The Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals' fifth annual payslip survey, reveals a number of surprising trends including: the number of employees being paid weekly drops; the fact that employees still aren’t ready for online payslips and the surprising news that the use of Faster Payments has dropped. Karen Thomson, Associate Director of Policy, Research and Strategic Visibility at CIPP comments.
The CIPP's payslip survey looks at the number of UK employees being paid, the frequency with which they are paid, the method of how they are paid and the information included in the payslip. The survey was conducted by the CIPP’s policy team earlier this year has yet again shown some surprising new trends within the payroll. Most noticeably is the addition of pensionable pay information as the effects of automatic enrolment come into play. The figures rose from 19 percent last year to 30 percent this year. Karen Thomson, Associate Director of Policy, Research and Strategic Visibility, commented, “This statistic really stood out for us because it demonstrates that many employers are already looking at automatic enrolment for their staff. “However the worrying aspect is that, in many cases the employee may not be aware of the deductions in their pay until their payslip arrives at the end of the month, for which they may not have financially prepared for. It is therefore of paramount importance that organisations have an effective communications strategy in place ahead of the deductions being made.”
Also on trend with previous years, is the rising inclusion of absence payments, both statutory and occupational, has risen. Another interesting result was the number of payslips now being mailed to employees homes has increased and the use of electronic payslips has dropped from 38 percent to 33 percent. The reasons for this were cited as being the cost to businesses of implementing an electronic system and employees wanting to protect their privacy by having their pay details mailed to home instead of work. The proportion of pay frequencies in 2012/13 remains broadly consistent with the results from the research undertaken for 2011/12. Bacs remains the most popular payment method across all pay frequencies, however the use of Faster Payments has fallen this year, though those using cheques remains constant and the number paying by cash has increased slightly.
In other results, the research showed that there has been a steady decline in the number of weekly payrolls processed, from a high of 44 percent in 2008/09 down to its current level of 31 percent. The CIPP expects this to decline even further over the next 12 months as a potential consequence of the extra administration burden RTI brings to weekly payrolls.
It was also noted that the number of payrolls employing only one person has increased by ten percent, whilst the number of payrolls employing between one and five employees has dropped significantly, from 48 percent in 2011/12 to this year’s result of 35 percent. Unsurprisingly, the last working day of the month remains the most popular pay day for monthly payrolls, with Friday retaining that accolade for weekly payrolls. Karen Thomson, added: “This is the fifth year that the CIPP’s Policy Team has surveyed its members to understand the long term trends affecting employee payslips and this year has really thrown up some surprises for us. In particular the number of online payslips decreasing, as we had predicted to see the opposite occur this year, and for us this is definitely an area to watch. In addition, it’s also interesting to see the number of weekly payrolls being processed as the pressure of RTI hits. We’ll certainly be interested to see how automatic enrolment adds to their administration in next year’s survey.”
Karen Thomson, Associate Director of Policy, Research and Strategic Visibility
Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals
www.cipp.org.uk
