2020 was a difficult year. With COVID-19 disrupting nearly all aspects of modern society, everyone was forced to rethink what ‘normal’ meant, from coffee shops to multinational corporations. Of those affected in various industries, smaller businesses had to bear the bigger brunt in the scramble to identify and implement safe, remote workflows. The lack of manpower and the financial cushion of being a large organization were the primary reasons for that.

Caught in in the lurch of that transition was a critical part of HR: payroll. Businesses, like the rest of us, were utterly unprepared for a global-scale disaster – as corporations and government bodies drafted updated rules and regulations concerning payroll practices in a pandemic-ridden world, most of the year was spent in a sort of firefighting mode. Rules would be implemented, issues arising in the aftermath would be amended and the cycle would repeat. New Zealand went into a strict, enforced lockdown early in the pandemic, a measure that wrecked economic stability in the short term but is being lauded by the rest of the world for its effectiveness. Government support, changes in business tax and wage subsidies meant that payroll managers needed to always be on top of the latest compliance requirements, because there is no margin for error when it comes to payroll.

Having to manage all that in addition to the standard corporate tax and income tax (withheld by employers in the form of Pay-As-You-Earn basis) added several layers of complexity to the jobs of payroll managers, who were also adjusting to working remotely with the extra responsibility. That is where technology has proven itself invaluable, by helping payroll operations run smoothly and accurately. Cloud-based solutions like PeopleSonic gained wider adoption as data and access portability were sought, alongside a robust and secure platform for managing critical payroll and HR data.

A year into the pandemic, however, most HR and payroll teams are still running in disaster mode, as the uncertainty associated with virus hotspots, variable restrictions and lockdowns keeps businesses operating erratically. That means that even with technology providing necessary support, there are still steps that HR professionals can take to tackle this uncertainty and still deliver quality work. Let’s examine what those steps could potentially be:

Embrace the automation provided by technology

While most companies, small or large, have sought HR platforms for their cloud services to meet work from home requirements, they are missing a critical advantage by not utilizing these platforms to their fullest.

PeopleSonic provides a payroll automation solution as part of its software suite, which not only helps reduce errors in bookkeeping and payroll processing, but it optimizes the process as well so that there are no delays – we all know how inefficient large spreadsheets become over time. Not only that, payroll automation helps reduce process costs as well, a saving critical for small businesses at this critical juncture in time. If you consider one upgrade to your HR and payroll processes, make it this.

Stay on top of changing regulations

The pandemic response in New Zealand involved various forms of stimuli and support for businesses of all sizes. The Employer Wage Subsidy Scheme, the Business Finance Guarantee Scheme and sector-specific support, for instance, are all new aspects of payroll that need to be accounted for with every salary processing event.

While the government-based programmes have been established by this point, it does not hurt to add ‘checking the Treasury website regularly’ to your work routine to stay on top of any new developments, or updates to existing subsidies.

Technology can aid here as well. The PeopleSonic suite, for instance, provides compliance information within the platform, so that HR personnel are aware of critical information in the employee’s country.

Stress on data security

Most businesses, even smaller ones, have traditionally had on-site IT to provide a secure digital environment for employees to work in and store data. However, with the move to home-based work, employees, especially in HR and admin, will be accessing highly sensitive data through unsecured home networks, which opens the possibility for security breaches – the ultimate betrayal of the client/customer’s trust.

Shifting to a cloud-based HR solution rather than the in-house solution that was used pre-pandemic is the fastest way to secure all your critical personnel and payroll data. PeopleSonic’s platform pairs that secure cloud environment with a system that can be accessed on computers, smartphones and any internet-enabled devices to combine convenience with the ultimate peace of mind.

 As 2021 gets underway and it becomes clearer that the term ‘business as usual’ is still not attainable, it is paramount that HR remain on top of the upheaval in daily work functions – more so now than ever before, employees need reassurance in the face of uncertainty with regular salaries. That requires payroll processing to happen like clockwork, which can only happen if HR personnel make embracing technology their 2021 resolution.

