Consolidating payroll activity into one secure, interactive portal can improve efficiency, productivity and allow greater employee engagement in a consistent way.

As businesses expand and hire in new locations, the need for effective payroll delivery becomes ever more important. For busy HR or payroll managers, payroll is not limited to simply providing employees with payroll results on time; they also need to share individual documents, make HR documentation available to keep employees up-to-date with the latest company policies, and of course manage daily queries raised by employees about their pay and various entitlements.

An effective global payroll portal can allow organisations to deliver both company-wide and individual notifications, roll out policy documents and gain employee acceptance through one single, secure method. It can also enhance employee engagement through its ease of access and the greater visibility that it provides.

When selecting a global payroll portal, companies should consider the below functions that allow employees to:

Access their employment information anytime, anywhere.

Employees require flexibility to call on their payslips and other documents whenever they need them, so a good portal system should be available online, and across desktop, tablet or mobile.

Be interactive with their payslips.

Employees should be able to view, print, download and save payslips locally. Delivery through an online portal is a far safer option for both the company and employees; unlike issuing payslips via methods such as email, which is still the case for many companies.

To help employees understand the information within the payslip, and thus reduce the number of day-to-day enquires, employers should consider providing an example payslip with local specific annotations explaining payslip key notations.

Enter a centralised document library.

This way, employees can access documents such as employment contracts or corporate policies that employers want to share; such as a health and safety policy or travel and expenses document. Once again this goes a long way to reducing the numerous requests made to a HR department.

Communicate with their employer

Instead of sending numerous email enquiries to an individual or a shared inbox, a portal allows employees to submit questions (with attachments) directly to the HR or payroll department through a ticket system. The ability to raise query tickets linked to a payslip is advantageous for ease of processing – and these tickets should have inbuilt monitoring systems.

An interactive, global payroll platform expands standard payroll service delivery to become an effective communication tool between employers and employees. Take a look at TMF Horizon to find out how this new solution can help you meet these needs, and improve overall employee engagement.

Developing a cost-effective and truly global payroll system in-house is not easy. Partnering with a global service provider can overcome the challenges of managing payroll globally.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.