What are the key challenges organizations face when trying to scale their HR operations as they grow, like payroll and benefits?
One of the biggest challenges we see organizations face is scaling the administrative tasks within HR. With new employees and expanded benefits programs come more administrative work to onboard employees, manage payroll and benefits, make employer contributions and ensure adherence to regulations. And when companies begin to scale, many times their HR teams don’t scale as fast as the work does–putting this extra work on smaller teams.
To manage this work, many HR teams are currently dependent on the same manual tasks and processes that they’ve been using for decades – which can create hours of unnecessary work. This not only puts a strain on HR teams, but can impact employees as well. With so much time spent on the behind-the-scenes of payroll and benefits, there’s little time left for HR teams to spend on higher-level tasks, like educating employees on the benefits available to them and how to maximize those benefits.
How does Payroll Integrations help companies to scale their benefit offerings and financial wellness programs?
Our technology automates the administrative hassles of payroll and benefits, by connecting payroll systems with a wide spectrum of benefit providers. This enables HR teams to scale their processes and expand benefit offerings as their business grows because they don’t have to worry about manually entering employee details, managing contributions or ensuring compliance regulations.
According to Payroll Integrations’ Financial Wellness Report, HR managers spend 12 hours on average on payroll and benefit-related administrative tasks, with 27% of them saying they spend 20 hours or more. That’s up 25-50% of their work week taken up by administrative work.
Payroll Integrations eliminates the administrative burden behind payroll and benefits so teams can focus on what matters most: their employees. When HR teams no longer have to spend up to half of their day on these tasks, they can spend their time investing into employees and ensuring that their benefit offerings and financial wellness programs match what employees want and need. When their administrative work is automated, teams can also introduce new benefit offerings that they may not have been able to before, because they don’t have to manage as much on the backend.
Can you tell us a bit more about the benefits and payroll partners Payroll Integrations works with to help companies scale their HR operations?
We work with 70% of the payroll provider landscape, including ADP, Paychex, and Quickbooks Online, as well as 90% of the largest 401k providers, such as Empower, Transamerica, Principal, Voya and John Hancock. Our technology establishes a direct two-way connection between these payroll and benefit providers, that these companies would otherwise have to build individual integrations to have.
It’s through these integrations that we connect payroll with retirement, FSA/HSA and other employer-sponsored benefit plans for over 5,000 companies and their one million-plus employees. We also work with third-party administrators (TPAs) to provide payroll and census data for year-end compliance testing season and partner with companies like PensionPro to seamlessly connect TPAs with the providers they work with.
Why is financial wellness so important right now for employers to offer and for employees to have?
Employees have been feeling the financial pressures from inflation, higher costs of living, the rise of insurance costs and more, and employers increasingly feel responsible to help support their financial well-being. When employees are stressed or unsure about their financial health–it can impact other parts of their lives, including work. And for many employees, financial wellness benefits have become a need-to-have and can be the reason why they decided to stay or leave an organization.
The key to supporting employees’ financial wellness is to offer benefits and education where employees need it most–not based on what employers think is most important.
According to Payroll Integrations’ Financial Wellness Report, nearly half of employers believe they are completely supporting their employees’ financial wellness, but only 28% of employees feel the same way. This is likely because their priorities within financial wellness are not aligned. But employers remain committed to supporting employees’ financial health, with most employers expecting to invest more (56%) or the same amount (39%) in financial wellness programs for employees. We’ll only continue to see this grow in importance for both employers and employees.Â
In what ways are you seeing that HR tech is helping organizations to attract and retain employees, while scaling rapidly?
When companies use HR tech to eliminate their most repetitive and timely tasks, they’re left with extra hours in their week that they can use to focus on their employees. This includes speaking with employees to understand what’s most important to them from a benefits perspective, to ensure it’s reflected in the company’s offerings–or can be added. For example, a majority of employees say they would not accept a new job offer if retirement plans (67%) and health insurance (65%) were not offered as benefits.
In addition to offering the benefits that are most important to employees, HR teams can use the time they get back with HR tech to educate employees about their benefits. It’s not enough for employees to have the benefits available–they have to be able to use them and maximize their value.
Employees who feel educated about company benefits are three times more likely to opt in to certain benefits than those who don’t feel educated.
Companies that use HR tech, especially to automate information related to employees’ benefit and payroll, also ensure a much seamless and error-proof process for employees. This means employees don’t have to deal with things like wrong name spellings, incorrect contribution amounts or delays in being onboarded to benefits–they always have the timely information they need. When employees know their important information is always secure and reliable, they’re likely to put more trust in their employer.
What are some best practices for integrating HR technology into existing business systems without disrupting ongoing operations?
The best way to integrate HR technology into a business with as little disruption to operations as possible is to do it little by little. This is good advice for any technology that companies onboard, but especially for HR teams as they have historically been slower to digitize their work. Doing so one-by-one ensures teams have the time to learn the ins and outs of each individual tool before they start using it in their daily work–as opposed to integrating everything at once and overloading teams. While companies may be eager to onboard the technology and improve productivity, taking a slower approach will drive more efficiencies–and cause less disruption–in the long run.
Another practice to keep in mind is that even when tools are onboarded, teams’ education on their tools and technology shouldn’t stop. Consistent learnings about the tools they’re using will help teams to always maximize the benefits of their technology–especially as new updates and features become available. This will also ensure that there are never any operational disruptions down the line.
How do you see automation and AI reshaping HR processes to increase productivity and support business growth over the next few years?
We’ll continue to see automation and AI become a part of HR processes as HR teams start to onboard a few tools—and see their impact to productivity—and grow to utilize more. And while we currently see HR teams using AI to automate more administrative tasks, in the next few years we will likely start to see them use AI in other parts of their job. The more HR teams can automate their more mundane and repetitive work, the more time they can spend face-to-face with employees.
Doug Sabella
Doug Sabella is the CEO and co-founder of Payroll Integrations. Sabella co-founded Payroll Integrations in 2016 to simplify payroll and benefit processes for employers and advance employees' financial wellness. The company's technology introduces a direct, two-way connection between payroll systems and benefits providers (401k, HSA/FSA, etc.) to automate the process of onboarding employees, updating benefit plans and managing employer/employee contributions.
