was in a technology company; it was the late 80s or early 90s and I had just joined their marketing department. The timing of my arrival just happened to coincide with the early planning stages for a major trade show we were to attend. And the topic of conversation was how we were going to present ourselves at this conference.

Now keep in mind – this was “back in the day” when if someone said “computer”, the name that popped first into everyone’s head was IBM. And tradeshows were serious affairs; “doing something bold” at your booth usually meant that you opted for a yellow tie instead of a red one to go with your blue suit. In fact, at my preceding job I had once had the gall to ask the marketing manager there “what color suit” should I wear at an upcoming conference and received the helpful answer “Any color you like – as long it’s blue”.

That answer didn’t sit well with me, and I bided my time until I was in a position – at a different company, of course – to try to do something about it.

So when I realized that my arrival at this new company – in a position of some influence – coincided with their planning for an upcoming event, I couldn’t resist the temptation to suggest that we try something a little daring at the upcoming show. I suggested that we arrange our booth – and staff – to look like an old-fashioned, neighborhood Italian restaurant. Bistro tables. Red-and-white checkered tablecloths. Menus instead of the usual product data sheets. And booth staff dressed up like waiters and waitresses.

The reaction was phenomenal. Everyone hated it.

Well – almost everyone. The CEO, normally a very active participant in corporate discussions, was surprisingly quiet. He was listening to everyone else in the conference room telling me why my idea wouldn’t work. Heck – “wouldn’t work” was how the nicest of my new colleagues were phrasing it; others were openly questioning my sanity, my employment, and the very distinct possibility that I was overly self-medicating.

And yet when I started listening – really listening – to peoples’ comments, I realized that it wasn’t the “restaurant theme” that everyone objected to. It was that fact that everyone felt that we couldn’t do justice to that theme. The objections ranged from “we can’t actually serve food or wine”, to “we don’t have time to change our existing booth graphics” to look like restaurant menus.

That’s when our CEO uttered those unforgettable words:

“Well you know . . . I kind of like the whole restaurant approach, and I think that if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly.”

Needless to say that broke the tension in the room pretty well and it was a good two or three minutes before all of us regained our composure . . . not to mention our chairs. And then some poor soul asked our CEO:

“You mean you want us to do a bad job?”

And that’s when our CEO explained what he meant. Many organizations shy away from bold new initiatives because they are afraid of failure. That’s nothing new. But our CEO explained that in his experience, many organizations chose not to try something new because they were afraid that they weren’t going to be able to do as good a job on it as they’d like to.

That’s right – there’s “fear of failure” and then there’s “fear of incomplete success” – and it’s the latter of these that our CEO was talking about. You see, nobody wants to undertake a project thinking that he or she will be able to get it to only 65% (or so) complete. As humans, we are trained to envision the end-result of a project and that end result vision is rarely, if ever, imperfect or incomplete.

But that’s exactly how we should envision many of our business initiatives.

Because — when it comes down to choosing between a project imperfectly done and a project not attempted at all, it’s better to try and partially succeed rather than to not try at all. A project attempted can be evaluated, improved upon, or even abandoned. As long as you set your expectations so that “imperfection is acceptable”, your finished project will be good enough to fairly evaluate its current success and its potential for even greater success in the future.

So – the next time you have the opportunity to try something new but are concerned that you might not have all the resources to “do it right”, go ahead and do it anyway. After all, if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly.

(Oh yes – and we DID end up doing the Italian restaurant theme at the show that year and it was a huge success.)

Today’s guest post comes from Don Farber. Don writes frequently for the Employer Solutions blog and is a leading spokesperson on the value of business activity monitoring. Don has over 25 years’ experience in the front-office and back-office software industry and is co-founder and Vice President of Vineyardsoft Corporation. Don is a frequent speaker at industry events and author of numerous white papers on such subjects as identifying support rep burnout, enabling organizations to become more ‘data-driven’, and cost-effective compliance.

Today’s guest post comes to us from Brandon Smith. Therapist, professor, consultant and radio host, Brandon brings an upbeat, witty approach to the challenges of workplace health and dysfunction. Brandon is the founder of theworkplacetherapist.com – a resource dedicated to eliminating dysfunction at work, improving workplace health and restoring optimism and focus in the workplace. Brandon also currently serves as faculty at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School where he teaches and researches on topics related to leadership, communication and healthy workplace dynamics.

