Payroll leaders often find it difficult to totally switch off while on holiday. Here are four tips for ensuring your annual leave is relaxing and you get the well-earned time you need to completely reset from a busy professional life what comes with a ton of deadlines.
In mid-size organisations the burden of payroll often primarily falls on one person’s shoulders. When you're the individual responsible for ensuring everyone gets paid correctly and on time, taking a vacation can feel like an impossible endeavour.
We’ve all heard stories of the payroll leader who takes their laptop on holiday because they are too indispensable. Or the payroll lead who can’t take more than a few days off at a time because the company processes payroll weekly or biweekly. We asked our connections on LinkedIn how they manage their holidays to find out more:
Payroll leaders, how do you arrange coverage during your annual leave?
- 12% I’ve trained a junior to cover me
- 10% My boss covers for me
- 76% I schedule my holidays around payroll
- 2% The company hires a contractor
Payroll is the financial lifeblood of every organisation and must run accurately and on-time. But payroll leaders should also be able to use their annual leave entitlement to recharge and model a healthy work behaviour to the rest of the team. Planning and additional support means payroll people can unplug while on holiday.
Create time of for payroll people
Scheduling your holidays around a monthly payroll cycle is a common scenario, but payroll professionals who work at companies with weekly or biweekly payroll cycles often bring their laptops with them on vacation. They would rather take care of it while on leave than come home to a lot more work than they left behind them. Or they put off taking leave altogether, which can lead to burn out as many workers and managers around the world aren’t using their entire holiday allowances. In the US, 54% of managers and 42% of non-managers don’t use all the paid time off offered by their employer. In the UK, an estimated 65% of workers don’t use their annual leave.
Payroll professionals who can’t take time off when it suits their personal life and unplug from work are far more likely to experience burnout and dissatisfaction at work. One person shouldn’t have to bear the entire weight of payroll. Here are four ways to protect your time off as a payroll leader while still ensuring wages are processed efficiently and in compliance.
- Document everything. Create thorough documentation and checklists for your organisation’s payroll process. It’s essential to update these files regularly and keep them on a shared drive. Every company has quirks, and documenting your deadlines, processes, common pitfalls and exceptions will help colleagues stepping in during your absence.
- Train up. Building a payroll talent pipeline is important. You shouldn’t wait for a crisis to identify someone who can handle payroll in your absence. Invest time in mentoring and training one or two of your juniors so they can pitch in or take over when needed. This not only better prepares your team for absences but also fosters career growth and builds business resilience.
- Crosstrain. If you don’t have juniors, your boss or another manager should learn your payroll process. Cross-training a finance or HR manager on key payroll functions can keep the process running in your absence. (It’s also a way to build appreciation for the complexity and value of payroll work.)
- Hire backup. If internal resources are limited, consider engaging a contractor to cover your time off. This can be a cost-effective way to ensure continuity without overburdening your team. Be sure to bring them up to speed with your documentation well in advance of your time off—it could make sense to process payroll together before your leave. As part of a global payroll offering, activpayroll provide short-term staffing support for businesses looking to fill a key business function in payroll.
The most important thing is to document and test the backup plan procedures before they are needed so teams feel well prepared when payroll leaders are absent. In addition to covering payroll for annual leave, these strategies are useful in case of emergency as well. A sudden medical leave can leave a company scrambling to run payroll if there’s no contingency plan. Having a backup plan in place helps maintain payroll accuracy, keeps employees happy and a global business running smoothly—and importantly, allows leaders to leave the laptop at home.