PaidRight is a fast and cost-effective way to prove
you are paying every employee correctly
Can you prove you are paying all of your staff correctly every payrun?
All retailers paying under modern awards and enterprise agreements can now feel confident they can prove they’re payroll compliant with new technology. Common controls of sample testing and reliance on payroll or time and attendance systems have proved inadequate in shielding retailers from underpayment scandals.
However, a new technology released this year allows retailers to have oversight over every employee, in minutes, not weeks, providing real confidence in payroll functions.
PaidRight’s payroll compliance platform
PaidRight has launched a payroll compliance product that provides the ability to prove you are compliant. In minutes you can review your entire payroll every month, based on your interpretation of the applicable modern awards or enterprise agreements and payroll data from all of your systems.
Review all employees, not just a sample
Previously sample testing was acceptable as a risk management approach as entire workforce reviews took too long or were too costly. However, sample testing when conducting payroll compliance audits or reviews is not good enough anymore as technology allows retailers to do entire workforce reviews at the same price and speed as a sample test.
Sample testing unfortunately is what got us into the position we are in today; daily articles about underpayments, damage to brands and confidence and uncertain payroll teams is a result of not assessing all employees.
The PaidRight product allows retailers to review their entire workforce, all modern awards, all enterprise agreements and all employees. PaidRight were able to generate results for a recent customer in less than 5 hours of receiving their raw payroll data making it much faster and more cost effective than traditional sample testing methods.
Reviewing 100% of your workforce allows for total risk awareness and the ability to make business changes within offset periods alleviating the need for a large scale wage remediation project. It will provide confidence to various stakeholders, including the board, investors and Fair Work.
Time and attendance systems are difficult to configure to deal with complex interpretation
Reliance on time and attendance or payroll systems is also not sufficient as although many time and attendance systems have inbuilt award interpretation tools that calculate pay based on an employee’s rosters and timesheets. What has become evident in recent years is that many of these systems are difficult to configure to accurately capture some of the more complex clauses that retailers have to comply with.
The difficulty in configuring these codified systems to deal with different interpretations has led to uncertainty, frustration and underpayments. Some common examples of where we have seen issues are triggers and rules for consecutive days on and off work, regular Sunday workers, 19 starts in a four week roster cycle and max ordinary hours on a day.
To totally mitigate the risk of underpaying our people, relying on the configuration of our time and attendance systems has proven not to be adequate.
Why do retailers need to act now?
The Australian Payroll Association recently conducted a survey of 2178 payroll professionals, which conveyed that senior management lacked knowledge of what is needed for a compliant payroll and provided little supervision of wage audits, and that payroll teams felt overworked.
When asked what contributed to their burnout, 49 per cent cited lack of leadership, 40 per cent lack of resources, 39 per cent lack of investment in payroll, and 36 per cent unrealistic deadlines and expectations.
These results follow previous advice from the Fair Work Ombudsman calling large companies to invest more in payroll teams and overall compliance. Underpayments were “almost inevitable” unless action was taken, including investing more in payroll teams to support retention and bringing in external specialists to conduct regular reviews.
Helping the retail industry prove they are getting it right
PaidRight makes it easier for the retail industry to prove they are paying their people correctly. They are already working with some of the country’s best-known retailers and have spent years building a robust product, built to deal with different interpretations of the relevant retail industry awards and enterprise agreements.
As a member of the Australian Retailers Association, you are eligible for a 20% discount when signing up for PaidRight’s ongoing compliance reviews.
If you’d like to learn how you can utilise PaidRight’s product, book a demo today!
