HR
Enabling A Happy Workforce
By Helen Shone, Sage HR Advice
What does happiness look like?
There’s a business mantra that states a happy worker is a productive worker. But happiness is hard to quantify and even more difficult to create.
As an employer, you can’t just tell everyone to be happier and watch your profits grow. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work that way. So what can you do? The first step is to find out what makes your employees happy at work, and build on that.
Getting along famously
A recent study by Samaritans and Simplyhealth concluded that forming positive relationships with colleagues is the most fulfilling part of a job.
The survey of over 1,400 workers revealed that 42% said that getting on well with their co-workers helped them to feel good at work.
The next most common reason for feeling good at work was having a positive work/life balance (40%), followed by receiving praise for a job well done (26%).
In comparison, only 14% said that hitting their targets was their top factor for feeling good at work.
Posted under: 10 Things To Consider When Choosing Payroll Software For Your Business
By Lorna Keogh, Senior Digital & Marketing Operations Specialist at Sage
When choosing a payroll software there are a number of things to bear in mind to ensure that you find the right solution for your needs. Many of these will be standard considerations but there will be some that are unique to your business needs and the industry in which you operate.
So – where to start? Let’s start with the most obvious factors and work from there.
1. Number of companies and users
In essence – how many different companies will you need to process payroll for? It will be important to ensure that any software you purchase includes a licence for the required number of companies. Likewise if you plan to install the software on a server to allow multiple users to access it from a local or remote network, ensure you choose a software package and licence that allows for this.
2. Employees
How many employees do you need to process payroll for this year? When working out this figure include seasonality and any resulting staff. Also include starters and leavers because if someone leaves, their details will need to remain on your payroll software for the year as they will need to be included in year-end reports. Many payroll solutions will be priced and divided out by employee number bands so it is important to have this figure in mind when researching potential suppliers.
3. Payroll Frequencies & Types
How often do you need to pay employees? i.e. weekly, monthly, every two weeks? Also – does every employee get paid in the same manner or do you have for example some employees who are paid monthly and some who are paid weekly?
In terms of the type of payroll are employees paid a salary or by the hour or have you a mixture of both? Ensure to check that any potential payroll solutions can cater for the payroll frequencies and type of payroll that you need. Also consider how employees holidays are calculated – do they get a set amount of days a year, a third of the working week or a percentage of hours worked? If tracking holidays is currently a manual task, check which payroll packages can help you to manage this.
Five Key Features of Sage HR
By Sarah-Jane Maguire, Business Advice Consultant at Sage
1. Employees Details
You can store all of your employee’s details in one place. With the click of a button you can see every detail about your employees from their address to their previous employment history. In this section we track all our employees details. We can see what working patterns they usually do, attach any documents we have on them, maybe a contract of employment or their CV and keep note of any emergency contacts, as well as a lot more.
Employee Details – Sage HR
We can see a dashboard of the demographics within our company. This give us a breakdown of what our employment gender and age ratios are and shows us a trend in our leavers and starters.
Company Demographics in Sage HR
2. Employment Legislation
Having the peace of mind that you are up to date with all current employment legislation. You can track important information such as passport numbers and work permits dates:
We can attach a scanned copy of their driving licence to the documents section:
We can make sure necessary training is always remembered and recorded:
And we can schedule an event for 2015 so we don’t forget to book this:
This ties nicely into number 3.
Deducting Property Tax From Your Employee’s Payroll? What You Need To Know
Sage are currently in discussions with Irish Revenue about how Property Tax will be deducted from employee’s payroll. From July 2013, anyone that is liable to pay the property tax but has not started doing so will have the option of having it deducted from their payroll. All Sage Payroll packages including Sage Micropay, Sage Quickpay and Sage One Payroll will be updated to enable payroll administrators to automatically deduct the necessary payment.
When this update is available, you will be able to update your Sage Micropay and Quickpay through your payroll software’s Auto Update feature, or on www.mysage.ie. The update will automatically be made to Sage One Payroll so all you have to do is login as normal and Sage One Payroll will be up to date with the latest legislative requirements.
More information will be made available in the coming weeks and months. For now you can rest assured that all Sage payroll software will be updated to ensure you are legislatively compliant. In the meantime you could talk to your employees and find out which employees will opt to have the payment deducted from their payroll.
Interested in seeing how Sage Micropay makes it quick and easy for you to calculate deductions from your employee’s payroll, try it now for free.
Using An Online System To Manage Absenteeism Effectively
By Beatrice Whelan, Social Media & Content Specialist at Sage
Although employees in Ireland have one of the lowest rates of workplace absenteeism in Western Europe, absenteeism costs Irish businesses 1.4bn per annum. This figure however only accounts for correctly recorded absenteeism whereas in fact it could be the case that many absences go unrecorded due to poor record keeping and tracking. In a recent Sage survey respondents indicated that the single biggest cost to running a business is staff cost with 48% identifying this as their biggest expense.
One way to make a saving on staff costs and to manage employees and absenteeism effectively is to track both authorised holiday leave and unscheduled leave correctly using an online system.