2020 is undoubtedly a year we won’t be forgetting soon. The world itself was left dismantled due to the spread of Covid-19. Crumbling many businesses to their downfall and shaking up our entire perspective on the way we live our lives, study, and work. As we carry on into 2021 with new hopes, we can’t render the work status from 2020 useless. The post-Covid gameplan will surely reflect our future trends.

Although many trends arise each year and many are still in rapid growth, here’s an insight into the 5 emerging HR trends in 2021.

Digital Tracking and Automation:
As we move into a digital-oriented workplace, managing and sustaining such workplaces may prove to be a hassle without proper software implementation. As with much of 2020, workplaces have modeled their employees to work from home. Though this provides workers with a more relaxed environment in some cases, keeping track of said employees may prove to be difficult. With spaced out teams working together virtually, tracking their progress is just as important. Automating minute tasks such as attendance, auto-syncing, and seamless data transfer will prove to be fruitful for efficient working.

A variety of software and online tools provide adequate service, but only a few encapsulate the entire theme of HR Management such as PeopleSonic.

Hybrid Workplaces and Their Culture
With work from home becoming the new norm in the passing year, some are truly struggling with managing all from one space in their home. Whereas others are striving in the more relaxed and casual workspace created at home. There’s no doubt the pandemic has caused many issues with working at home, especially during long terms of isolation with kids or family bustling about. However, this seems to be the way of life for at least a few more months, until there is more clarity to this pandemic.

Designated workspaces at home are therefore being defined but to a more professional approach. Many establishments offer, shared co-working spaces and multi-use offices for those who need them, following covid-19 precautions of course.  

Performance Management
As established before, handling employee data and performances virtually is a task in itself. Achieving and handling KPI’s is key throughout the organization’s run. In the coming years, we are bound to see a great improvement in virtual management as a whole. Currently setting specific targets via software and implementing that into the system has resulted in brands going fully digital. The ability to have customized reports, detailed analytics, and data displayed in an automated fashion show how far we’ve already come.

There’s room for improvement, with faster speeds and completely reliable figures over the horizon, Performance management is something business should proactively look into.

HR In the driver’s seat
The HR department in any given organization is vastly important in linking the employees to the management and higher hierarchy. The department is known to be at the frontline of customer and employee concerns, the ability to keep a straight head and guide others to what’s best for both parties takes immense skill and effort. The current Covid-19 pandemic has taken everything to an even more intense level. Employees are constantly worried about their wellbeing and juggling their work from home amongst family and young children can become daunting. Similarly, the managers are equally worried as there is uncertainty regarding communications and maintaining company values. 

Being at the core of such an intense situation requires extreme dedication and hefty responsibility. Therefore staying firmly in the driving seat is necessary for the department to drive them through 2021.

Virtual Team
Conferencing and collaborating with co-workers virtually is the new norm for the upcoming years. With the steady and progressive growth of globalization due to the vast majority of social media, it creates an exciting new opportunity for global partners and employees. This adds more depth and new input into the system which may allow for your team to strive! Such interactions are very easily maintained via a variety of online tools. Since we are already working from home, this virtual team management isn’t tedious, especially if you’re familiar with the tools available. Managing time with global teams for meet-ups might be a little tricky, but nothing that can’t be overcome.

Though the virus has separated us physically, we are still able to connect with those who matter and maybe 2021 is the year we excel in it!

Better three hours too soon than a minute too late, a popular saying which ties in perfectly with Peoplesonic’s introduction of Automated Payroll. A simple and easy to use interface, that allows for a time-efficient solution to your financing problems. 

Is Your Risk Calculated?

In terms of finance and calculation, it all comes down to margins and efficiency. There’s a certain speed at which an employee can execute a task and even then the accuracy of said calculations is in doubt. Manually crunching numbers, entering data, and calculating leaves a lot to be desired from an efficiency standpoint. Similarly, as humans are incapable of perfection a few natural hiccups are inevitable.

For a small business or any business, all these factors are very much counter-intuitive. So why not opt for a ready-made solution; Peoplesonic? Payroll automation simplifies and completely revolutionizes the traditional method as it is capable of calculating a string of numbers in seconds. Calculations also include adding bonuses, taxes, and other variables that would otherwise be tedious to factor in.

