WFM UK: HR: Summary of HR and Payroll

Fourth – HR & Payroll

This article summarises Fourth's Labour and Payroll solution with its four core modules: HR, Scheduling, Payroll, and Pensions.

Key Features & Benefits

Fourth’s HR & Payroll solution provides the industry with best practice functionality and processes,  combined with significant measurable benefits:

General

• One integrated system seamlessly feeds data between modules, removing all duplication
• ​One single employee database, easily navigated and access-driven, providing a consistent and consolidated approach to the management of employee information

Human Resources

• A means to enable legal compliance through the management of eligibility to work (based upon nationality), work permits, student visas & NMW
• ​Version-controlled standard document management tools and a central repository for employee-specific documents, enabling easy access to all company documentation
• Several configurable workflows, including pay rate increase request,s coupled with an automated alert and reminder engine to ensure total visibility of system actions and future events

Holidays & Absences

• Automated holiday calculations for flexible workers in line with legislation and industry standards
• ​Accurate absence management, calculations and analysis with graphical views ensuring total visibility and accurate payroll of all absences

Scheduling

• A platform that provides managers with a tool to accurately forecast labour against budgets and business-specific productivity measures
• Detailed interrogation of labour spends and accurate attribution of employee costs across multiple locations and departments, ensuring all wage costs are accurate
• Real time clock in/out data feeds from Time & Attendance (T&A) biometric readers or 3rd party T&A systems
• Operations dashboards with summary and drill-down information for all groupings within the business
• On-demand visibility of group and site compliance to business standards surrounding daily best practice actions and weekly payroll submissions

Payroll & Pensions

• Seamless population of current pay runs from submitted rotas, negating the requirement for manual intervention and reducing the margin for error
• ​Variance and trend reporting on payroll data and detailed analytics for data interrogation
• Automated interfaces to accounts
• Multiple pay slip delivery methods, from email to self-service logins and mobile device apps
• Automated auto-enrolment calculations
• Employee communication of document templates and audit trails

Customer Success Stories

Fourth implemented a single HR, labour scheduling and payroll system with a fully managed bureau service across 287 locations and 7105 employees in 13 brands. We integrated Tragus’ payroll system with our payroll bureau, created a single system, removed data and duplication (replacing four systems with one), delivered management timesaving of 3 hours/week at restaurant level, improved accuracy of holiday pay calculations and eliminated back pay/supplementary pay runs.

• "Fourth’s solution transformed our business in a very short space of time. We couldn’t run our business without it." Mike Cass, FC, Tragus
• “Fourth’s payroll and labour management integration is their differentiator. Other providers were simply not on the same page” Mohan Mansigani, CFO, Tragus (Tragus ROI within 6 months)

“Stonegate needed to ‘separate’ quickly from Mitchells & Butler’s payroll system, and Fourth implemented their system in what I believe was the fastest rollout they have ever completed to assist us. 6 weeks for 333 pubs and 5000 staff. We needed it to be fast... so we could start producing our own reports and control costs without reliance on M&B. Fourth’s system is a breath of fresh air ... we have complete visibility and see trends which help make better management decisions. Forecasting is improved, and managers spend more time with customers because they spend less doing the rotas. I’m impressed with how Fourth is enabling us to run more efficiently”

Lee Woolley, Head of HR, Stonegate Pubs

“Research showed that more accurate sales forecasting with systemised allocation of staff would give us a more productive workforce, increasing our competitive advantage and decreasing staff cost per customer. We needed Fourth to produce extra functionality to enable three sets of data to be added to the system each week. This would produce for each site a centralised forecast of likely number of diners, enabling restaurant managers to schedule the optimum number of employees. We included Fourth immediately. They worked tirelessly to ensure their system was adapted for us, enabling us to achieve optimum labour productivity. Without Fourth, the task would have required an army of PizzaExpress employees and hundreds of weekly spreadsheets. Fourth has helped us to move fast and start seeing positive results early”.

