Sage MicrOpay Payroll Software and People Management Blog

Top 5 reasons to maximise your return on employee investment

Posted by Sage MicrOpay on Thu, Oct 09, 2014 @ 10:58 AM

MadridOffice Spain 290813 632 There are many benefits in taking the time to understand your employees and to enhance their engagement and growth within the company.

Your employees are a big and unique asset for your company, and for most businesses the workforce is also its largest investment. Here are our top 5 reasons to maximise your return on employee investment.

Benefit from engaged employees

Building a positive work culture focused around what motivates your employees can go a long way towards better customer engagement, increased revenue and higher profits. Organisations that can establish trust between the workforce and management, and between co-workers, can create an engaged workforce and experience the many benefits that go along with it.

Increase employee retention

High turnover rates can be attributed to several different factors and how they impact on your employees. This can include unchallenging work, poor relationship with management or co-workers, ability to fit into the goals of the organisation and the overall corporate culture.

Whilst at times turnover can be unavoidable, turnover among your top performers is largely avoidable and it is certainly worth the investment, given the extraordinary expense of replacing them. It is worthwhile investing in key areas such as analysis of employee performance and information, company communication, work environment, employee engagement and recognition, training and compensation and benefits.

Reduce your employee replacement costs

Employee turnover is a very high and often underestimated cost for employers. The costs associated with replacing a departing employee include recruiting, interviewing, hiring, orientation, training, compensation and benefits while training, lost productivity and administrative costs.

Reduce sick leave and absenteeism

Missed work time and unscheduled absences can have large cost consequences for your company and can contribute to lowered productivity and morale. One way for a company to reduce absenteeism is by using a HRMS system. This technology can make information about each employee available to managers so it is easier for them to identify possible patterns of absenteeism or illness and address them with employees.

Focus on managing and developing your talent

Talent management is much more than just a performance appraisal tool or process. A successful talent management solution should also address alignment with business goals and people performance. Businesses that use performance appraisal and management software show a reduction of low performers. Talent management can impact your company’s return on employee investment in cost savings, revenue growth and improved employee productivity.

Key payroll insights revealed in the 2014 Payroll Benchmarking Study.

Posted by Sage MicrOpay on Thu, May 29, 2014 @ 12:05 PM

All eyes from the payroll sector have been on the “Australian Payroll Association 2014 Payroll Benchmarking Study” since its release by the Australian Payroll Association (APA). 1,782 organisations responded to the survey that was conducted between November 2013 and January 2014 and it features great news for our own payroll product – Meridian.

There are a few key results to note from the report which relates to the industry and Sage MicrOpay, including who has the responsibility of handling payroll and which payroll products make up the largest share of the payroll market?

The Finance Department in many businesses still have the responsibility of looking after payroll, but as a company grows in size, it is the HR Department that takes on this role. Nearly 75% of Australian organisations still run an inhouse payroll function, whilst the other quarter outsources their payroll to a payroll provider. The outsourcing of payroll tends to lend itself to companies that have less than 200 employees or with employers with over 10,000 employees.

The average salary including superannuation of a payroll professional has risen from $73,629 to $78,756. However, there are significant differences between industries with the lowest average payroll salary found in the Personal Services Industry and the highest average payroll salary found in the Transportation and Logistic Industry.

Finding a payroll product that can save both time and money is an important factor for businesses in today’s modern society, and it is clear that some organisations are delivering the payroll function much more efficiently than others. So who is using Sage MicrOpay’s Meridian payroll product to make their payroll run more efficiently, and is it only particular sized companies that benefit?

Out of a possible choice of 40 types of payroll systems in the Australian market, Sage MicrOpay’s Meridian payroll system is one of only nine products that were the most prevalent in the top five for all categories. This result demonstrates the versatility of the Meridian software which has been developed for Australian businesses of all types, industries and sizes.

For employers with 200-499 employees, Meridian came out top with a massive 41.9% share of the market – the biggest share of the market owned by one payroll product within one category. For employers of 500-1,999 employees, Meridian was the second most commonly used product within this market segment, and those with 10,000+ employees, Meridian was the 5th most used payroll system. The result demonstrates that Meridian is one of the most widely used payroll software for companies of all sizes, highlighting our clients’ confidence in our payroll system.

Not only does Sage MicrOpay make up a large proportion of the payroll software market, it also plays a significant role in providing exceptional services in the outsourcing space, being the 5th most popular outsourcing payroll provider.

The Australian Payroll Association sees trends in the utilisation of mobile, cloud computing as well as big data will be the key to improvements in payroll benchmarking in 2014 and beyond.

The use of software technology to enable time saving automation in payroll, in addition to rich functionality and comprehensive reporting is becoming increasingly important and relied upon within payroll, and no doubt Meridian will continue to rank as one of the top payroll providers in Australia.

If you’re interested in learning more about MicrOpay Meridian, and how it can help your organisation, you can find out more information here.

Payroll Software and People Management blog