Automated Payroll Gets Work Done Faster, Simpler, And More Efficient

Setting up your payroll on Peoplesonic for the first time may seem daunting, however, it’s as easy as a few taps. An admin has to specify a few factors such as payroll date and frequency, which can conveniently be altered from the settings tab. It’s as simple as that, with the data entered the process will completely be automated without any errors. You’ll be able to see each payroll report and overrule any edit you wish seamlessly, every detail is just a tap away!

This will remove the need for an in-house resource to manage finances as well as a host of other features to top it all off. The software automatically transfers the funds via bank transfer online and notifies both you and the employee about the transaction. Keeping a strict check on time won’t be an issue either as the system runs very precisely on time, allowing for each transaction and process to be done on the dot. All of this will be synced and stored to keep a complete record of the process.

Organizing Your Organization With Automated Payroll Filing

Peoplesonic completely encapsulates payroll automation, and payroll filing is no different. This feature can be activated by enabling the IRD button and linking your IRD account to the Peoplesonic system. This allows for the payroll to be optimized as per the IRD regulation and will continue to generate during its set schedule. This will allow the system to periodically maintain a tax record, and store each record as a backup. Worrying about errors won’t be an issue either, as the software is designed in a way that minimizes calculation errors and smoothly calculates your taxes.

The payroll process will no longer require human interaction or handling per se, the system will reliably produce results in an effective manner. The filing system will store and manage data, generating folders to organize as it goes forward. This will facilitate you due to its timely processing and simple interface. Convenience and efficiency all in one system!

Make Changes With A Few Clicks

One of the points of using an automated system is the ability to customize and alter any components to suit your needs. Similarly, the payroll allows for edits to be made anytime. Any edit will quickly be updated and the relevant changes will be showcased after a quick refresh! Adding a new employee is a prime example, another would be to change bank account details. If any detail is incorrect or does not have a correct value, it will be highlighted and not processed to reduce errors. This allows you to have full control over the system despite it running independently.

Peoplesonic’s entire interface runs on the same easy on the eye aesthetic which helps you navigate seamlessly.

Maintaining Employee Satisfaction

Although being an automated system, the boost in employee satisfaction is vast. The interface allows users to request and access files/libraries much more easily and even has the benefit of displaying remaining leaves etc. This allows the employees to stay in check and aids in the management side as a constant check is not necessary. It guarantees each change is made to the server at the earliest providing for a smooth and productive experience. Employees will be notified if they arrive late or have exhausted all of their leaves and paid leaves, a detailed report of each user is available to keep the financing transparent. 

The software removes the guesswork for the employer and keeps the employees in the loop, allowing for an overall efficient system.

Efficient On Time and Money

Normally HR-related tasks are carried out by an assigned team member, which exhausts the human in question, countless resources, and more importantly time. An in-house HR manager may have its perks, but it’s clear the heavy amounts of money and time do not add up. However, a feature-rich solution allows you to carry out multiple tasks within a finger’s reach and a few taps here and there. So a well-optimized payroll system carries out your tasks while eliminating human errors, and automates your problem into the all-around solution you need!

PeopleSonic’s HR management platform has been upgraded with new features, implemented with greater team productivity and HR efficiency in mind. After last week’s deep dive into timesheets, this week we will look into leave liability reports, what function they perform, and how to make the most out of them.

Leave liability reports can be accessed in the PeopleSonic product under the payroll menu. Let’s get started.

What is leave liability?

Employees are entitled to a certain number of leaves a year, based on their employment status (permanent, full-time, or part-time – contract employee

s generally don’t accrue leaves). Leave liability is the financial value for all types of leaves accrued by the employee, that is owed to them by the company. 

What does a leave liability report include?

A leave liability report is a detailed breakdown of an employee’s pay cycle, the leaves they have accrued, and their financial liability. Below is a look at what the PeopleSonic leave liability report looks like:

The weekly pay rates (ordinary and average) are determined by the laws of your particular country, as is the holiday pay liability – these are used in conjunction with the number of leaves accrued to calculate the leave liability per employee.

Automating the leave liability report

Leave liability is generally a manual and collaborative effort between finance and HR departments to calculate and record the relevant data into balance sheets. Manually generating a leave liability report, whether on a daily or weekly basis, would involve daily communication, checks, and balances to make sure the most updated information is fed into these reports for managers and the company decision-makers. Not only would that be a time taking process, but would also be prone to mistakes due to so many moving parts involved.

