HRMS Payroll: 3 Steps to Salary Management Success

In all companies, salary is the largest part of employee costs. It makes sense then, to give it the closest of attention. With so much data to manage, how can an HRMS payroll be used to improve your salary management processes?

Compare HRMS Payroll Metrics

If your HRMS includes your payroll, then you have all of the numbers and employee details within one database. If you have all of these details, it is easy to then run reports and analytics from your HRMS.

Salaries and fringe benefits may vary according to location and the employment market. However, within one location and one grade range, your HRMS payroll module can drive comparison metrics: why is one analyst paid so much more than another at the same level? Why does a group of employees at a certain level receive a certain allowance via payroll when the next level up does not? Comparisons among groups of employees will help you to ensure standardization and fairness in compensation.

Implement Manager Self-Service

Another area where HRMS payroll can support effective salary management is the area of HRMS manager self-service. Many years ago, HR and Payroll held all of the pay-related knowledge and managers were not expected to be interested in the details. However, times have changed and manager self-service has opened the door to managers learning more about such topics.

Guide: how to successfully manage payroll with HRMS

Managers are now expected to be savvy enough to recommend a pay increase percent, based on various compensation details. Such actions require the functionality to be enabled in the HRMS payroll module, as well as the base underlying data, e.g. employees have correct reporting lines, grades, ranges, as well as system help and errors to ensure that managers do not go beyond guidelines without additional approvals being triggered.

Get the Salary Right from the Start

A final area where HRMS payroll data supports salary management is in the area of recruitment and retention. Turnover is a common metric, however, to get to in-depth analysis, you need your HRMS payroll data to support such a task, to understand all of the cost factors. As well, from a recruitment perspective, if applicants for a certain position are turning down job offers even though it’s the going rate for the current staff, it may be that current staff are underpaid as compared to the market, as the applicant knows. In such cases, your HRMS can then highlight payroll salary discrepancies prior to them becoming a larger issue with your current employee population.