How effective payroll software can help in the war for talent

Internal labour pressures combined with external concerns around increasing costs mean that CFOs are currently paying close attention to the potential collective impact these challenges will have on their company’s bottom line.

“The CFO’s role has moved from just account control in financial reporting, dealing with tax and cashflow to looking at the strategic direction of an organisation becoming much more involved in the initiatives across the business, like digitalisation, investment risk management and in general, the efficiency and performance of the workforce,” says Steve Dunkley, HR analytics consultant at Zellis.

CFOs need access to high-quality human capital data so they can understand if there is the “capability, skills and the capacity” within the current workforce to meet the strategic goals of the organisation, he says.

If the current workforce cannot support the business direction, CFOs will also “need to understand what the cost of recruitment is as well as the cost of delays in hiring and lost productivity”, adds Dunkley.

Access to this data should be seamlessly integrated with the organisation’s other systems to make it easier for CFOs to spot trends within their workforce, forecast future developments and make better data-driven business decisions to support growth across the business, explains Dunkley.

Zellis HCM Cloud offers a modern suite of both payroll and HR functionality in a single platform that supports CFOs to utilise the true potential of the organisation’s data helping them to effectively navigate the challenges they face, says Dunkley.

“We’ve structured our ability to integrate data within our HCM system through the Zellis Intelligence Platform that is driving us to really help answer those big problems [for organisations] from an analytics point of view.

“We really continue to drive our payroll functionality to be best in class and then building out how we actually look at the data we have, and how we can integrate that data with other solutions to really drive added value for business users.”

The importance of reliable payroll software has been demonstrated in the last few weeks after it was reported in The Guardian that retailers Asda and Next had encountered significant errors in their payroll process causing staff to be underpaid.

Access to key industry information

The current war on talent has meant 83% of CFOs now say hiring and retaining talent will be the key to growth in 2022, according to a survey by PwC. This has seen finance and HR departments naturally become closer business partners to address these challenges, says Dunkley.

As such, finance teams now require more from their current payroll and HR processes to access key data. In fact, research by the Global Payroll Management Institute found approximately 56% of payroll professionals have reviewed their global and HR systems in the past two years.

CFOs having access to key HR and payroll data enables efficient financial management, supports budgeting and forecasting processes and helps to boost profitability across the entire business.

Alongside improved data quality, organisations may also benefit from having access to industry information in their payroll and HR systems such as salary benchmarking.

“We’ve seen inflation in salaries due to a war on talent. Certain organisations will move the median salary level further up for certain skill sets meaning that for companies tracking will have an attrition risk and could lose key individuals to their organisation.”

Salary benchmarking data is “critical for organisations to have” so they can really understand if they are setting their salaries competitively for the current market and are able to minimise their workforce attrition, says Dunkley.

However, Dunkley warns not to get too lost in the data. “Obviously, if you can take any kind of market data and start doing some benchmark comparisons, that’s highly advantageous but can also lead you to go down rabbit holes as well.”

Employee acquisition and talent retention have remained at the top of the priority list for most senior finance leaders during the last couple of years and are likely to remain a priority in the years ahead. As such, it is vital organisations have the right processes and data in place, underpinned by payroll and HR software, to support them in meeting their strategic goals.

To learn more about how Zellis HCM Cloud can support your payroll and HR reporting software needs, click here.

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