PeopleSonic helps centralize and automate the leave liability report – a single datasheet where you can sort by employee name and date is a powerful tool that is updated automatically based on data picked up from other features of the product. This means that managers can, at the press of a button, get the latest numbers for any employee’s leave liability, which would let them evaluate the cost of an employee potentially leaving, among other things.

The need for leave liability reports

Companies need to have on the fly access to leave liability reports for balancing financial liabilities, work output, and employee welfare. That’s because employees who don’t take the fixed yearly leaves accrue a higher financial liability to the company, but it also negatively impacts their mental and physical health, which in turn can affect the quality of their work. On the other hand, poorly planned mandatory time-off can also impact project timelines and work output on time-sensitive tasks.

Smaller businesses can’t afford to have dedicated resources in finance and HR collaborating and managing annual leaves and liabilities, but it is a critical task that needs to be performed. That’s where solutions like PeopleSonic come into play, with dedicated reports to help reduce the workload involved in strategizing around leave liabilities. With this feature rolling out soon, small to medium-sized businesses can quickly take advantage of it by offloading a lot of manual labor to the PeopleSonic platform!

PeopleSonic has recently introduced timesheet management features to help small businesses run smoother, by offering simplified visual interfaces to view, approve and edit timesheet information and save time and effort involved with manually exchanging and approving timesheets via email.  

There is also an option for bulk import of timesheets so managers and admin can quickly parse a high volume of timesheet data – faster, smarter and a more efficient way of going through bulk timesheets!

Why Timesheets?

This of course begs the question, why timesheets?

With 2020 completely changing how businesses operate and how we ‘work’, smaller businesses have been left scrambling to adjust to the new normal as they lack the manpower and resources of bigger organizations to brute force a solution. Instead, they have had to resort to being smart about how they transitioned to hybrid work and implemented COVID-safe practices for their office space.

Small businesses have faced unprecedented hardships in sustaining and growing and for them, the smarter way of working will always favour them over any ‘traditional’ processes. In this case however, the ‘traditional’ process of timesheets has made a resurgence as the smarter solution to keeping businesses operational and highly productive in the face of changing workplace norms and is a solution that all small companies need to adopt.

For these businesses, an interesting trend has emerged with how timesheets have been keeping teams within those businesses functioning. Here’s a quick breakdown of how timesheets became a sleeper success to keeping small and medium businesses running “business as usual”, and how the timesheet feature from PeopleSonic can help you achieve the same.

Resource allocation in a hybrid setup

With most businesses worldwide, whether large or small, having to work completely or partly remotely, the way teams communicate has changed, and that results in poor collaboration or resource management – you can no longer turn in your seat and ask your team member what they are working on!

That’s where timesheets come in – a daily timesheet will help a manager stay on top of how their team is functioning and can allocate resources to specific tasks or projects based on their importance and time/cost budgets. These timesheets also let managers understand how tasks are being completed and can understand the resource costs associated with such a task and allocate accordingly in the future.

Boosting project management

Timesheets have always been important tools for project management, but that importance has become crystal clear this year. Timesheets let managers understand which employees are ideal for a new project, task or role based on their performance in similar tasks previously. They can analyze how certain team members perform in different time-based scenarios, identify key skills and learn to utilize each resource to their maximum potential.

Project managers can also benefit from timesheets when planning trainings and improvements for teams and future projects. Employees in need of additional training can be highlighted, overall efficiency of putting certain people together on a task can be determined, as well as their availability. All of these things help project managers estimate optimal costs and time requirements when creating projections for future and current tasks.

Reduce resource wastage

Or alternatively, increase efficiency of resources. A timesheet can help a manager pinpoint the areas where a team’s efforts are being wasted. By identifying tasks that are taking longer than usual, or necessary, managers can figure out how to prioritize tasks and make decisions to optimize project completion.

What do these things achieve for small businesses? In short: saving money. Optimizing processes to reduce overhead has been critical for small to medium businesses this year and is a trend that’s likely to continue into next year and beyond.