Key Components to Setting Up Payroll: Part 1 – Pay Frequencies
Key Components to Setting Up Payroll: Part 2 – Employee Payment Methods
Key Components to Setting Up Payroll: Part 3 – Process, Workflows and Approvals
Key Components to Setting Up Payroll: Part 4 – Payroll Journal
Key Components to Setting Up Payroll: Part 5.1 – Company Payroll Policies
Key Components to Setting Up Payroll: Part 5.2 – Payroll Policies, Full-Time Equivalency (FTE)
Key Components to Setting Up Payroll: Part 5.3 – Payroll Policies, Employment Type
Key Components to Setting Up Payroll: Part 5.4 – Payroll Policies, Pay Type
Key Components to Setting Up Payroll: Part 5.5 – Payroll Policies, Work Schedules
Key Components to Setting Up Payroll: Part 5.6 – Payroll Policies, Overtime & Banked Time
Key Components to Setting Up Payroll: Part 5.7 – Vacation
Key Components to Setting Up Payroll: Part 5.8 – Sick Days
Key Components to Setting Up Payroll: Part 5.9 – Personal Days
This article is written to provide you with an understanding of why standard work schedules are useful in the work environment.
Standard work schedules in a company are a benefit to everyone (including the business itself) as they provide an expectation of when employees are required to be at work and allow the business to effectively plan and schedule for the future, which can also help control payroll costs.
Generally, businesses will determine their employees’ work schedules on three common components: work location, position, and industry standards (if there are any). When companies have a standardized work schedule, they are able to quickly determine when employees are scheduled to be at work, how much time in a week they work, and if they are eligible to receive certain benefits or incentives such as Group Benefits, Uplifts, Scheduled Overtime, etc.
It also becomes easier on the Payroll and HR side of the business, as there is a clear expectation as to how pay is administered to employees in certain positions, without having to dig too deep. This makes the business run much smoother!
Have you ever worked in a company where scheduling anything was difficult due to different work schedules? You can run into a variety of issues, including paying out overtime if some employees have to come in on their scheduled days off for training or meetings when the majority of employees are on a different work schedule. By maintaining standard work schedules these troubles are eliminated, and employees’ time is utilized much more effectively!
Standardizing work schedules helps the business, payroll, and HR by having clear expectations on how employees’ pay should be calculated regarding their regular pay, paid time off, and in some instances premiums, allowances, and other incentives which may be based on an employee’s hours of work.
Finally, we recommend sharing work schedules with payroll, so they can easily identify if an error has been made on an employee’s timesheet. There may be instances when an employee accidently enters a working day or vacation day in their timesheet on a day that it should not have been entered. Remember that each industry and company will have a different set of rules when it comes to work schedules, it all depends on the business’s needs. A general rule is to keep your company’s work schedules as simple as possible, as predictability is easier to follow, plan, schedule, and report on.
Now that we understand why work schedules are useful and important in the work environment, stay tuned for part 5.6 of this series when we discuss Overtime and Banked Time.
Download this resource article Key Components to Setting Up Payroll: Part 5.5 – Payroll Policies, Work Schedules.
click to enlarge
