Iris News

When HR and payroll are connected, employee data is entered once by the person responsible for it, and payroll then uses that entry without the need for any manual re-keying. The employee data that HR and payroll share includes bank details, address, tax code, salary, hours, pension status, absence and leaving date. Whenever the same data is manually entered into both HR and payroll, you run the risk of errors and the two figures disagreeing.

When you buy software, the headline price is an important starting point, but it can only provide part of the total cost of ownership. For example, accounts production and tax software is often sold in tiers and scales according to the number of users and clients you have. Then you need to factor in other costs, like those for support. With that in mind, how do you get the full picture?

Wanting one system for HR, payroll, performance and learning is really about wanting one employee record. This doesn’t necessarily mean one piece of software, and the real test is what happens to your data when something changes. When businesses seek one system for HR, payroll, performance and learning, they usually assume they’re tackling a software problem. In actual fact, it’s a data problem. Let’s look at a scenario: an employee receives a promotion.

From 1 January 2027, the qualifying period for ordinary unfair dismissal in the UK drops from two years to six months. The statutory cap on compensatory awards is also being removed. These changes leave little room for errors. Performance records, in particular, become far more important, especially as the cost of a decision you can’t evidence is no longer limited.

If your HR admin has outgrown spreadsheets, it may be time to implement a human resources information system (HRIS), also known as HR software. An HRIS offers a dedicated system for managing your people, creating a single record for each employee which can map against your HR processes. Many businesses start with managing their HR processes through spreadsheets, but it’s not a permanent solution.

A UK offboarding process predominantly centres as much on payroll and employee records as on IT. Employee offboarding isn’t finished when the user’s accounts are disabled and their laptop has been returned. Offboarding is finalised when the last payment has been correctly made and reported, and the leaver’s records are securely put away somewhere you can still retrieve them years later, if required.

HR software includes built-in payroll when payroll is a module inside the HR platform rather than a separate product connected to it. IRIS Cascade is one example, featuring a Payroll Module that works from the same database as core HR. The alternative is integrated payroll, where two separate systems are connected, such as Staffology HR and Staffology Payroll. Both work, so there is no single ‘best’ option.

and are equally important when you’re looking at digital tax compliance solutions. You can’t talk about one without the other. Right now, it may seem like AI is a stadium-filling rock star, and that, by comparison, automation is playing small clubs. In reality, both can have a huge impact on the work you do. AI’s potential is yet to be fully understood, and automation has affected millions of lives for centuries in its different forms.

There is no UK GDPR certification scheme for HR software. That said, your HR software should support compliance, not make it harder, helping you maintain data security and adhere to UK GDPR standards, such as those laid out in Article 5 and Article 32. This can make buying HR software harder; there’s no badge to look out for, and instead you must ascertain whether the functionality can support data security and UK GDPR.

HR software can manage onboarding, offboarding and absence tracking in one system. The true test is whether this is supported through one employee record, created during hiring and maintained throughout the entire employee lifecycle. To minimise administrative work and optimise the employee lifecycle, the same record should be used for all elements of HR. However, many UK businesses manage the employee lifecycle through spreadsheets, shared inboxes and a handful of separate trackers.