My Work Place is Negative

I get it. The last several years have been tough. “Do more with less… there won’t be any raises this year… you are lucky to have a job… we may have to close our doors tomorrow…” Working day-in and day-out under these conditions can get to anyone. A therapist colleague told me a story that I think captures this sentiment perfectly. Several years ago he had a client who was in a highly toxic, negative and abusive relationship. No matter what he did, he couldn’t get her to change her perspective. One day he finally came to a realization. Here’s what he told her, “I’m a very healthy person. And yet, if I were in the relationship you are in 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, I would be just as broken-down, lost and as negative as you are.” Workplace negativity can get to us. To that point, here was a question I received over the past week from a reader that I think sums up many of our collective feelings of frustration at the office:

Where we work, the morale is terrible. Everyone is overworked, frustrated with our demanding customers and generally burned out. As a result, we are handling stress in negative and unhealthy ways. What specific tools can we use to change the negative and unhealthy ways we are handling stress? For example, I would like to put a punching bag in the back so we can hit it as a way to vent and then hopefully go about our business a bit happier.

To feel so stressed and frustrated that the idea of hitting something sounds like the perfect cure truly says it all. And to the reader’s question, what is the right solution? Is a punching bag in the back room the answer or is it something else? While a punching bag may sufficiently empty out the negativity from our veins, it doesn’t resolve the core issue. Negativity has infected our workplaces and unless treated, no amount of punching bags are going to fix the problem.

Stomping Out Negativity At Work

Below are a few different treatment options for eliminating negativity at work. Feel free to take them in combination. Daily doses are recommended.

• Leadership needs to declare war. A critical starting place for eliminating negativity at work is for leadership to take a stand and declare all-out war against any forms of negativity at work. This can be the boss or a team decision. Regardless, those who lead need to announce that negativity is no longer welcome and they must be prepared to confront it at every turn. What does this mean? I’ve seen leaders who are serious about fighting negativity send an employee home when they become “infected.”
• Make it a game. A second treatment option is to turn the negative moments at work into positive events by reframing them. In other words, make it a game. For example, I worked with an insurance company several years ago that had developed an interesting way to combat negativity at work. During the week, customer service reps would take a beating with disgruntled customers. At the end of each week, reps would meet and share their most difficult customer interactions. Whoever had the most difficult or challenging encounter won the “crazy customer” trophy. A huge oversized trophy, the “crazy customer” trophy would live at the desk of the rep who won it until the next week when more stories were shared. Games and fun competition can take a negative event and create a more playful team experience.
• Throw out all the bad apples. Sometimes negative work environments are the product of a bad apple – an employee who is so negative he / she is poisoning everyone else. If there is a bad apple coworker in your midst, inviting them to leave is a necessary first step.

There you have it – strategies for eliminating negativity at work. Feel free to combine any of the above remedies. Take regularly and often.

Of course, if nothing else works throw up the bag in the back and wear it out. Who knows? You might find you have a future in the ring.

For businesses in today’s economy, there are more payroll processing options than ever before, and deciding what method will work best for your company can be daunting. If you’re thinking about switching how your payroll is processed or are curious about what is currently available, taking action on the following steps is a good place to start.

Making the First Step
If you are a seasoned business and are considering a change to your payroll processing system, before you make any decisions or put a plan in motion, you must first begin the evaluation process. At this stage in the game, the more questions you ask, the better. What compensation structure works best for your employees? Monthly? Bimonthly? How do you track employee hours? What about overtime? Paid time off? Health plans? Income taxes? Payroll taxes?

You’ll want to assess the strengths and weaknesses of your current workforce and identify the best person or team most capable of facilitating the switch. If you cannot identify a suitable person, consider hiring an experienced payroll processing professional as an independent contractor to help you make the transition. Payroll administration requires a high commitment to detail and accuracy and regardless of which route you take; any efforts must be comprehensive and dedicated.

It’s also in the best interest of the company to assess the timing of your payroll change, paying close attention to current economic conditions and growth trajectory of the firm. For example, a recent and robust expansion in business may make it a good time to reconsider your payroll processing—especially if there are plans to boost hiring significantly to maintain your growth.

What may have worked for you with just 50 employees begins to be strained by the demands of 200+ employees. In addition to this consideration, many common mistakes and errors in payroll processing become more visible and potentially dangerous to operations when you increase the number of employees.

Functionality a Determining Factor
Upon sketching a rough outline of what business factors will influence what payroll processing options to pursue, it’s then time to transition to the subject of functionality. After all, payroll processing doesn’t just need to work for the company, it needs to work—period.

