Tag: Automation

Categories
Managing Processes

7 Payroll Mistakes that Could Cost Your Business  

Stephen Adewumi  

Running payroll might seem like a routine task, but even the smallest mistakes can have a huge impact on your business. As a business owner in Nigeria or across Africa, you are responsible for ensuring your employees are paid correctly, taxes and all statutory deductions are made and remitted on time. Neglecting these responsibilities, no matter how unintentional, can result in hefty penalties, loss of employee trust, and even litigation. 

Here are seven payroll mistakes that could cost your business; 

1. Incorrect Employee Classification 

One of the most common payroll mistakes is misclassifying employees. You need to clearly distinguish between permanent employees, contractors, and part-time staff. In Nigeria, this is especially important because contractors and permanent employees are subject to different tax and benefit rules. 

I recall a story about a small logistics business in Lagos that classified its riders as contractors to avoid paying pension and health benefits. The employees took the case to the National Industrial Court, arguing that they were full-time staff. The company ended up paying a huge settlement for backdated pension contributions and penalties. 

2. Incorrect Pay Calculations 

Miscalculating wages, overtime, or bonuses can result in underpayment or overpayment, both of which can have legal and financial repercussions. Regular audits and leveraging the features of a reliable payroll software can help ensure accuracy. 

3. Delayed Salary Payments 

Late remittances of salaries break trust and damage relationships with employees. Delays in payroll are often caused by cash flow issues, inefficiencies in payroll processing, or even technical errors. This hurt morale, especially of staff, and might lead to the loss of key talents.

4. Failing to Remit PAYE and Statutory Deductions on Time 

In Nigeria, businesses are required to remit Pay-As-You-Earn (PAYE) taxes to the government as well as other statutory deductions like pension, NHF (National Housing Fund) contributions, and Health Insurance to relevant authorities or bodies. Defaults in these obligations attract penalties, audits, and back payments. Staying updated with regulatory bodies and their guidelines in the country where the business is domiciled is critical while utilizing a tax-compliant payroll management system makes this a “walk in the park”. 

5. Inaccurate or Incomplete Employee Records 

Having inaccurate or incomplete employee information creates various payroll errors, including wrong pay amounts or missed deductions. This can result in problems during audits and your employees are likely to become disgruntled due to the frustration caused by these kinds of issues. Maintaining precise employee records is essential and implementing automated HR systems can enhance accuracy and efficiency. 

6. Manual Payroll Processing 

Manual payroll processing is highly prone to errors, and it becomes increasingly inefficient as your business grows. Not only does it waste time, but mistakes in calculations, or salary payments which are common with manual processes can have costly consequences. As a business owner, if you still rely on a spreadsheet to calculate salaries, taxes and deductions, your process is prone to errors in formula or mistaken edits which could result in either underpayment or overpayment of your employees. Adopting automation in payroll management will streamline processes, reduce errors, and save time. 

7. Non-Compliance with Local Labor Laws 

Not adhering to labor laws, whether it’s due to ignorance or neglect, can have severe consequences. Laws around minimum wage, employee benefits, and leave policies must be followed to avoid disputes or penalties. An example is a manufacturing company in Kano which once defaulted on minimum wage guidelines introduced in Nigeria in 2019. After an employee reported the violation to labor authorities, the company was fined and had to settle significant arrears in compliance with the law.  

In conclusion, payroll mistakes, no matter how small, can have a cascading effect on your business—financial penalties, employee dissatisfaction, and loss of trust can result in reputational damage. The best way to avoid these issues is by automating your payroll processes, regularly auditing your payroll, and staying up to date with local labor laws and regulations. 

By leveraging a reliable payroll solution like HumanManager, you can have all these pitfalls avoided, ensure accuracy, efficiency, and compliance in one solution. You can focus on growing your business while keeping your employees happy and paid on time. 

 

Categories
Managing Processes

Choosing the Best HR Tech: Essential Factors to Consider 

By Aisosa Ajayi

It’s the start of a business year, and you need the right operational tools to scale. These tools include adopting flexible and tailor-made human resource technology that will significantly impact your organisation’s efficiency and effectiveness.  

