As an HR leader, you want to support your payroll colleagues. You know how important their work is, you know how much pressure they can be under, and you certainly don’t want to be the person adding to it. The problem is that payroll can be a bit of a black box.
HR teams are busy managing people, handling employee issues and keeping up with their own deadlines. It isn’t always obvious what is happening behind the scenes in payroll, or how much pressure a seemingly small request can create at a particular point in the payroll process.
So, how can a HR leader better support their payroll team?
The good news is, you don’t need to understand every detail of payroll. Instead, focus on understanding what your payroll team needs from HR, when they need it and what happens when that information arrives too late. A little more visibility, communication and planning can make all the difference.
The relationship between HR and payroll
HR and payroll are two sides of the same employee experience. Each with different responsibilities, systems, and deadlines, but directly affecting one another.
Almost every stage of the employee lifecycle creates information that payroll needs to process accurately: a new starter is added, someone receives a promotion and their salary changes, an employee goes on maternity leave, someone leaves the business. From an HR perspective, these are all familiar people-related processes. But for payroll, each one creates a change that needs to be recorded, checked and reflected in an employee’s pay. The timing and accuracy of that information matters because payroll can only process what it receives from HR.
This is why supporting payroll starts with understanding the relationship between the two teams. When HR understands what payroll is working towards, it becomes much easier to work together rather than unintentionally working against each other’s deadlines.
What is a payroll calendar and why should HR leaders understand it?
One of the simplest and most effective ways HR leaders can support payroll is to understand the payroll calendar.
A payroll calendar sets out the key dates in the payroll process, including when information needs to reach payroll, when payroll is processed and when employees are paid. For payroll teams, these dates aren’t just useful diary reminders. They determine how much time the team has to check information, resolve queries and make sure everyone gets paid correctly.
The challenge is that these deadlines aren’t always visible to HR. If you don’t know that payroll is about to hit its cut-off, you might reasonably think that asking for a salary change, bonus or other adjustment is a straightforward request. From payroll’s perspective, however, that same request might arrive at the worst possible moment, when the team is already working against the clock. This is where a lot of unnecessary stress can build up.
It isn’t that HR is deliberately making things difficult. It is that the impact of a request isn’t always visible from the outside. Making the payroll calendar visible to HR can change that. It gives everyone a shared understanding of what “last minute” actually means and helps HR teams plan their requests around the reality of payroll processing.
What information does payroll need from HR?
While the exact requirements will vary between organisations, there are certain changes the HR team will often need to communicate to payroll, such as:
- New starters and their employment details
- Leavers and termination dates
- Promotions and salary changes
- Bonuses and other additional payments
- Maternity, paternity and other family leave
- Absence and changes that affect pay
- Changes to employee or bank details
The important thing isn’t just knowing what information to send: it is understanding when to send it. A salary change communicated two weeks before payroll cut-off is a very different situation from the same change arriving a few hours before payroll needs to be finalised.
Payroll teams can quickly feel stressed and under-valued when they are constantly dealing with last minute requests and changes. Especially when it involves requests that could have easily been communicated earlier.
Oh, and if your HR processes aren’t making this easy, it may be worth reviewing how your systems and processes connect.
What causes unnecessary pressure for payroll teams?
Payroll pressure comes from a combination of tight deadlines, changing information and work arriving at the absolute wrong moment in the process.
For HR leaders, the trick is to recognise where it is your team can make life easier for around these pressure points, and help another team, who have a very important job to do.
| Challenge | Potential impact |
| Manual data entry | Increased risk of payroll errors |
| Inaccurate employee data | Incorrect employee payments |
| Late HR updates | Payroll delays and additional work |
| Poor communication | Reduced employee confidence |
| Last-minute requests | Increased pressure and reduced time for checks |
| Changing legislation | Compliance risks |
The phrase “it’s only one small change” can be particularly dangerous around payroll.
For the person making the request, it might genuinely feel like a small change. For payroll, it could mean stopping what they’re doing, checking the implications, making an adjustment, running additional checks and potentially revisiting work that has already been completed.
That doesn’t mean HR should never make an urgent request. Sometimes things genuinely are urgent. It simply means that understanding the payroll calendar helps HR distinguish between something that can wait and something that really can’t.
7 Simple ways HR leaders can support their payroll team
- Make the payroll calendar visible – Make sure that members of the HR team know the key dates in the payroll calendar. This gives everyone a shared understanding of when payroll needs information and when the pressure starts to build.
- Understand what “last minute” really means – Ask your payroll team what happens during the final days and hours before payroll is processed. You may be surprised by how much work is happening behind the scenes.
- Avoid last-minute requests where you can – Not every request can be planned. But when you can give payroll more notice, do it.
- Get information right first time – Accurate employee data makes payroll’s job easier and reduces the risk of errors. Take the time to check information before passing it across, particularly when it relates to pay or contractual changes.
- Communicate changes early – A few days’ extra notice can give the team time to ask questions, check the information and resolve an issue without having to work around an already tight deadline.
- Talk to payroll about exceptions – When something unusual comes up, involve payroll rather than simply sending over a request and hoping they can make it work. A quick conversation can often prevent a much bigger problem later.
- Learn from what went wrong – If the same payroll issue keeps happening, don’t just correct it and move on. Ask what caused it and if HR can help. Was the information too late? Was responsibility unclear? Did a manual process create the problem? Fixing the root cause can make the next payroll run easier for everyone.
How can technology help HR and payroll work better together?
When you have integrated HR and payroll systems it reduces duplicate data entry, improves payroll data accuracy and gives HR and payroll a shared source of truth. This matters because every manual hand-off creates another opportunity for information to be delayed, entered incorrectly or missed altogether.
Technology won’t solve every HR and payroll problem. But when the right systems support well-designed processes, they can remove some of the friction that makes collaboration harder.
If your systems aren’t talking to each other as well as they could, HRIS integrations can help connect your technology and reduce manual processes.
What does good HR and payroll collaboration look like?
Good HR and payroll collaboration doesn’t mean HR needs to take on more of payroll’s workload. It means both teams understand each other’s pressures.
HR knows when payroll deadlines are approaching. Payroll knows that HR is trying to manage its own competing priorities. Communication is timely, questions are raised before they become problems and both teams feel able to speak openly when something isn’t working. Most importantly, payroll doesn’t feel like an afterthought.
If you’re an HR leader who has ever thought, “I know payroll are under pressure, but I’m not really sure what I can do to help”, start with a conversation. Ask your payroll team to walk you through their calendar. Ask when their busiest periods are. Ask what information they wish they received earlier. Ask which requests create the most pressure and why.
You don’t have to fix everything immediately. Simply making those pressures visible can be a powerful first step.
In conclusion
Supporting payroll starts with understanding it. Take the time to understand what happens behind the scenes and recognising how HR impacts payroll. A few small changes can make all the difference, and give your payroll colleagues the breathing room they need to do their job properly.
For more tips and tricks, on bridging the gap between HR teams and Payroll teams, have a listen to our Payroll episode of The HR Green Room, where we’re joined by Payroll expert Adam Ford, to discuss practical ways HR leaders can support their payroll teamsw. Available on YouTube and Spotify.
