Press releaseMonday 5 October 2009

Swine flu absenteeism may leave recruiters’ payroll departments struggling to pay temporary workers

• Lack of manpower will put on-time payment at risk
• Very few recruiters have adequate payroll disaster recovery systems in place

The Government predicted increase in sickness absence this autumn as a result of the swine flu pandemic could leave recruitment agency payroll departments so short-staffed that they struggle to pay temporary workers on time, warns giant precision, the outsourced solutions provider to the recruitment industry (www.giantprecision.com).

According to giant precision, a large number of recruiters have already begun to make enquiries about payroll disaster recovery procedures in the event of late processing and/or payments.

According to giant precision, paying contract workers on time is absolutely critical for both the recruiter and their end users.

Typically payroll departments complete their payroll calculations and generate a BACS file each Wednesday so that contract workers receive funds in their accounts’ on Friday explains giant precision.

According to giant precision, many recruiters, prompted by the swine flu warnings, are now reviewing their payroll disaster recovery plans. Their objective is to have systems in place to ensure contract workers are always paid on time irrespective of any ‘disaster’. Although recruiters prioritise ‘disasters’ differently, common ones include existing system processing failure especially with relatively new systems, BACS payment file failure, staff shortage/failure, power outage, fire etc.

Matthew Brown, Managing Director of giant precision comments: “With the Government predicting that swine flu will confine swathes of the workforce to their sick beds this autumn depleted payroll departments could be reduced to a skeleton staff and struggle to cope with their normal workload.”

“Paying contract workers on time is business critical for recruiters so putting a contingency payroll and payments system in place is good business practise as part of the recruiters overall disaster recovery plans and gives piece of mind. A contingency system should as a minimum be capable of taking raw payroll data from the agency and processing this data through to BACS or CHAPS payments to workers and, if it is a BACS rather than system failure, have the ability to convert a BACS payment file to a same day CHAPS payment file such that the workers still get paid on time. These processes should be automated and tested quarterly.”

Note: Established in 1992, giant group specialises in providing services to recruitment agencies, temporary workers, freelancers and contractors. The range of services include agency back office solutions from giant precision – timesheet management, billing, payroll, contract management, pre-employment and background checking, BACS disaster recovery – and giant umbrella payroll services where giant is the professional employer organisation employing and payrolling the temporary workers and contractors.