With a plethora of options in the market, it is essential to carefully consider critical features that make the selected Human Resources Information System (HRIS) the best fit for your company. In this article, we have dissected the key factors to consider.  

1.   Automation 

An HRIS’s primary advantage lies in its ability to automate manual processes, enhance efficiency and minimise errors. Choose a solution which incorporates features such as an automated workflow on HR processes and employee self-service functionalities. These features contribute to a seamless and error-free workflow.  

For instance, HumanManager helps you automate all processes from employee entry to exit which gives you the time to focus on strategic business growth.  

2.  Integration 

Efficient integration with new and existing software is crucial for a streamlined workflow. Choose an HRIS that can be integrated with other employee management solutions, including payroll, time and attendance, and benefits management. This integration ensures a cohesive data flow, eliminating the need for manual data entry and reducing the chances of errors.  

3.  Reporting 

Robust reporting capabilities are essential for gaining insights into various HR metrics and empower you to make informed decisions. Your chosen HRIS should offer customisable reporting features, allowing you to generate real-time data such as employee turnover and headcount.  

4.  Compliance 

Compliance with all extant laws in your area of jurisdiction is non-negotiable for any human resources management system. Choose a solution that provides features such as automatic updates on HR policies, compliance tracking, and other tools that support adherence to legal requirements. Being compliant safeguards your organisation and fosters a culture of trust among all stakeholders.  

5.  Employee Self-Service 

Enhance your overall employee experience with self-service features that foster engagement and reduce the workload on the HR team. An effective HRIS should offer a robust self-service module allowing employees to update their personal information (document uploads, profile update, with little or no paperwork) as well as access data on salary reports, benefits, and lots more.  

6.  User-Friendly Interface 

How user-friendly is the HRIS interface for your HR managers and employees? 

Choose a system with an intuitive, user-friendly interface that facilitates easy navigation. A good interface promotes adoption across the firm, ensure that all users can leverage the system’s functionalities without extensive training.  

Selecting the best HRIS requires a thoughtful analysis of factors that align with your organisation’s specific needs. By prioritising automation, integration, reporting, compliance, employee self-service, and a user-friendly interface, you can identify an HRIS that not only streamlines HR processes but also contributes to the overall success of your firm.  

Look beyond the popularity of the software and invest time in understanding your unique business requirements before selecting the best fit solution. Want to scale your business and give your employees the ease that they deserve? Visit www.humanmanager.net for more information or send an email to [email protected]  

Categories
Managing Teams

7 Tips for Effective Team Meetings

Have you ever led or been in a team meeting that went off track? Or does it stretches too long and boring that you slowly lost interest? Of course, we know that feeling!

Team meetings are a great way to engage colleagues, share ideas, and encourage creativity but this won’t happen if your meetings are badly structured or colleagues perceive them to be unnecessary and ineffective.

We’ve got the following tips to guide you and make your meetings rewarding:

1.      Plan Ahead – Keep your meeting on track

To avoid one-sided communication, you should share a brief or meeting agenda in advance with your team. Also, take note of important talk points, expected outcomes, and participants to attend, and choose the right time that suits every team member. This will help you evaluate the success of the meeting at the end.

2.     Adopt relevant technology

Technology is ever-evolving. You can now enjoy great collaboration tools that will help increase the efficiency of your meetings – send messages, share files, set up online calls and more. Here at SystemSpecs, we use collaboration tools like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google suites, GitHub, and more. You should try it out too.

3.     Be Time-conscious

When team members are late to meetings, it could result in unnecessary delays. There would be a need to recap and extend meetings to cover the agenda which will interfere with the meeting structure and possibly cause a ruckus. To avoid this, you need to set early attendance rules with reminders ahead of time to keep each member in check. Also, allocate time frames to the agenda outline for better time management.

4.     Ask Questions

Be intentional about your team’s participation. The meeting has to be valuable to everyone, so questions should be asked to encourage discussions and input. This way you’ll keep your team members actively interested and involved in the meeting and also confirm they understand the purpose and outcome of the meeting.

