What matters most in your firm? Is it exceeding your profit margins? Is it keeping your shareholders happy? Is it having positive customer relations? All of these are surely very high on your list, as they should be. But what makes a firm operate day-to-day? Of all the ingredients that go into making an enterprise pie, which, when taken out of the recipe, would cause the pie to collapse in on itself?

The employees.

Good employee management is one of the most underrated aspects of keeping a workforce operational. Over time, little problems can develop into significant problems. A missed payment here, a too much overtime, or even too little positive reinforcement can lead your employees to think that they are undervalued, underappreciated and overworked. It’s not hard to imagine that over time, this can results in them leaving or even litigated against your for the money they’re owed.

To best tackle this, it’s important to have solid payroll systems in place. It then also often makes a lot of sense to hire contractors (so off-payroll staff, Payroll Index have a great guide to that) if you do not need permanent staff for the task, so definitely look into that.

There are many ‘payroll software’ packages available these days to help you automate this to some degree, but for the most part, software isn’t going to have a single hope of navigating the nuances of employee personality or particular situation that needs to be rectified. For that reason, it’s important to hire great payroll consultants who can provide a professional payroll service as well as tax consulting specialists who can provide expert tax consulting and planning services. But what should you look for in a new payroll employee?

We’d argue these 3 skills.

Communication

Your payroll employee should not only be on top of his or her game when it comes to the nuances of payroll, how it can be effected and the remedies that should be taken to counteract. Not only that, but the consultant in question needs to be able to articulate simply what they are doing to rectify those issues with you as owner and the employee who is affected.

They need to be amiable and approachable about these issues, and leave the employee feel like they are better educated about what happened and that they received a stable fix. In circumstances that can’t be resolved for a time, they need to help keep your staff patient and positive knowing that a fix is on the way.

Promptness

Paying your employees needs to be resolved quickly. If an employee is unhappy about the speed to which their query was settled, they will let you know about it, and in no uncertain terms. It’s for this reason that your payroll consultant needs to understand the importance of the work they do, and how fast their turnaround should be in new calculations if needs be, to learn more you can now check out these payroll misconceptions. For managing larger teams, they need to be deadly organized, to the point where their work might look like a military operation. Be sure to ask for examples of when they’ve resolved issues promptly before now for best success.

Mathematical & Digital Fluency

Of course, it goes without saying that your payroll employee needs to be good with numbers, and able to calculate in aggregate salaries, taxes, insurances, etc. However, they also need to be suitable to work with the aforementioned software packages that are popular within their discipline. Ask them for their computer program experience. A qualified professional should be processing your payroll with ease.

Follow these tips, and you’ll find a brilliant payroll hire in no time.