Difficult to make your payroll department's resources stretch far enough? Are you considering letting an outsourcing partner take over the job? With the proper preparation, you can increase your chances of success. In this guide, we have compiled our top eight tips to help your outsourcing project succeed.
Is your company struggling to maintain the necessary resources or expertise to handle payroll internally? Are you looking to minimize vulnerability during absences, vacations, and personnel changes? Perhaps you also want to cut your IT and personnel costs and gain access to modern pre-systems and payroll systems? Or is it primarily about freeing time and energy to concentrate on your company's core competencies?
Regardless of the reasons for choosing to outsource payroll management, a significant process of change awaits once the decision is made. How can you and your colleagues prepare in the best possible way, and how do you tackle the challenges that may arise during the process? Here, we share our top eight tips!
- Don't Neglect Your Homework
To start off on the right foot: What lies behind your decision to outsource payroll? What are your needs – today and tomorrow? Which parts of the work do you want to outsource, and which parts do you still want to manage internally? What is your vision for your outsourcing project? For the best possible start to your outsourcing journey, make sure to invest enough time in preparing and discussing internally. It speaks for itself: By comprehending your current position and desired objectives, you can formulate more thoughtful and precise requirements – and better communicate your needs and expectations to your outsourcing partner.
Read more: Common Questions and Answers About Payroll Services. - Involve the Right People – From the Beginning
Do you have the right employees on board for the project? A common mistake is that the people leading the outsourcing project have insufficient knowledge of how payroll and personnel administration work on a practical and everyday level. In other words, involve the individuals and roles within the company who truly understand your needs and can contribute with the right insights and detailed knowledge – from procurement and specification of requirements through startup and handover. This way, you will (hopefully) reduce the risk of dealing with new, unforeseen conditions along the way – something that can disrupt both the timeline and budget of the project. - Get a Firm Grip on the Payroll Process
What does your current payroll process look like? What agreements and regulations do you need to manage? Any discrepancies? Perhaps various payroll offices and administrators have developed their own routines over the years, resulting in a lack of unified and standardized approaches to managing specific tasks? During the initial phase, i.e., during meetings and workshops with your outsourcing partner, it’s essential to map out all existing routines and processes and capture any discrepancies as well as any special solutions. - Structure, structure, structure!
With many details that must be handled correctly and numerous tasks to track, a well-structured approach is vital for your outsourcing project. A standardized and well-proven project plan with detailed checklists and templates indicating what needs to be done in each step, when, and by whom is something you should expect from a professional outsourcing supplier.
These documents should encompass all project stages from start to finish: from initial analysis and mapping through the setup of payroll and pre-systems based on applicable agreements and other conditions, testing and quality assurance, and finally, training of relevant personnel. A clear and carefully designed plan ensures a high-quality implementation. Also, all parties know what they can expect in each phase, and you can monitor that you stay within the timeframe.
Read more: Outsourcing Payroll Management – How to Know When It's Time! - Be Prepared to Reconsider Old Work Methods
How efficient and quality-assured is your current payroll process? Is there potential to solve specific tasks in a smarter way? Another purpose of the mapping process – besides documenting your current processes – is to identify opportunities for improvement in your new outsourcing solution. If you hire a professional outsourcing partner, their specialists have extensive experience in other clients' operations and knowledge of best practices that can benefit you.
So, our advice is: leverage your partner's expertise and be open to advice and recommendations that help enhance your work processes. - Who does what? Be Very Clear on Roles and Responsibilities!
What should we do, and what will you do? To ensure successful collaboration with your outsourcing partner, roles and responsibilities must be clearly defined from the start. Any uncertainties in this area risk leading to conflicts between what you expect from your partner and what is ultimately delivered, as well as misunderstandings or discussions regarding interpretation, or important tasks being overlooked.
In other words: ensure that it is clearly documented who is responsible for various parts of ongoing payroll and personnel administration and the specific subtasks included in each part. - Get Employees Involved
New or changed work tasks, new people to collaborate with, changed routines, new IT systems to learn, and perhaps even personnel changes in the payroll and HR department... The transition to outsourcing entails several tangible changes for the employees. At the same time, the company depends on having time, knowledge, and resources in place to ensure a smooth handover to the outsourcing team and a successful start to future collaboration.
To create the best possible conditions for effective knowledge transfer and to prevent uncertainty and concern, there are a few things to consider:
- Involve employees in the process well in advance.
- Inform them about the expected changes and how they’ll be impacted.
- Emphasize the importance of current payroll and personnel administration staff sharing their time and expertise to ensure a successful handover to your outsourcing partner. - Communication is Key
The handover is complete, and the day-to-day operations with your outsourcing solution begin. Now, it's just a matter of taking care of your responsibilities, allowing the partner to do their part, and then sitting back and relying on everything to run smoothly... Well, not quite! Communication continues to be the keyword when it comes to making the partnership work. Transparency is key! Make sure to foster an ongoing dialogue with your outsourcing partner – this will allow you to assess progress, address any uncertainties, and discuss continuous development and improvement of systems and processes.
Consider assigning a dedicated resource within your organization to monitor the collaboration and serve as the primary point of contact for your outsourcing partner.
Is outsourcing payroll the right choice for your company? Let's find out together!"
Struggling with your payroll management? Do you have any questions about how outsourcing of payroll and HR administration works and whether it would be the right solution for your company? Let us answer them!
