64% of businesses change their payroll performance targets

The research from software provider Zellis is based on a survey of payroll and HR decision-makers from more than 150 organisations across the UK, Isle of Man, Channel Islands, and the Republic of Ireland, that run payroll in-house.

Citing limited team sizes and remote working challenges, 44 percent of respondents said they are not confident about their organisation’s ability to run its payroll function if staff members are directly affected by COVID-19.

The vast majority of decision-makers (85 percent) said their organisation employs fewer than 10 payroll staff members, while 15 percent said these employees do not have access to the infrastructure and resources needed to work at full capacity from home.

Managing short-term change was also highlighted as a major challenge, as 40 percent said they are concerned about the complexity of adopting emergency government measures such as changes to sick pay and the UK’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (or Ireland’s Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme).

When asked how their organisation is responding to the pressures of COVID-19, nearly 64 percent said they have either changed their payroll performance targets or deprioritised other work in order to focus on key tasks.

A third of payroll and HR decision-makers agreed that COVID-19 will have some form of long-term impact on how their organisation runs its payroll and HR operations.

Nearly four in 10 (39 percent) said their organisation will develop stronger business continuity plans to prepare for any future incidents, while a quarter (27 percent) will focus on accelerating the adoption of automation to reduce its dependency on manual work.