I spoke to Lorna Keogh, Manager of the Business Advice Team in Sage. Lorna explained that manual systems that require the use of paper and spread sheets are extremely inefficient at tracking and recording employee leave. Research has also shown that absence rates are higher in larger organisations. Could this be because the larger the organisation, the more difficult it becomes to track leave and absences with manual systems?
As Lorna explained, “The challenges posed by these systems are experienced by employees and managers. If a team manager is out, absence requests will go unseen until they return. The team member waiting for the manager to respond to their request needs to ensure it is recorded in the spread sheet and not just confirmed verbally.
“It is very difficult for team members to see when their colleagues will be out and plan their own leave effectively, ensuring there is sufficient cover. Although a shared calendar can address this, discrepancies between the calendar and spread sheet inevitably crop along with a difference in opinion between the manager and team member as to how many holidays each employee still has.
Why People Leave: Understanding and Reducing Employee Attrition In Your Business
By Alexandra from Sage HR Advice
Keep hold of your best employees.
As we venture into a new year, many businesses have a set of goals that they want to hit to ensure a successful 2013. If you’re planning on doing this, one important factor to consider is your employee attrition: how many people are leaving your business.
Employees leaving your business is to be expected to some extent, but it can be expensive and problematic when key team members exit your business. Advertising for and recruiting replacements can be a real headache too.
If you’re finding that more and more people are resigning, you should be asking yourself why, and if there’s anything you can be doing to reduce it.
Asking the important questions.
The first thing to do is understand the problem. Interviewing your existing staff on how they feel about their jobs and the workplace is useful, but people often hold back on what they really think in fear of limiting their careers or offending their colleagues.
One of the most revealing ways to get a realistic appraisal of your business this is to arrange frank and meaningful exit interviews for anyone leaving. The leavers’ questionnaire located on the Sage HR Advice service provides example questions to ask. Explain that their answers won’t affect any reference that you are giving and you are looking for honesty, even if you might not like what you’re going to hear.
Sage Micropay Professional Vs Micropay Lite
By Sarah-Jane Maguire, Business Advice Consultant at Sage
As a member of the Sage Business Advice Team, I consult with customers regularly in order to recommend a solution that suits their needs. When discussing payroll options, customers will often query the difference between our Micropay Lite and Micropay Professional payroll products. There are several difference between Micropay Professional and Micropay Lite. To simplify this I have put together a piece including screenshots to explain the main differences:
1. Advanced Report Writer
ARW is only available in Micropay Professional. This feature allows you to design customised reports which can then be run at any time. The report can be created using any subject field within Micropay Professional.
To get the best from this functionality we would advise customers to attend the Sage Advanced Report Writer training course which is held regularly at our training centre.
Sage Micropay Professional Advanced Report Writer
Employers: How To Conduct An Internal Health And Safety Audit
By Amanda at Sage HR Advice
Let’s face it: dealing with health and safety isn’t the most interesting use of your time.
You could argue that putting all of your effort into growing your profits is the best way to spend your day.
However, the reality is that there are four extremely important reasons why health and safety should be one of your top business priorities:
- Legal – prosecutions for non-compliance can cause major headaches and ruin a business’ reputation
- Moral – you have a duty of care to keep your workers and customers safe from harm
- Economic – hefty fines and other costs associated with accidents can and do sink businesses for good
- Emotional – Looking after your employee’s safety and welfare can help improve morale
Social Media In The Workplace
By Amanda at Sage HR Advice
Photo Credit: Sarah Houghton, Source: Flickr.com
The business landscape was changed forever with the advent of social media. Using platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, companies of all sizes have revolutionised their ability to reach their existing and potential customers.
Not only this, but traditional recruitment channels are starting to be overtaken by the use of savvy social networking strategies to identify individuals with specific skill sets.
So social media is brilliant and every business should embrace it, right?
Not so fast. While there are some fantastic advantages to social media in the workplace, there are also disadvantages, which can potentially damage your business and its reputation.
There have been some high profile examples of employees uploading malicious, libellous or commercially sensitive tweets or updates, which has often got them dismissed. However, the damage to their employers has already been done, as countless people have read their posts and formed an opinion about the companies that they represented.
A Matter Of Trust
So what’s the solution? Ban everyone except managers and the social media team from using this technology at work? You could do, but you’d need to think carefully about the message you’re sending to your employees. If your staff think that you don’t trust them, then their morale could be severely damaged, and that’s a real problem.
Automating Your Payroll Activities
By Sarah-Jane Maguire, Business Advice Consultant at Sage
If you have ever tried to calculate your payslip manually then you will realise just how much works goes into it. When it comes to calculating PAYE, PRSI and USC it is difficult enough taking into account standard cut off points, tax credits not to mention the fact that all normal pay is done on a cumulative basis which only adds to the complexity of the calculation. This is why it amazes me as to why people would go to all the effort of doing this when it can all be done with a click of the button.
Many people are under the impression that paying for a payroll package can be a big financial burden and wouldn’t give a return in investment. In fact it is quite the opposite. Many payroll packages are very affordable and are designed to be user friendly so take very little or no training. Some payroll packages also include support therefore if there are any technical issues with the package it can be sorted out in the space of a few minutes.
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