There Are Goldmines Of Data Hidden In Your Payroll
You might think of payroll as a basic necessity to your business—you take care of the totals and move on. But there is actually a lot of information within your payroll data that could be applied to running a better business. Here are some takeaways from your payroll.
Attendance
You may need to study attendance patterns throughout the work year. There are key signs that point to dissatisfaction, such as lots of time taken off at the end of the year.
Utilization
Another thing that you might discover in your payroll data is how well employees are being utilized in the company. This refers to the amount of billable hours or hours that are spent on activities that directly bring in revenue. Some departments are naturally better at this than others, such as sales. But it helps to look within departments to see which employees are bringing in revenue and which are spending their time on unrelated tasks. You might even want to set standards for how long employees spend on administrative vs direct tasks if you notice any discrepancies between employees in the same department. Or, you might look at giving raises or letting underperforming employees go.
Turnover
Turnover is something that can be looked at within departments or shifts. If you have a list of employees who quit or were fired within the previous year, you can look at payroll data to see who their manager was during those shifts or which hours they were working. There may be a greatly different culture under each manager or at different times of the day, so if you notice a pattern with who's quitting or not dong well, you might need to provide better incentives to those employees.
Payroll Tax
Another area you can look at is the spendings themselves. This is especially true with payroll tax. You might need to analyze how much money is spent on payroll tax and whether or not there is a way to reduce it. It may be possible to reduce payroll tax, for instance, by offering better perks rather than giving cash bonuses and raises.
In short, there are many different ways that you can use payroll data to your benefit. By outsourcing your payroll to a payroll services specialist, such as those found at Homer Wilson & Co Ltd, you can help to ensure that the data are all accurate and presented in a visually appealing way so that you can pick out trends and areas to explore in more depth.