Jackie Freeman, Finance Director, PizzaExpress

Functionality Summary - Human Resources

New Starters

Name, Address (Post Code Look Up), DOB, Email, Contact Numbers, Eligibility Management (automatically updated in line with HMRC legislation), Student Visas, Work Permits, Location, Department, Job Title, Start Date, Probation End Date, Live-in, Contracted Hours, Bank Details (Bank Account Validation), Next of Kin, Standard Checklists

• New starters are created in the HR Module and instantly appear in the Employee List
• A new starter is automatically added to the rota and appears in payroll, pending approval to pay
• Alerts are sent to the relevant parties advising of new hires to complete the onboarding process, where required
• NMW compliance and pay rate banding functionality by area, region, segment, etc
• Automated email alerts are set up in line with standard business requirements to provide relevant information surrounding key dates and missing data, expiring work permits, student visas, missing NI number and probation period tracking
• Interfaces to 3rd party training companies

Updating Employee Records

• All of the employee fields can be updated at any time and impact both the Rota & Payroll Module instantly. A full audit trail of all changes is available within an employee’s record. All system actions are date-stamped with users' credentials and are searchable centrally

Terminating Employees

• Bespoke termination reason codes linked to drill-down turnover reporting and analytics
• ​Automated final holiday pay calculations and the addition of employee holiday payments or deductions to the current pay run
• Forwarding address capture and termination checklists
• Auto-prompting of company assets requiring return
• Termination codes ensure previous bad hires cannot be rehired into the business

Multiple Employment

• Creation of unlimited additional roles and rates of pay
• Home lending manager controls their employees' availability, and the borrowing manager controls the employees' hours worked
• Auto adding to the rota, either within the employee’s home location or a different location
• Automated attribution of wage costs within the rota when scheduled, and warnings to prevent entry of duplicate hours

Holidays

• Average Hours and Days calculations based upon historical rota information (typically 12 weeks)
• Compliant holiday days calculations for all employees based upon industry standards
• Accurate day rates produced for each employee. When booked, show on the rota for all roles and feed into payroll as a separate line on the payslip
• Detailed holiday accrual journals
• Visible holiday and absences calendars
• Self-service workflows for requesting and authorisation down to employee level

Absence

• Easy and quick recording of absence against defined absence reasons
• Absence logging from HR or Rotas feeding into employees' records and payroll
• Accurate SSP and CSP calculations based on company policy
• Visible rota absence costs, analytics, and absence analysis reporting

Warnings, Grievances, Suspensions & Comments

• Management of all of the above and detailed reporting
• Time & Attendance visibility allows comments on timekeeping to be logged within the rota and appear within an employee’s record, and alert relevant people
• Suspensions automatically ensure that an employee cannot be scheduled
• Appeals are logged and managed accordingly

Training, Succession Planning & Appraisals

Management of all training requirements, courses, sessions, actions, and resources

• Full integration to other modules, providing visibility of each employee’s training plan and flagging training course booking on the rota
• Automated emails alerting relevant managers/Head Office employees to employee training course expiry, with quick re-booking to enable compliance 
• Graphical drill-down reports to provide visibility on under/over performing areas/regions
• Agreed headcount over/under graphical reporting
• Customisable appraisal module by location and job title ensures the correct questions, which match your key business drivers, are being asked of the right people.
• Appraisal reporting allows you to collate training needs, to help plan and review your training calendar

Reporting

• A full suite of powerful reports (all specifications available on request)
• The ability to create customised reports, extracting any data within the HR Module
• Drill-down analytical dashboards surrounding turnover, age, employee history. . .

