Payroll doesn’t really have a quiet season — it just has different cycles of busy. And it’s during those intense work periods that payroll professionals can experience high job stress.
When stress levels spike, your team’s morale and job satisfaction can take a hit, leading to lower performance and costly mistakes. But there’s a lot you can do as a payroll manager to help ease the pressure on your team. You can’t remove every stress factor, of course, but these six strategies can go a long way toward keeping your payroll staff feeling engaged and motivated on the job:
1. Be quick to recognize standout work
If your payroll staff has been putting in extra hours to get through a busy period, they deserve sincere, timely and specific recognition for their efforts. Acknowledging their efforts in an all-team email or during a video conference is a simple but powerful way to provide recognition.
For employees who have gone above and beyond, such as working on a weekend to help meet a payroll reporting deadline or catching a critical error in time, thank them with a gift card or paid time off.
2. Provide flexible work options
Research for Robert Half’s latest Salary Guide found that more than half of workers (56%) want their employers to provide remote work opportunities. And in a separate survey we conducted, professionals who said they plan to search for a new job in the next six months cited the ability to work remotely permanently among their top reasons for moving.
So, if your organization isn’t offering remote or hybrid work arrangements for your payroll staff, it could impact morale and your recruiting and retention efforts. Leading employers understand that flexible work options are here to stay. These arrangements can give your payroll staff the autonomy and work-life integration they want while helping the business grow its reputation as an employer of choice.
Learn seven ways to engage employees who work remotely.
3. Offer meaningful training and development opportunities
Professional development and training are essential for broadening your payroll employees’ skills and helping them prepare for the future of work. What’s more, when you invest in them, they return that investment with greater loyalty and engagement. Training often gets pushed to the back burner when things become manic, but don’t let busyness get in the way of helping your payroll staff reach their full potential.
Online training, job rotation, job shadowing and mentoring arrangements (including reverse mentoring) are all professional development options that can help your payroll team members expand their skills and knowledge. Payroll conferences are also a great way for your staff to learn from industry leaders and their peers from around the country.
4. Invite team members to take on new challenges
The payroll department’s work is vital to the business, but it can get repetitive for payroll staff. To help shake up the routine, consider offering your employees special projects and stretch assignments.
For example, you could ask them to list some payroll pain points and suggest solutions. Reducing the error rate, streamlining the onboarding process and improving payroll-related communication with company employees might be some of their ideas. And by working on creative solutions together, you build a more cohesive team and empower staff to take ownership of their work.
5. Review compensation regularly
It’s essential for companies to pay employees competitive compensation, so be sure to evaluate and adjust salaries regularly. Even if your organization can’t increase salaries for payroll staff right now, consider whether you could provide other forms of compensation, such as bonuses. Don’t forget about improving healthcare benefits and retirement plans, which can help raise employees’ job satisfaction, too.
See this post for more strategies that can boost employee engagement — and retention.
6. Bring in extra support when needed
Even the best payroll employees can flounder on the job when they’re feeling overworked and stressed. As you consider your team’s long to-do list during busy periods like tax time and year-end, make sure your payroll department is adequately staffed. Hiring payroll specialists on a contract basis to lend a helping hand during intense work periods is one strategy for easing the pressure on your staff while keeping critical work moving forward.
Employee engagement isn’t just some touchy-feely concept that you can leave or take. Helping your payroll team stay motivated has net benefits all around: It’s good for them, it’s good for you as their manager, and, ultimately, it’s good for the company’s bottom line.
