Top 7 payroll and HR New Year’s resolutions for 2024
Payroll
Author
Laura Bohrer
Date published
December 22, 2023
New year, new goals. Many people use the beginning of a new year to make resolutions on what they want to do better in the upcoming 12 months. Personal New Year’s resolutions are a common thing, but how about resolutions for the new business year?
Setting clear, achievable goals is a key factor for business success. Here are seven New Year’s resolutions for HR and payroll to help you take your business forward in 2024.
1. Improving payroll and HR compliance
The U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) estimates that nearly 5 million penalties were imposed related to payroll taxes, which translates into costs equaling around 13.7 billion dollars. Looking at these numbers, it’s no surprise that ensuring HR and payroll compliance in terms of taxes, employment laws, and more is a top concern for businesses.
Increasing compliance in payroll and HR is therefore also an excellent New Year’s resolution for business leaders. Measures to achieve this include creating a payroll and compliance calendar, setting alerts to regularly check for employment law changes and new regulations affecting payroll, and considering outsourcing payroll to a professional payroll provider.
2. Going paperless in HR and payroll
The urge to get rid of paper records and printed documents is a transformation process that spans across all industries and business functions. Although HR and payroll are traditionally slower to follow suit when it comes to mega trends like digitalization, there is a growing awareness among businesses that things need to change in payroll and HR, too.
Going paperless in the payroll and HR departments should definitely make it onto your list of New Year’s resolutions for 2024. Actual steps to take in this process include:
Digitizing payroll records, HR files, and employee information,
Introducing digital payment methods, such as direct deposit or digital wallets,
Switching from paper time sheets to online time-tracking tools,
Replacing paper payslips with electronic ones, and
Implementing employee self-service functions.
3. Focusing on employee recognition, retention and engagement
The dynamics between employers and job applicants have changed. While businesses were once in the position to pick and choose the best applicants from a pool of candidates applying for a position, they now have to compete for the best talent with other companies.
Given the current economic climate, businesses cannot go wrong when they make a resolution to improve the employee experience in their organization. Putting this resolution into practice can include different approaches, such as:
Increasing their offer of Learning and Development opportunities,
Extending their offering of employee benefits,
Launching employee recognition initiatives,
Finding ways to foster employee engagement,
Diversifying their employee compensation strategy,
Improving their employee onboarding process, and
Writing a detailed employee handbook for new joiners.
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4. Decreasing the number of manual processes in payroll
Manual data entry is the main source of payroll errors. Also, manual processes are a lot slower compared to using technology and software. In fact, as respondents in the Deloitte Global Payroll Benchmarking Survey indicated, manually entering or loading inputs is the most time-consuming aspect of processing payroll.
Reducing the need for manual intervention is a noteworthy New Year’s resolution for payroll leaders that will increase both payroll accuracy and efficiency. Ways of getting there are integrating HR and payroll software for seamless dataflows and leveraging payroll automation. Payroll processes that can be automated include data input gathering, payment processing, and payroll results validation.
5. Increasing the efficiency of your hiring processes
Making processes more efficient is not only a good resolution to have with regard to payroll. Hiring and recruiting processes should also receive your attention in this regard. Increasing the efficiency in hiring and recruiting can lead to a significant reduction of your hiring costs.
There are different routes you can take to make your hiring processes more efficient. The most prominent way is leveraging technology to automate tasks like CV, reference and background screening. Using recruitment chatbots and Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) can also help your HR department work more efficiently. Additionally, you could consider outsourcing hiring and recruiting to an external service provider.
6. Aiming for more diversity in your team
Diversity is becoming a leading principle in the workplace. As businesses become increasingly aware of the many benefits that come with a diverse team (e. g. enhanced creativity and innovation, broader range of skills, and unique cultural insights), diversity is turning into an important criteria in the recruiting process.
Increasing the diversity in your team is therefore definitely an HR New Year’s resolution worth pursuing. Implementing this resolution first and foremost requires your business to introduce ethical hiring procedures. What this means is that hiring and recruiting processes need to be based on unbiased candidate selection criteria and standardized processes that ensure that all candidates have a fair chance of securing the position they are applying for.
7. Running regular HR and payroll audits
HR and payroll audits are excellent ways for businesses to ensure that all their data is in order, all processes and procedures are compliant, and that their policies fulfill their purpose. Introducing audits in HR and payroll, or increasing the frequency with which such audits are run, is a good resolution to set your business up for success in the new year.
Aspects to check during an audit include:
HR and payroll data,
Overall payroll costs,
Worker classification,
Atypical payroll transactions,
Data security standards,
And more.
Below you can download our ultimate payroll audit checklist that will guide you through your first audit from start to finish.
Download the ultimate payroll audit checklist.
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