Back to School: Why Continuous Learning is Important in Payroll

September: the month that children dread as they make their return to school after the freedom of the long summer months. But for adults, especially those in the payroll industry, after the quiet summer period September should be a time to be motivated and to adopt that ‘back to school’ thinking. It’s important for teams not to be stagnant. In the ever-developing payroll industry, adaptability is key and so learning shouldn’t stop just because you’ve left school—in payroll and HR it’s all about continuous learning. 

The payroll industry is non-stop and developing all the time. With emerging technology that has the potential to revolutionize the industry, there is always something new for the HR professional to learn. Ultimately, if a payroll department can embrace HR technology, then everyday has the potential to feel like a summer holiday with its power to minimize the repetitive admin tasks for the team. 
Learning to efficiently work alongside HR and payroll technologies, such as automation and AI, can free up the human workforce to focus on the more value adding tasks. Working with these technologies enables the team to be more ‘human’ and spend more time on the tasks which require emotional intelligence and empathy, which automation simply can’t be applied to. HR tech can put the ‘human’ back into Human Resources, and if teams can learn how to properly implement it rather than shy away from it, the department will become much more efficient. 

In addition to the implementation of technologies, new legislations that affect the payroll industry are always being introduced. The recent introduction of GDPR reshaped how payroll teams across Europe handled customer and employee data—ensuring compliancy is an ongoing commitment and certainly not a one time job as there always more to be learnt (if an organization is to avoid significant fines from the ICO). 
A payroll team can never sit back and relax—there’s always a new development to keep on top of to ensure efficient and compliant running of the department. It’s important to keep on top of incoming legislations—such as the potential new workplace laws in Australia to protect gig economy workers—that could affect how the department functions. If HR professionals are to stay on top of their game, there’s always learning to be done. 

On top of the implementation of new laws, it’s just as important to stay on top of the current legislations to avoid those significant fines. A ‘back to school’ compliance refresher course for the payroll team could be the answer to ensuring the risk of non-compliance is a low as possible: this will prepare the team for the busy period ahead.
As well as learning at work, there are training days, courses and qualifications that payroll professionals can undertake. You can never know too much about the intricacies of the payroll industry and the more that employees can learn, the more efficient the department becomes—as demonstrated above, there’s always something new to learn about.

Sharing knowledge as a team and as well as an industry is mutually beneficial. Alongside running team training sessions to ensure that the team is on top of their game, industry conferences are valuable opportunities to learn from industry experts and benefit from their unique insights. SD Worx will be sponsoring and exhibiting at the upcoming UNLEASH in Amsterdam, sharing our expert industry knowledge as well as learning from others—will we see you there? 

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The workplace, just like school, is a natural source of learning. In a non-stop industry such as HR and payroll, it’s never too late to learn something new and develop departmental efficiency. 
Learn more from SD Worx’s insight on our previous blog  here.