Before the onset of COVID-19, payroll was generally regarded as a relatively standalone function within a business, and for many outside of payroll itself, not one that was strategic in any significant way. But then things changed very suddenly: in many countries, laws were changed literally overnight, affecting where, when and how people worked, and how they were paid.
Payroll teams across the globe adapted very quickly, and in many cases remarkably well. Constantly changing processes and differing support measures put in place by governments meant they were aiming at a moving target, but managed to ensure that employees were still paid in a timely, accurate manner.
And this ably demonstrated how integral payroll can be within an organization as a whole. Payroll workers are now recognized as key players in a business, taking on responsibilities and solving challenges that benefit everyone - but it’s data that has helped those teams prove their worth. In this blog, we’ll explore how some vital KPIs are helping payroll teams define and underscore their success, and the extent to which they have thrived during two very challenging years.
The payroll teams that best weathered the storm of the pandemic were those who were able to monitor performance and quickly spot issues within their payroll processing. The results of certain KPIs were critical in pointing the right way forward for payroll teams, and for businesses as a whole, in fast-changing circumstances.
Five KPIs, in particular, stood out as useful pointers to performance during the pandemic:
As those five KPIs demonstrate, there were lots of challenges for payroll teams to contend with. The good news, however, is that payroll teams at a global level have performed very well in the circumstances, and this success has been quantified in our recently-released Payroll Efficiency Index report.
Our findings show that first-time approvals are up by 1.89%, data input issues are down by 4.2%, and issues per 1000 payslips have dropped by a substantial amount (24%). And while calendar length and supplemental impact have both increased, by 0.1 days and 4.2% respectively, neither of these results are necessarily negative. The small rise in calendar length can be considered a good return in the context of such a challenging time, while the turbulence of employment status is a fair mitigating factor in the increase of supplemental impact.
All of this goes to show what an asset payroll can be to an organization. Payroll teams have responded and adapted so well to all that’s been thrown at them over the past two years, that they have been a dependable rock in many organizations - and the KPI performance proves it. And that’s why so many businesses are now increasingly bringing payroll into their everyday decision-making, and taking full advantage of the data and insights that only payroll can provide.
Read our Payroll Efficiency Index report to get more detail on the importance of payroll to modern business. Explore some of the effects of the pandemic in more depth, drill down into regional results and variations, and understand how your business compares to overall benchmarks.