Payroll services administration is a year-round responsibility that businesses can't afford to let slip at any point. Unfortunately, this task can be difficult during the winter as inclement weather makes it difficult to get to the office.
According to the Society for Human Resource Management, enterprises should start strategizing for how they'll deal with disruptions caused by storms this season. If a blizzard hits your area, your employees might not be able to commute to the office, which can affect their wages and how you report compensation to various government agencies.
Research state laws
The SHRM also points out that every state has unique payroll requirements. The news source uses Massachusetts as an example because employers in that state are obligated to pay workers if they're scheduled to work three hours or more during a shift. Other states may have businesses compensate everyone regardless of the scheduled number of hours.
You need to research your state's laws to ensure that you don't run into reporting issues. If you run a mid-sized enterprise that has locations in multiple states, your HR representatives and payroll administrators should perform due diligence to ensure compliance.
When you don't need to pay
In some instances, you won't owe your staff members anything when a winter storm forces you to close for the day. The most notable exception is that if you actively try to inform employees not to come to work, you're off the hook in some states, the SHRM notes.
Of course, you have to make sure you don't accidentally compensate a staff member after saying he or she doesn't need have a shift. Cutting-edge payroll processing software is beneficial in this case as you can automatically update wages and stop any payments before they've been cleared.
Simplifying the entire problem
Winter storms tend to make everything difficult. Powerful blizzards can even prevent employees from commuting to work but with a web-based payroll application, entering payroll data is possible from anywhere in the world. Log on any time of the day and enter the data. Triton HR's payroll options are all web-based and they are also responsible for providing necessary support all year long, which means that your internal HR or payroll team won't have to worry about paychecks reaching the staff.