How payroll self-service boosts employee experience

Expectations around work are changing. Employees expect more from their job, their employer, and the technologies and tools they use at work. This includes self-service portals that empower employees to manage HR-related tasks on their own.

In fact, surveys show that nearly three-quarters of employees expect their employers to implement a high level of self-service functions for HR and payroll. Ease of use, accessibility, and convenience are three key requirements that must be met, but there is more to successful implementation than first meets the eye.

Read on as we dive deep into self-service payroll, its functionalities and benefits. Also, we will explain how it impacts the employee experience.

Self-service functions make it possible for employees to complete HR-related tasks online, which eliminates the need to go through members of the HR team or fill out additional paperwork and forms.

Self-service payroll empowers employees to manage certain payroll-related tasks on their own. The service is typically provided through an employee self-service payroll portal or a self-service payroll software.

Payroll self-service functions are built on several key principles, including:

• Accessibility from mobile devices,

• Options for personalization, and

• Convenience and user-friendliness.

Self-service functions enable employees to manage parts of their payroll independently, i. e. without the involvement of the payroll or HR team. Common self-service payroll features include:

• Requesting PTO,

• Enrolling in employer-provided benefit programs,

• Viewing payroll accruals,

• Accessing documents,

• Managing and updating personal information,

• Submitting receipts for expense reimbursement,

• Approving timesheet entries,

• Downloading paychecks,

• Viewing tax information,

• Checking time-off balances, and

• Getting answers to common payroll questions.

Self-service payroll systems offer many advantages for organizations. For instance, they:

• Create and increase trust between employee and employer,

• Help maintain payroll accuracy,

• Foster employee engagement,

• Eliminate the need for time-consuming data-entry tasks,

• Optimize the allocation of HR resources, and

• Improve the employee experience.

Payroll ensures that employees are paid accurately and on time, which makes it an important factor that impacts the employee experience at an organization. Since payroll has a direct impact on employee financial wellbeing, it is crucial for building trust between employee and employer. Nothing breaks an employee’s trust in the company like recurring payroll errors.

The better and smoother the payroll process and everything related to it, the better the employee experience. In this context, payroll technology plays an important role because it empowers employees to take matters into their own hands.

Here is how self-service payroll enhances employee experience.

• Self-service portals create more transparency between employee and employer.

• Giving employees the possibility to manage certain payroll-related tasks on their own signals trust and fosters independence.

• A self-service payroll portal can be integrated with other HR self-service functions, which prevents employees from being overwhelmed by the number of tools they need to use.

• Payroll self-service empowers employees to take payroll into their own hands—at least parts of it.

• A self-service payroll system saves the payroll team time and thereby increases the overall payroll efficiency, which ultimately benefits employees because complex or urgent payroll matters can be addressed more quickly.

• Implementing self-service payroll helps create a similar standard of digitization to the one employees are used to from their private lives (e. g. instant access to banking services, video streaming services, and more).

• Giving employees instant access to personal data and payroll information helps businesses respond to digital expectations.

• With the right software, organizations can create a highly personalized digital experience for employees in their personal portal space.

Implementing self-service payroll is a great way of improving the employee experience. However, there are several things businesses should keep in mind when following this approach.

• Create a unified experience: No matter how many entities, geographies, and employees you count in your organization, make sure to create a unified experience across the entire organizational structure.

• Get feedback from your employees: Payroll self-service is intended to create a better experience for employees. When implementing self-service functions, businesses should make sure to ask their employees for input regarding desirable functionalities, priorities, and more.

• Choose your payroll software carefully: Self-service payroll requires a modern payroll software that is built with employee experience in mind. This should be kept in mind when choosing a payroll system.

• Ensure a positive user experience: Payroll self-service functions that are not intuitive and easy to use will fail to meet the intended purpose.

A digitized payroll experience for employees is no longer a nice-to-have but a must-have. Digitization is changing the way businesses operate and moving towards a digital payroll has nowadays become a real necessity. This includes the implementation of self-service payroll functions.

With the rise of AI and next-gen technologies, businesses are tentatively starting to take payroll self-service to the next level by connecting employee self-service portals with AI-powered chatbots.

Chatbots have already made their debut in hiring and recruiting, and payroll chatbots to answer employee queries regarding paychecks, payroll policies, and more could be next.

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