The first week of September was the 26th National Payroll Week!
Every year, National Payroll Week provides a vital opportunity to reflect on the current best practices of payroll and consider the ways in which things can be improved going forward.
Although the results of the Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals (CIPP) payroll survey 2025 are not out yet, we can look to the previous year’s study and see what businesses are getting right and where they are struggling with payroll.
As always, we are here to improve your payrolling, so speak to our team for professional payrolling you can trust.
How are businesses currently managing payroll?
As business becomes more digital and companies adopt automated solutions to support everyday operations, it’s tempting to believe this is universally done by all businesses.
However, there are plenty of businesses that have not yet done away with paper records entirely.
In fact, only 65 per cent of businesses use fully digital systems, with 28 per cent relying on a mixture of digital and paper.
For that 28 per cent, there is a concern that vital information will be lost as records are disjointed due to being spread across different formats.
The real winners are the six per cent of businesses that have taken the time to create physical and digital records of all payrolling information.
As cybersecurity becomes an ever-present issue, there is a re-evaluation going on concerning paper records, so we may see more businesses adopting this dual approach to ensure that records can always be accessed.
However, given how many new regulations have been updated to insist upon digital filing and record-keeping, it is troubling how many businesses do not have digital versions of all payroll information.
What payroll records do you need to keep?
It is best practice to keep payroll records for the current tax year and the previous six years.
This ensures that any discrepancies can be caught and addressed so that they do not impact an employee’s future.
Digitisation is likely the best way to handle this, as it prevents old records from clogging up filing cabinets or getting lost under a pile of other bits of paperwork.
Importantly, more businesses are moving towards this practice, with retention of these records seeing an increase of 26.49 per cent.
Overall, compliance with payroll legislation has improved in some areas, particularly with the rollout of itemised pay statements and full payment submission for payday reporting.
Yet despite these positive steps, many employers are still not doing enough to help staff understand their payslips or the components of pay.
More than half of employers do not use any tools to ensure their employees grasp pay slip information or how deductions are calculated.
Given the fragile state of the economy and the continued threat of inflation and tax hikes, many workers would benefit from greater transparency around their wages and clearer explanations of their pay.
This National Payroll Week is an excellent opportunity to improve your payroll processes.
We can help you to better understand your payroll obligations so that your employees are better equipped with financial literacy.
You can use our outsourced payroll services to ensure that your employees are paid the right amounts at the right time, and that tax National Insurance Contributions (NIC) and other deductions are correctly declared.