Functionality Summary - Scheduling (Rotas)

Forecasting – One consistent approach to understanding and approving your labour spend

• Intuitive methods of forecasting and copying historical forecasts
• Quick view hourly rate visibility
• Quick access employee summaries from the HR Module
• All logged absences and approved holiday populated automatically
• Unavailable days highlighted per employee
• Drill-down detailed hour-by-hour analysis against business rules driving labour optimisation
• Daily visibility of budgeted revenue and labour spend
• Ability to re-forecast daily driving revised available for wages figures
• Productivity metrics in line with business measurements, such as sales per labour hour
• Clear printable rotas with a choice of layouts
• Approval workflow coupled with snapshot functionality for comparative reporting of approved Vs. actual labour spend (£ and hours)
• Detailed analysis of all elements within a daily and weekly wage cost with bespoke terminology and guidance for operations – typical splits of basic pay, salaried pay, managers lent/borrowed, holiday pay/accruals, employers' national insurance,  cleaning costs, door costs, fixed costs, etc.
• Daily messaging and logging of special events, weather and operational information
• Automated cross-charging for employees with multiple roles in one or more locations, all feeding into payroll and showing separately on a payslip

Operational reporting and visibility

• Bespoke grouping of locations linking to ops dashboards
• A standard suite of dashboards summarising area totals against budget, with drill-down ability to identify specifics using a traffic light system
• Detailed analytics and comparative reporting
• Standard benchmarking and date parameter reporting
• Data exporting for Excel manipulation 
• Focused management by exception methodology
• Automated e-mail alerts for approvals/overspends

Time & attendance & completing rotas

• Quick updating of forecast hours to actual
• Automated daily importing of actual revenues
• Instant generation of actual labour spend against available wages
• Integrated time and attendance (T&A) data visibility with RAG categorisations for managing by exception
• Accurate and fair payment to employees based upon full visibility of T&A data
• Additional payments with restrictions per job role if required
• Standard GROSS pay reports for sign off
• Structured and timely sign-off processes automatically feeding payroll after approval
• Alerts for non-compliance to ops

Functionality Summary - Payroll (HMRC Accredited)

Standard payroll processes

• Full bureau services, individually assigned customer payroll teams and close working relationships
• Automated pay information from the Rota Module
• Automated additional payment information from the Rota Module
• Standard Excel upload templates
• Starter/leaver automated pro-rata calculations
• Auto-pay final holiday payments, ensuring compliance
• Quick timesheet input and control of available payments and deductions
• Access-controlled logins for task streamlining
• Online payroll approval
• Online payslips and self-service
• Paper and e-mail payslip options
• Standard and bespoke interfaces to accounting packages
• Bespoke data extracts to 3rd party MIS systems
• A suite of standard exports for data interrogation
• EDI interfaces
• Pension compliance and detailed product roadmaps in line with pension reform
• HMRC reporting and payments
• Benefits Module and P11D production

Functionality Summary - Self Service & Mobile Technology

Access-driven employee self-service

• Individual logins for all employees (in line with business-specific defined employee access options)
  • Updating of  personal information (address, contact details, preferred name)
  • Visibility of employment detail (start date, employee number, rate of pay, bank details)
  • Updating Next of Kin information
  • Visibility of past, present and future holidays
  • Holiday request workflows and automated e-mail alerts with approved holidays auto-added to the holiday and absence calendar, future rotas, and fed into payroll
  • Visibility of historical actual hours worked (since employee start date)
  • Visibility of all approved and forecasted rotas in the future
  • All past payslips are available and can be printed
  • Tax code, NI category visibility
  • All statutory payment information and payment visibility
  • Ability to query payslips with direct feeds into the bureau/Head Office for reply  

Mobile technology

• iPhone App for employee access
  • Personal and employment details visibility (as above)
  • Holiday year-to-date information
  • Past and current payslip information
• Future iPhone/Android releases, including Area Manager/Ops apps for revenue/wage cost data visibility and labour management

Also See

• Fourth API - Sales Import to Fourth Labour & Payroll
• Payroll - Exports to 3rd Party Payroll Solutions