Nadia Lake
Group Payroll Manager
- Compass Group
- Country
- Australia and New Zealand
- State
- All
- Industry
- Hospitality
- Employees
- 11,000 (AU) and 2,990 (NZ)
Key Benefits for Compass Group
- Simple timesheet entry tool for remote sites to use
- Ability to automate the award interpretation for the 100+ awards, EBAs and AWAs
- Seamlessly integrated between all four modules to create accurate forecasts
- Significant reduction in printing, postage and consumable costs
Background
Compass is one of Australia’s largest dedicated food service companies. Compass operates on contracted client sites that vary from restaurants and sporting stadiums, to staff canteens on mine sites and defence premises. Its services are now available throughout Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Asia. Compass employs over 11,000 people in approximately 600 sites across Australia and 3,000 people across New Zealand.
Challenges and Goals
Prior to implementing PayGlobal software, Compass’s payroll department managed employees from multiple companies, each with separate databases. Compass processed payroll from two departments, based in Sydney and Perth, which were faxed timesheets on a weekly basis from various employee sites across Australia. The Auckland office performed the same task for New Zealand. This laborious administrative process not only required several payroll staff to manually enter every timesheet into separate databases, but often resulted in data entry errors and reporting delays.
Contrasting interpretations of over 100 State and Federal awards, EBAs and AWAs further contributed to payroll disparities in Australia. As there wasn’t a single platform to interpret award conditions, employees were often subjected to different working conditions at various sites – even if performing an identical role or shift.
Process and Solution
Compass assessed four other leading Australian HR/payroll software providers: Oracle Payroll, CHRIS, Kronos and MicroPay. PayGlobal was ultimately successful because it addressed all challenges specific to Compass and its pricing proposal was competitive. Crucially, the PayGlobal product had been proven in an outsourced service provider model similar to the way that Compass Group’s IT strategy is structured.
Compass initially installed Payroll and Time and Attendance modules to immediately improve the processing of timesheet information and reconciliation. As all of Compass’s sites were already PC and internet-enabled, PayGlobal’s simple timesheet entry tool allowed sites in very remote areas to submit their timesheet data with ease.
PayGlobal was also the only solution that could automate the award interpretation for the 100 or more awards, EBAs and AWAs relevant to Compass employees. This eliminated the need for payroll staff to manually check which award each staff member is associated with and introduced a single, consistent interpretation of all conditions across the entire company. Group Payroll Manager Nadia Lake says, “One of the biggest advantages of choosing PayGlobal was its ability to interpret our various employee award conditions. This alone has saved our payroll department an astronomical number of hours per week in processing.”
Satisfied with the solution, four years later Compass expanded its PayGlobal software use to include Rostering and Human Resources Self-Service. With these additional modules seamlessly integrated into the existing solution, Compass was able to produce accurate staff and budgetary forecasting on a site-by-site and company-wide basis. The reporting function exceeded expectations.
Business Results and Return
Since implementing PayGlobal, Compass has revolutionised its payroll process and cut five Australian staff, now operating from one office in Perth. The New Zealand payroll processing continues to be done from Auckland. Moving forward, Compass has recently employed a System Administration Manager and separated the payroll team into Transactional Payroll Processing and Payroll System Development. This way, the Payroll System Development team can continue to roll out the Rostering module functionality across the entire employee base, who all currently use PayGlobal Self-Service to manage their leave applications online and view their pay details, eliminating the need to print payslips. “By expanding HRSS to all staff, we will no longer need to print payslips for our employee base of 11,000 people in Australia,” Nadia says. “We predict that this service alone will save us approx $200,000 in printing/consumables and postage. It is another reason why PayGlobal is a valuable commodity for Compass Group.
“PayGlobal has provided process improvements, cost savings and a central information repository that provides easy access to all HR/payroll related information,” Nadia says. “These improvements have allowed for a reduction in the number of staff in payroll and relieved phone traffic to the payroll team on employee-related issues. PayGlobal is a fully integrated HR/payroll solution and is a one-stop shop for managing and reporting on your people.”
Get in touch
- Customer Call Centre Australia
- 1800 129 181
- Customer Call Centre New Zealand
- 0508 104 357
"Conservative estimates show savings of around $70,000 per annum on timesheet entry alone and payroll processing time reductions of over 50 per cent."
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