Steve Bestvater
Product Manager, Payworks
Jeff Zielinski
Client Experience Consultant, Payworks
Cassie Hamer
Sales Consultant, Payworks
Too often, owning a small business means juggling the responsibilities of an accountant and HR professional on top of day-to-day operations. Here’s how Payworks helps small business owners get back to what’s important.
To discover the true meaning of the phrase “jack of all trades,” find a local small business owner and ask what they did today. On top of spearheading their company’s operations, they probably handle what would otherwise fall to accounting and human resource departments in a larger organization, like keeping track of payroll — and the shifting web of regulatory requirements that comes with it — and managing an endless patchwork of employee schedules, absences, and benefits.
“Keeping up to date with changing payroll legislation and labour laws can be a job in itself,” says Jeff Zielinski, Client Experience Consultant at the HR, payroll, and workforce management solutions provider Payworks. “And while most small businesses are experts in their trade or craft, they usually aren’t experts in payroll.”
A business owner can only juggle these tasks for so long before hitting the proverbial wall. Delegating isn’t a cop-out: it’s sustainable business practice. That’s where a third-party solution like Payworks comes in.
Take efficiency to the next level with smart data integration
A small business differs from a large one in many respects, but when it comes to workforce management, they tend to face similar challenges. For businesses that haven’t made the leap into automation, data about employee work schedules, time off, benefits, and payroll tends to live on disconnected spreadsheets. Integrating all this information to make sure employees are paid on time — and in accordance with provincial regulations — can be a major time sink.
And as any small business owner will tell you, time is their scarcest resource.
“Whether you are a small business or a large business, in Canada there are provincial labour standards dictating that all employees are entitled to vacation pay as well as time off,” says Steve Bestvater, a Product Manager at Payworks. “Our Time and Absence Management solutions are built on the same data as our payroll offering. The collection of that data makes it instantly available for payroll, so employees can be paid accurately and on-time.”
A dedicated customer service representative for every business
Have you ever called a company to resolve an issue, only to be passed back and forth between anonymous customer service representatives, wasting valuable time reciting your question to each of them? When small business customers at Payworks need help navigating the service, they know exactly who to call. “Once clients have completed the onboarding process, they are provided a dedicated Customer Service Representative from our Canadian national service team,” says Jeff Zielinski, a Client Experience Consultant at Payworks. “This gives our clients confidence that we know their payroll, and they know exactly who to get in touch with if they have questions or concerns.”
Identifying and going after specific goals is part of any business’s success story. In that spirit, Payworks’ customer experience representatives always ask new clients what they hope to accomplish by signing up with the service. “To date, new clients have stated that we’ve achieved 90 percent of their goals, validating that they made the right decision in signing up with Payworks,” says Zielinski. Zeroing in on well-defined goals is also an integral part of customizing the service, so you never end up paying for what you don’t need. After all, enlisting a third party to help manage your workforce should make your business more efficient — not introduce redundancies.
“We take the approach that one size does not fit all,” says Cassie Hamer, Sales Consultant at Payworks. “While our payroll solution is our core offering, the rest of our suite of workforce management solutions are available ‘a la carte’ so business owners can utilize the tools best suited for their needs. This model allows Payworks to grow and adapt with our clients. They might start with a less complex solution; as their organization grows and changes they can add further functionality.”