 5.     Set Ground Rules

This might seem too serious but it’s incredibly important to set ground rules that would keep your team members in check to avoid interference that could cause delay or generally any problems. Rules like: camera switched off if it isn’t a video call, mic muted when not speaking, phones silenced, meeting expectations, no interruptions, and others as they apply.

6.     Identify Meeting Patterns and Behaviours

If you’re going to change your old meeting patterns, you’ll need to observe your meeting patterns to observe what you think is wrong and also ask your team questions on what should be better improved to make the next meetings more effective. This will give you a better perspective on how the team feels and why they feel that way about your meetings.

7.      Improve Each Week and Do a Follow-up

This is a brief check-up that will boost your meetings every time. Less than being told what to do, people love to feel valued and that you care about their wellbeing. It’s not just about checking task completion but also building relationships with your team and checking in on how they are faring, and also how they are coping with their assigned task.

You can ask questions like: What worked and what didn’t? Was the last agenda accurate and helpful? Was there any information we could have shared in another way?

NOTE: Always test whether you need a meeting before setting up one. Once you have established that, you can decide how to use these tips to hold your best meetings ever. 

Want to make your work-life easy? HumanManager can help your business manage high-performing staff. Click here to get started.

Categories
Managing Processes

7 Must-have HR Modules for your Organisation

Human Resource Management (HRM) processes have evolved over the years, with the growing interest in the need to give employees the best opportunities for optimal performance, and to inherently boost revenue.

These inter-related, complex and often difficult tasks could be overwhelming for HR managers, leaving little or no room for strategic planning and proper fusing of their execution into the firm’s operations.

It is therefore important to consider an intuitive and innovative solution that delivers data accuracy, efficient management and enables the aggregation of multi-sourced data for quality decision-making.

When choosing an HR solution, it must have these 7 modules in order to enhance your operational productivity:

  1. Employee Information Management

The beginning of proper HR management is having the right staff data for a comprehensive insight into the type and capacity of the workforce. A good solution simplifies this process and eliminates hours of searching through hardcopy files for relevant staff information whenever required.

2. Administration Module

This helps you manage organisational structure and data through predefined metrics which enable seamless exchanges, approvals and decision-making. There should be clearly defined access rights for users and automated workflows for various processes to eliminate the need for time-consuming manual approval processes.

3. Performance Management

A fit-for-purpose appraisal system is key to evaluating individual and collective contributions towards set organisational objectives. This module simplifies the management of various appraisal systems including the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) or the Balanced Scorecard systems for an appraisal cycle.

4. Leave Management

According to a popular proverb, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”. You can now ensure that your employees take the needed rests as and when due, using a leave management solution to specify applicable leave types, staff entitlements, applicable allowances and schedule vacation times among others while ensuring a smooth handover.

5. Expense Management

Certain jobs demand staff to spend on behalf of companies, and on time too. This process can however be taxing due to the required audits and approval requirements. Automating the entire flow from advances to retirements or even re-imbursements and all the settings to align with company policies is the sure way to go!

6. Payroll Management

Another major source of expenditure of organisations is the compensation system, which largely involves the payroll. You can achieve more productive time for other HR functions and avoid falling on the wrong side of the law when you automate this complex process with the right application.

7. Self-Service

The self-service module empowers employees to comprehensively manage their personal information as well as drive transaction flows, approvals and feedback to monitor progress with relevant processes. Strict access rights should be applied as expected of a standard business support application.

In addition, when all activities have been carried out on the system — transactions passed, approvals given and major processes completed, reporting is the output that makes the work worthwhile for decision-making. Also, a comprehensive solution should have an up-to-date reporting system with easy-to-use infographics for high-level information from the solution.

You need not worry about where and how you can get all these benefits in one solution.

HumanManager, known for its 28 years of optimising workforce and talent management processes, can give you all these benefits and more.

Visit www.humanmanager.net now to request a DEMO and get started!