Many companies that choose payroll processing software often do so without accounting for the range of capabilities and features a solution must possess in order to improve the business and save it time and money. Before you approach a vendor, determine what functions you’ll need or desire to be included in the processing software.

Again, asking yourself questions on what is needed from a solution is the best path to reaching an optimal selection: How frequent are tax updates sent through? What security checks are in place? Can we integrate existing data into the new platform? What payment options exist? How does it prevent fraud?

Besides ensuring a solution effectively addresses and takes care of standard compliance issues, it’s good practice to investigate what other added value such a service can provide. For example, many payroll processing software vendors offer deduction and earning codes, shortcuts that enable automatic and accurate deductions from employee paychecks regarding health insurance or child care. If your company’s pay structure is more complex, you’ll want to pursue vendors that can allow you to customize your own codes. Other features to look for include direct deposit, employee garnishments, and piecework pay codes that assign and track employee pay based on work completed.

It’s also worth examining the basic features of payroll processing, like electronic tax filing, which is paramount in any payroll software. This feature allows you to fill out and submit tax forms electronically and eliminates the need for printing out forms, organizing them, and mailing them out to the appropriate office—which can result in huge time savings!

It’s also crucial that employees have sufficient access and interaction with the system. Opting for a solution that can seamlessly allow for employees to view documents and pay stubs is important both to HR compliance and employee engagement.

Making a Choice and Implementing the System
After pegging down what payroll processing solution your business needs and what features and accommodations it should have, it’s time to research the market. Spend time closely evaluating all vendors, and consider their reputations and relationships with past clients. Pay close attention to how vendors service clients, price their solutions, and ensure their networks are secure.

Finally, once all has been said and done and a solution has been decided upon for implementation, you’ll need to ready your operations for the change. The most important function when readying the business is making sure you have the hardware needed for installation. It may also behoove the organization to solicit the services of an implementation team. But that’s only the half of it. Once in place, businesses must still conduct routine check-ups into how the solution has performed and what benefits it has provided or how it has streamlined operations.

After determining who can help facilitate the change, when the ideal time is to switch, and what functions your business needs out of payroll processing software. Evaluate which vendors most closely align with your values, budget, and business needs. Then it’s easy. Make the switch and reap the rewards!

Need more information about changing payroll processing? Visit our library of Human Resources Best Practices and Tools to download white papers like “The 15 Factors to Consider When Changing How You Process Payroll” or “Stay In Control: The Benefits of In-House Payroll Software.”

Technological innovations have played a crucial role in shaping the work environments of modern offices. While HR software solutions have streamlined processes and freed up resources, advances like mobile communication and video conferencing tools have enabled more workers than ever to craft their own schedules and work from outside the office while still being connected with coworkers and others every step of the way.

The trend in a mobile-enabled workforce is gaining steam among businesses in surging numbers. A recent survey by Challenger, Grey & Christmas found 80 percent of HR executives said their organization extends telecommuting options to employees in some capacity. Other findings indicate telecommuting isn’t a passing fad, but an increasingly essential aspect to a talent management strategy: 97 percent of respondents that offer telecommuting options said they had no plans to cease such benefits.

Yet for all the popularity and growing acceptance of telecommuting, such policies have become a lightning rod for controversy recently. The most notable example of this contentious issue was the refutation of work-from-home options by Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, who ordered company employees to stop telecommuting. In the process, she ignited a debate on the merits and detractors of telecommuting. Through it all, at least one insight was gleaned: Telecommuting, no matter the personal opinions of a select few, is here to stay.

As such, HR professionals and company management need to address the issue of telecommuting by developing a strategy that is aligned with talent management aspects and employee needs. Policy-making is essential to maintaining a beneficial telecommuting position, and below are a few steps to take to ensure organizations reach that goal.

Keep Data Security in Mind
While new technology has been a boon to businesses and employees, it has also been a revelation for less scrupulous individuals. The issue of privacy and data security must be a primary concern for any firm that allows telecommuting.

To ensure data security is addressed, the first step is requiring employees who use personal devices to access company and client information to lock their devices with passwords. While that may seem like a simple enough function, it’s important that firms require alphanumeric keywords to lock personal devices. Consisting of capital and lowercase letters and numerals, such passwords are the hardest to crack and are needed to safeguard private data.

It’s also important for companies to weigh the pros and cons of storing information on public cloud platforms. Such channels for data storage are susceptible to breaches, and firms may do better to store and allow access through a virtual private network with a more secure connection.

Formulate Policy so Benefits Aren’t Diluted
One common problem that businesses run into when crafting a telecommuting policy is balancing the benefits of working from home with the needs of the office. Ensuring productivity is not lessened, while still maintaining a level of freedom, is paramount to a successful policy.

