Apr 2018

9

Employers: Time to adapt to the needs of millennials

Experts predict that by 2020, millennials (now aged between 21 and 35) will make up 35% of the global workforce, with ‘Generation Z’ (aged 20 and younger) making up 24%. In just two years, more than half the entire workforce population will be made up by these younger workers.

A younger workforce presents knock-on effects for the entire business. As an employer, you need to adapt to meet the expectations of this new generation of employees. Millennials are very different from the workforce that preceded them. Having grown up using the internet as second nature, these young employees are true digital natives and have never known a world without it.

Take, for instance, payroll. With payment technologies evolving, millennials have become some of the fastest adopters of mobile and digital payments. Their influence on mobile payroll adoption cannot be ignored. The simple fact is these new generation employees don’t do paper forms. They are increasingly looking for digital options to access payslips and apply for annual leave.

In recent years, employees are using holiday time differently than previous generations, with the average leave duration reduced to just 2.34 days. This alone creates new challenges for payroll and HR managers. Shorter, more frequent bursts of annual leave tend to be requested last minute rather than planned in advance. It is important for employers and HR personnel to be able to quickly review and approve leave requests.

For HR managers, there is also the added strain due to the higher turnover of millennials, with research suggesting that they last just 8 months in a job! Fortunately, we live in a mobile world, whereby online platforms can enable HR staff to manage and approve time off instantly, with more time to focus on attracting and retaining top talent.

Mobile payroll solutions, such as BrightPay Connect, are an ideal way to improve the efficiency of your business, especially as new generation workers continue to integrate smartphones into every aspect of business operations.

BrightPay Connect benefits include:

  • Request annual leave - An employee opens up their phone or tablet, logs in and applies for leave online. The HR manager or employer will be alerted of the leave request and can approve the leave instantly, with the leave automatically flowing back to the payroll software. On the self-service portal, both the employee and the employer can view their number of leave days taken and remaining, along with an employee leave calendar displaying all past and future leave.

  • View payslips and payroll documents - The employee can log into their self-service account to view and download all current and historic payslips and payroll documents such as P60s. For the payroll processor, there is no more printing or emailing payslips. Payslips are automatically added to the employee’s online portal each pay period eliminating employee requests for copies of past payslips.

  • Access everything in one central location - Keep everything in one central place. For employees, there is just one login to view employee documents and a company noticeboard. Employers can upload documents such as employment contracts, staff handbooks, privacy policies, training manuals. The employer can choose whether the employee can view the document or not, using it as a central location for everything to do with each individual employee.

As an employer, adopting these few features favoured by millennials, along with additional employer benefits (such as an automatic cloud backup of payroll data and instant access to payroll reports), you are guaranteed to improve the efficiency of your business and payroll processing.

Book a demo today to find out how you can benefit from BrightPay Connect.

Posted byRachel HynesinBrightPay ConnectEmployee Self Service