Would you benefit from a payroll health check?
The Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals helps organisations find robust processes and put in place routine compliance checks, which are critical to ensuring risks of non-compliance in all areas of payroll are eradicated.
The payroll landscape is one of regular change, where the consequences of compliance risks can be adverse. The payroll department must ensure that an employer’s statutory and contractual obligations are fulfilled.
Maintaining best practice in payroll is essential to remain compliant but with constant changes, it would be easy to fall behind if departments don’t keep knowledge and processes up to date. The penalties if businesses fail to pay employees on time, file payroll taxes incorrectly or hold incomplete payroll records can range from being at risk of significant financial penalties enforced by HMRC, to damaged reputation from negative media coverage and even a loss of staff.
The CIPP, which is a leading voice on payroll and pension matters, has an arm to its business called CIPP Consult which might be able to help.
CIPP Consult prides itself on reviewing payroll operations with a ‘fresh pair of eyes’. The consultancy business will recommend innovative improvements to processes and ways of working. CIPP Consult provides payroll, reward, benefits and human resource advice, which is completely independent of all software and service suppliers and is based on their knowledge base. 
CIPP Consult has a proven track record of helping organisations in a variety of ways such as support in making strategic decisions, streamlining and improving payroll operations, system reviews or expertise to fix a specific issue.
Natasha Taylor is the Consultancy Relationship Lead at CIPP Consult: “Compliance within payroll is essential, yet payroll departments are often so focussed on making sure all employees are paid ‘on time and accurately’ that they do not always have time to step back and review the way they operate.
“Sometimes, the department is aware that something needs to be investigated, but finding the time, resource or expertise to effectively review and identify any issues becomes a barrier.”
Potential benefits of a payroll health check
CIPP Consult PAYE health check has been developed to support employers in reviewing what payroll departments are doing, identify risk areas and make suggestions for improvement.
Following an extensive review of the payroll operation, businesses receive a report outlining any risk areas that have been identified and recommendations, which is broken down into legislative issues, contractual issues, and areas of best practice.
This sort of health check helps prevent payroll fraud; identifies inefficiencies in the payroll process; identifies errors and provides solutions and strengthens financial controls. Further benefits include:
- Identifying errors and providing solutions for rectification
- Curtailing both financial and regulatory risks
- Reviewing employee data
- Payroll analysis
Once CIPP Consult has helped provide solutions to strengthen the business, there is an opportunity for the business and its people to be certified with the only payroll industry accreditation – the Payroll Assurance Scheme.
The Payroll Assurance Scheme is the prestigious gold standard for both people and payroll processes and is the much-coveted award in the payroll industry.
As the only voluntary accreditation on the market and developed in partnership with HMRC, the scheme is designed to identify risks to a business arising from skills gaps or inadequate processes and is a huge accolade for payroll staff, once accreditation has been achieved.
“We are absolutely thrilled to have obtained this accreditation for our UK Payroll Services team. The Payroll Assurance Scheme is a gold standard award in the payroll industry and it was hugely important for us to obtain this. Not only does this demonstrate our commitment to our staff in terms of continuous learning and development but also our clients can be assured that we are dedicated to compliance and best practices in the payroll industry.”
PwC LLP
Mitigate payroll compliance risk by accrediting your processes and qualifying your people. To find out more information about CIPP Consult, click here.