Going Global? Make Sure Your HR/Payroll System Keeps Up!


Labor costs are often one of the largest line items in your yearly budget, yet many organizations struggle with being able to reconcile actual labor costs with budgeted labor costs. Handling scheduling and payroll for workers in multiple locations, especially cross-border employees, means navigating a labyrinth of jurisdictional rules and regulations.

For management to have the kind of finely-tuned information needed to make labor decisions, it is crucial that payroll and HR data be detailed and accurate. Do you have an HR system for cross-border workforce that will help your business be as efficient as your business could be?



Here are seven signs you might need to review your HR software to better serve a cross-border workforce: 

1. You can’t seem to get the data you need or want from your current system. When you do pull data, it requires a large amount of massaging to fit the reporting requirements.

In some instances, budget overruns may be due to unforeseen costs that arise during the fiscal year. More often, however, the inability to reconcile is directly linked to incomplete or inaccurate payroll data. The ability to pull data from your system that answers the questions at hand is essential to enabling management to quickly and efficiently allocate labor when plans must change or projects grow in scope. If your current HR system isn’t helping you do that, it's wasting your time and costing you money. It might be time for a change. 

2. Your payroll system doesn’t allow for inputting of different jurisdictional rules, and your provider can’t give you the latest information on labor regulation and tax changes. 

Companies with cross-border employees need to stay on top of the rules and regulations unique to those employees' compensation and employment. Even closer to home, states and municipalities are quickly passing new regulations mandating paid sick leave for workers, with varying accrual requirements, which require workers’ hours (and the locations in which they perform those hours) to be carefully tracked. Tax regulations are in constant flux and especially complex for cross-border employees. If you have to keep track manually, you spend extra time and risk making mistakes in payroll in Canadian provinces or other municipalities and states. Keeping up with national and international labor regulations and tax laws isn't your business – it's ours! Let us help you get your scheduling and payroll systems under control so you can go back to your own thriving business.

3. Your time collection and entry is centralized; double-entry and mistakes occur because you are not capturing time at the source.

Today, companies operating with national and cross-border workforces face the challenge of re-deploying people to various jurisdictions as projects expand, shrink, or close. For management to have the information necessary to make relevant decisions, payroll data must be detailed and accurate. This means workers' times need to be entered at the source (ideally through a scheduling system that employees use) and cost-coded to a specific activity such as travel time, regular communications, safety, rig shift, etc. Once time and activities are entered correctly, analysis of that time and cost becomes more straightforward.

4. Your payroll department spends a large amount of time creating, correcting, and managing the accuracy of employee schedules and time-entry transactions.

If you have employees governed by collective bargaining agreements, you have to remember the contract rules. Some people get called in first and others can’t be called in. You can’t override employment agreements, which means you must maintain careful and accurate records of scheduling and payroll. If an emergency situation arises that requires employees be called in, you must be able to determine which employees are permissible, and among them, which are the best and most efficient for the project. Implementing an integrated payroll and scheduling system can dramatically improve the dynamics of this process while increasing the efficiency of your operations. The best people for the job, scheduled in the most efficient manner, equal a better bottom line.

5. Employees are frustrated with the scheduling process, and even more frustrated with inaccuracies on their paychecks.

Workers who don’t trust the payroll or scheduling system become disgruntled very quickly, and a frustrated workforce is an inefficient workforce. An integrated scheduling and payroll system will improve your employees’ scheduling and time tracking experiences while making sure payroll is accurate and timely – keeping everyone happy and more productive.

6. Without the right people with the right qualifications on the job, you risk increasing your legal liability.

Payroll and scheduling mistakes could expose you to liability if you are unable to comply with the requirements of your collective bargaining agreements or other jurisdictional requirements regarding worker qualifications. Fees add up, not to mention the cost of litigation services. Having a trustworthy payroll system will give you the peace of mind that you’re doing everything possible to minimize your risk.

7. You have a large volume of complex rules surrounding schedules and pay, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to handle the volume of changes each pay period.

Our business is helping you get back to your business. Stop wasting your limited resources struggling to keep up with the changing landscape of payroll rules and regulations (let alone having time to analyze data for budgeting purposes or to answer questions from other departments)! We can implement and manage an integrated scheduling and payroll system to help you more accurately track payroll costs and ensure complete compliance with union contracts, collective bargaining agreements, and jurisdictional labor and tax requirements. Contact us today to talk about how we can help you optimize your scheduling, simplify your payroll, and improve your business with an integrated system.

Contact Us!