To do this, it’s critical that HR decision makers do not limit the aspects of telecommuting that make it attractive to workers, like requiring employees to check in on the hour. Instead, it should be sufficient that an employee is simply available through online messaging or video conferencing if others need to get in contact.

Additionally, the inherent flexibility of telecommuting needs to be protected under the policy to have it work toward better employee engagement. Having a schedule of planned work-from-home days is neither constricting nor hurtful to the effectiveness of a policy. Rather, it keeps everybody on the same page.

Before employers can even begin to think about putting a new hire to work, it’s essential that they run an onboarding program to help newbies get acclimated to their work environment.

However, it’s crucial that businesses don’t equate onboarding with mere orientation training. While the latter provides new hires with the most basic of details on their new surroundings and job requirements, a true onboarding program accomplishes much more with an eye turned toward the long term.

An effective and refined onboarding strategy may prove to be one of the most integral factors that go into securing company success, generating a positive return on employee investment, and ensuring the workforce is knowledgeable and motivated.

The key to implementing a beneficial onboarding program lies in understanding the needs of new employees and balancing that with what the company wants to achieve through greater employee engagement and talent management. While it may seem like a banal chore to employers, with consideration of the talent gap in mind, advanced onboarding strategies have never been more important.

Components to a Successful Onboarding Program
Even though onboarding programs have evolved to become a more valuable employee engagement tool, recently, the basis for such initiatives is still drawn from fundamental introductory steps that employers have taken for ages.

These include simple actions like familiarizing new employees with coworkers and colleagues they’ll interact with on a daily basis, ensuring they have completed vital HR and employment verification documents, and raising awareness about company benefits. Creating a drop-in schedule to check in on progress during the hire’s first days, week, and month with the organization can also help.

But these are common steps to take that HR can do in its sleep; while they constitute the basic workings of an onboarding program, they do not represent the crux of a successful one. That added value lies in the strategic elements employers incorporate into their existing onboarding regimen.

For example, two guiding principles to a tactful onboarding program are folding the new employee into the corporate culture in order to foster talent development and utilizing the transition as a means to generating a return on employee investment that benefits both employee and employer in the long term.

There are several different ways in which that objective can be accomplished, like introducing the employee to the brand in an informal and educational manner. In order for employees to strengthen their brand through work, they must first know it like the back of their hand. By simply discussing brand image, integrity, profile, vision, and mission, employers can engage new hires and sufficiently immerse them in the brand and prepare them for meaningful work in the field.

New Tech Strategies Boost Onboarding Effectiveness
HR software solutions that automate payroll and other functions aren’t the only technological advancements that have spurred innovation in onboarding; increasingly, employers have turned to social media in order to welcome new hires and familiarize them with the company, its people, and its culture.

Especially considering the influx of millennial generation talent into the workforce, social media has become a primary channel for onboarding at forward-thinking organizations.

The benefits of social media-integrated onboarding structures are many. Employers and employees are afforded an interactive, personable, and casual environment in which to interact and build relationships with one another. Social media use also helps streamline processes and communications and makes new hires feel welcome and appreciated, which primes them to deliver to their fullest.

“If you want to enable those new hires to make a difference as soon as possible and fit into the culture of the company, go social: Give them the kinds of communication tools they are already using outside work,” Karie Willyerd wrote for a recent Harvard Business Review article on social and onboarding.

Onboarding Still Needs to Approach Greater Company Goals
Even though the onboarding process may be dismissed as a routine training program or taken lightly because of the honeymoonesque feel to it, in order for onboarding to be successful, it must reflect the goals and aspirations of the company.

This new and improved onboarding has become a major strength to employers, which have seen results when aligning onboarding with organizational objectives.

A recent investigation into the process of advanced onboarding published in the MIT Sloan Management Review outlined some of the ways companies can engage employees through onboarding while still focusing on the company as a whole.

For instance, connecting with employees and discussing their own identity and strengths and skills as people can benefit both employer and employee. The latter is happy because he or she feels valued as a talent asset and not a mere cog in a machine, while the former benefits from gleaning greater insight into the employee’s abilities and motivation, which can be applied in future initiatives.

Research, experience, and just about every sign there is point to a new age of onboarding wherein employers and employees are holistically more supportive and interactive. Better onboarding leads to better recruiting, retention, and return on employee investment. Advanced onboarding strategies are proven tactics, ones increasingly important to the overall success and well-being of the business and the employee.