Implementing Payroll Best Practices

Introduction:

Driven by your company's individual needs, this course helps develop a best practices plan to take back to the office. Attendees will examine organizational structures and models, processes, compliance issues, internal controls, methods of service delivery, corporate culture and staffing, and technology. Review actual case studies to better understand the issues you will face in selecting and implementing your payroll best practices plan.

Targeted Groups:

• HR Professionals
• Payroll Professionals
• Payroll Accountants

Course Objectives:

At the end of this course the participants will be able to:

• Determine who their organization is and understand their needs.
• Identify their support and their barriers to the best practices initiative.
• Obtain the analysis tools needed to implement best practices.
• Understand how to make the best in class continuity plan.
• Determine the return on investment for the proposed process changes.

Targeted Competencies:

• Preparing and producing payroll
• Analyzing and reporting payroll
• Reconciling payroll
• Budgeting for payroll expenses
• Budgeting for department expenses and needed assets

Course Content:

Unit 1: Introduction to Best Practices:

• What Are Best Practices?
• Assessing Where You Are Today.
• Improving Business Processes.
• Understanding Best Practices.

Unit 2: Best Practices Within Payroll:

• Best Practices – What Other Organizations Are Doing.
• Technology and Best Practices.
• Self-Service Applications and Tools.
• Other Technology Enabling Best Practices.
• Data Security.
• Best Practices: Payroll Processes.

Unit 3: Benchmarking and Best Practices:

• Best Practices and Correlation to Benchmarking.
• Types of Benchmarking.
• What to Measure:
  • Common Metrics
  • Quantitative Metrics
  • Qualitative Metrics
  • Problems/Issues
  • Poor Benchmarking Scores
  • Approach to Benchmarking
  • Examples of Measurement
  • Benchmarking
  • Common Errors to Avoid
  • Benchmarking is a two-way street
  • Standardizing definitions for benchmarking
  • Dashboards/Scorecards

Unit 4: Securing Support for Your Best Practices Initiative:

• Importance of Securing Support and Strategic Planning.
• Establishing a Best Practices Stakeholder Committee.
• Creating an Opportunity Assessment and Developing a Business Case.
• Communication Elements.

Unit 5: Tools for Implementing Best Practices:

• Effective Teams.
• Project Management.
• Quick Hits.
• Process Mapping.

Unit 6: Implementing Best Practices for Processes and Technology:

• Making It Happen.
• A 10-Step Approach to Process Change.
• Technology Implementation.
• Documentation of Policies, Procedures, and Systems.

Unit 7: Customer Service:

• Customer Window Surveys.
• Trends in Payroll Influencing Customer Service.
• Service Delivery Skills for Payroll Professionals

Unit 8: Outsourcing as a Best Practice:

• The Forces Driving Outsourcing.
• The Three Phases of Outsourcing.
• Business Process Outsourcing.
• Making the Outsourcing Decision.
• Choosing the Right Outsourcing Provider.

Unit 9: The Role of Business Continuity Planning:

• Disaster Recovery or Business Continuity?
• Ten Steps to Create a Business Continuity Plan.
• Get Involved and Get Results.

Unit 10: Change Management:

• The Change Process – Nine Critical Steps.
• Dealing With Negative Reactions to Change.
• Communication Planning