Here to Help: How is IRIS Managed Payroll prepared for COVID-19?

Ensuring business-critical functions such as payroll are maintained during the COVID-19 pandemic is essential but challenging.

At IRIS, we offer a fully outsourced payroll service that takes away your administrative burden and effectively becomes your payroll department, providing added certainty in uncertain times. 

To get a greater understanding of the measures that have been taken to ensure our outsourcing service continues during the current pandemic, we recently sat down with Steve Hawley our Managed Payroll Service Director.

What measures do we have in place to ensure we don’t fail our customers?

Our planning put us ahead of the game and as soon as we heard that we could potentially go on lockdown, following the lead of other countries, we accelerated our preparation to make sure our teams had everything they needed to work remotely. 

We spent a significant amount of time sending people home to test their working environment, to ensure they could process payroll and Bacs files from a remote location.  We also wanted to ensure that their internet was adequate so we could provide additional equipment for those struggling with their connection.

This plan has been executed over the last few weeks and after conducting many successful tests we have now sent everyone to work from home. 

Our teams are structured in the exact same way as they would be in the office but we're using Microsoft Teams to communicate internally. 

We also have detailed schedules in place to manage the workload and track progress daily to ensure everything goes out on time for our customers. 

Our teams have now been in touch with every client for whom we were providing paper payslips as that service is no longer available as we can't physically print them off and we have offered them the option to use either our secure online portal to deliver payslips or a password-protected pdf.    

How have we supported customers?

We've aimed to be as proactive as possible rather than waiting for customers to contact us, the last thing we want is for people to not be paid during this unprecedented time.

Our teams have contacted every customer to ask how they want us to deal with their payroll in the event that they're unable to get any payroll data to us. 

To support, we’re providing clients with a variety of business continuity options such as paying a previous period Bacs file or if it's a straight salary payroll, processing it without any changes.

Why is outsourced payroll so important right now?

As uncertainty grows, organisations need confidence that their employees will be paid accurately and on time. 

We have the scale and many years of experience and expertise in our managed payroll service centres, people who really go the extra mile for our customers and that’s massively important.  

We've had a lot of customers sending us messages, thanking us for how we've dealt with the current situation and it’s good to know that our efforts and the service provided during these tough times are appreciated.

The fact that our service is utilised by over 1,200 customers and boasts an NPS score of 67 is a real testament to the hard work, resilience and determination of our teams and the superb level of service they provide.             

What advice do you have for businesses moving forward during the pandemic?

I'd echo the same advice that we have all been getting from the Government, the main priority for everyone is to stay safe but don't forget that IRIS is always here to help, delivering business-critical services.

By outsourcing to our Managed Payroll service, you entrust your payroll responsibility to our team of highly experienced CIPP-Accredited payroll managers who tackle everything from paying employees to reporting.

For more information on how you can maintain your payroll during the COVID-19 pandemic, check out our informative support hub and for further details on our Managed Payroll service, click here.