44% of Employees Paid Late in Latest Global Payroll Survey

Did You Know Recently, SD Worx, A Global HR And Payroll Service Provider Revealed That Out Of 4000 Employees Surveyed, 44% Had Been Paid Late By Their Employers?

In fact, 48% of those who were paid late, were paid incorrectly. Out of the employees who had been paid incorrectly, 79% of them identified the issue themselves and 44% respondents would consider leaving their jobs after been paid incorrectly.

Isn’t this a huge number? Indeed it is! The above statistics tell us how employees’ actions are directly proportional to how accurately and timely are they being paid.

We all work hard at our jobs to give our best and give up on a lot of time, which we could otherwise spend with our loved ones. As an employer, you need to respect this commitment. But how do you do that? One way of keeping your employees satisfied is to ensure that they receive satisfactory compensation every month. In fact, this is one of the major reasons which will drive your workforce to work well (or not work at all).

“An average of 44% of respondents who were paid incorrectly said they would consider looking for work elsewhere.”

Processing payroll is a tough job and making it an accurate process can be even more complex. For most organizations, which still indulge in processing payroll at a manual level, the discrepancies can be huge – the biggest being the potential of human error. Such errors if ignored for long periods of time, can bring down the morale of employees to a great extent.

Going back to the SD Worx survey, the majority of employees who experienced payment delays felt their perception of their employer as ‘slightly negative’ to a ‘highly negative’ impact. Surveyed employees also thought that the cause for their late payment was poor management or financially unstable employers. – Now this becomes a serious business! What do you think? Inefficient payroll not just brings your finance guy into the picture but questions the functioning of your entire management system.

“The results of this survey are shocking in regards to the impact that payroll error has on employee engagement. An increasing number of employees are becoming actively disengaged in their workplace due to late or incorrect payments, something that employers need to fix to ensure that their employees are have high morale and trust in the workplace”.

 ~ Jan Van Mol, Head of Global Alliance at SD Worx

Incorrect or untimely payroll processing can not only make employees feel under appreciated and undervalued, but  they also become disengaged and detached from your organization. These employees are then underproductive and prone to making 100 times more errors than their engaged counterparts. For organizations, that is 100 times more energy, time and money wasted on a resource who isn’t willing to perform. The only way out of this is to eliminate the scope of such errors that cause employees to quit organizations.

“65% of employees do not feel recognized at work.”

If employees are dissatisfied, they leave, and with them they also take the knowledge, skills and experience that they acquired from working in organizations. It takes at least one-fifth of an employee’s salary to replace that employee. This cost can be huge for large organizations with high employee turnover rates. The cost of replacing an employee would include separation costs, increased overtime and other costs such as onboarding and training. On the contrary, engaged employees are 87% less likely to leave their organizations than disengaged employees. This is going to be coupled with social withdrawals, negativity at the workplace, lack of initiative to learn or improve and employee absenteeism.

Wondering what should be your next move? Let’s start with payroll. Ensure that your employees are paid on time and their dues are always cleared. This can be a good start as monetary compensation matters. This of course has to be coupled with other engagement efforts that go beyond financials. Invest in a payroll software that lets your finance team disburse payments in a matter of minutes through a few clicks. The advantages are:

• Lesser time in processing payroll, which can enable your teams to focus on core activities.
• No more errors in bookkeeping.
• Minimum paperwork, as everything is stored in cloud.
• A standardized hub storing employee and organizational information.
• Strict adherence to federal laws eliminating chances of legal trouble.

Such small changes can have the biggest impact in motivating your employees and keeping them engaged. After all, engaged employees are your biggest assets.