Five Critical Questions to Determine Your HR and Payroll Compliance Readiness in 2018

Posted on March 29, 2018April 2, 2018 by paynorthwest

Are you prepared for the next wave of tax, healthcare and regulatory changes affecting payroll and HR?

Managing compliance can be complex and tricky for any business today. It can be overwhelming trying to stay current on proposed guideline changes, updates to existing regulations, and rollouts of new legislation. Despite the complexity, a recent survey of 812 HR and payroll managersfound that many respondents believe they’re prepared and will be able to implement future regulatory changes with ease.

Based on their responses, we’ve compiled five short but critical questions to ask yourself to determine your organization’s compliance readiness.

Fill out the form below for an instant download of our Compliance Readiness Checklist.

New White Paper: Analysis – Developing Effective Front-line Managers

Posted on March 2, 2017February 21, 2018 by paynorthwest

Effective human capital management (HCM) strategies include an emphasis on developing effective front-line managers who are critical to your business. They manage and supervise field-level or customer-facing employees – your most critical asset in delivering value to your customers. Yet front-line managers often don’t have access to adequate tools and information necessary to support their direct reports, are overburdened by too much administrative work, have too wide a span of control, and are not empowered to incentivize and motivate their employees or team members.

A proper foundation for resourcing front-line managers begins with ready access to data on their employees and automated processes for routine, transactional, and administrative tasks. Easily accessing time and attendance, performance evaluation, and pay history data, for example, provides front-line managers with the much needed comprehensive view of their employees to monitor, coach, and make informed decisions. In addition, smart automation of compliance and administrative processes can free up managers to actually spend more time engaging with and developing their direct reports, driving the entire organization to greater success overall.

For further insights on developing effective front-line managers, click here to view our most recent white paper on the topic, courtesy of the Workforce Institute at Kronos.

To learn more about how cloud-based human capital management technology can streamline your company’s payroll and HR functions, don’t hesitate to contact one of our PayNorthwest specialist toll-free at +1.866.729.6920.

PayNorthwest and Pacific Continental Bank Partner to Provide Local SMBs with Best-in-Class Banking and Payroll Services

Posted on October 3, 2016 by paynorthwest

Provider of cloud-based payroll and human capital management solutions joins forces with local bank to deliver secure paycheck services to small- to medium-sized Pacific Northwest businesses

Seattle, Wash., October 3, 2016 – PayNorthwest LLC, a provider of cloud-based payroll and human capital management solutions (HCM), announced today that it has partnered with Eugene-Ore.-based Pacific Continental Bank to provide Pacific Northwest small- to medium-sized businesses with best-in-class banking and payroll services. As part of its payroll service offering, PayNorthwest provides clients protection against common check fraud, as well as escheatment and reconciliation relief for traditional paper pay checks. By banking this piece of their business with Pacific Continental Bank, PayNorthwest gains a partner with best-in-class, responsive treasury services. This new banking relationship extends and deepens Pacific Continental Bank and PayNorthwest’s already existing relationship designed to introduce bank business clients to PayNorthwest’s reliable and market-leading payroll services and HCM technology.

“PayNorthwest has been a long-standing partner of ours for many years. This new banking relationship with PayNorthwest comes on the heels of our recent acquisition of Foundation Bank that strengthens our presence in the Puget Sound market,” explains Nick Anderson, senior vice president and relationship banking manager at Pacific Continental Bank. “This agreement builds on our vision to secure a better future for local businesses and on PayNorthwest’s vision to be the trusted payroll and HCM partner for businesses throughout the Northwest.”

“We have a lot in common with Pacific Continental Bank – a vision for a vibrant, healthy, and supported business climate in the Pacific Northwest, customers with a similar profile, and a mutual commitment to providing best-in-class services to our local and regional businesses and not-for-profits,” adds Michael Anderson, president, founder, and CEO of PayNorthwest. “This agreement enables PayNorthwest to better serve its clients by reducing risks related to check fraud and adds additional assurance that payroll funds end up only in the hands of the people they are intended for – our clients’ hard-working employees.”

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About PayNorthwest LLC

Founded in 2008, PayNorthwest LLC is a payroll and human capital management software and services firm headquartered in Seattle, Wash. It helps small to mid-sized businesses in a variety of industries as well as non-profits across the United States more effectively manage their workforce and streamline their business with single-source, cloud-based human resource information system (HRIS), time and attendance, and payroll solutions. In 2016, PayNorthwest ranked #1627 in Inc. 5000’s fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. and one of Puget Sound Business Journal ‘s 100 Fastest-Growing Companies in Washington state. For more information, please visit us online at www.paynorthwest.com, read our blog, or connect with us via LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube.

About Pacific Continental Bank

Pacific Continental Bank, the operating subsidiary of Pacific Continental Corporation, delivers highly personalized services through 15 banking offices in Oregon and Washington. The bank also operates loan production offices in Tacoma, Wash. and Denver, Colo. With $2.4 billion in total assets, Pacific Continental has established one of the most unique and attractive metropolitan branch networks in the Pacific Northwest with offices in three of the region’s largest markets, including Seattle, Portland, and Eugene. Pacific Continental targets the banking needs of community based businesses, healthcare professionals, professional service providers, and nonprofit organizations. Since its inception in 1972, Pacific Continental Bank has been honored with numerous awards and recognitions from highly regarded third-party organizations, including The Seattle Times, The Portland Business Journal, Seattle Business magazine, and Oregon Business magazine. Pacific Continental Corporation’s shares are listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol “PCBK” and are a component of the Russell 2000 Index. For more information, please visit us online at www.therightbank.com.

New White Paper: The ROI of Automating Your Human Capital Management

Posted on July 23, 2016 by paynorthwest

Human Capital Management (HCM) is the set of processes related to your organization’s payroll, human resources (HR), time and attendance, scheduling, and other personnel administrative needs. Through automating HCM functions, businesses can see significant savings in the form of time, money, litigation exposure, and overall aggravation.

We invite you to click here to download our new ROI white paper to discover the specific areas where savings can be found, including:

Payroll processing
Payroll inflation
Employee absenteeism
Unnecessary overtime
FMLA and leave time
Wage and hour compliance exposure
Employee self-service
HR productivity
Employee engagement and satisfaction

To learn more about how cloud-based human capital management technology can benefit your business, don’t hesitate to contact one of our PayNorthwest specialist toll-free at +1.866.729.6920.

Have Salaried Employees and Don’t Need Workforce Management Tools? Think Again!

Posted on June 13, 2016 by paynorthwest

From our partners at Kronos

Ensuring the efficiency of your business means that you understand how to optimize your entire workforce, whether hourly or salaried. Here are three tips on how to leverage workforce management to drive an enhanced organizational effectiveness strategy for your organization:

Minimize Labor Compliance Risk

The management of FLSA, FMLA, and ACA regulatory guidelines applies to the entire workforce. Creating and sustaining a culture of compliance, accountability, and record keeping is vital for all organizations, big or small.

Companies need tools that provide average hours worked for full-time, part-time, hourly, and salaried workers, providing a holistic view of hours worked for all employees.

Manage Accrual Liability Costs

Today, most organizations track hourly employees’ benefit data such as vacation time and sick time. Yet they are much less disciplined when tracking their salaried workforce. Organizations should also look to maintain accurate salaried time-off data.

Workforce management solutions provide an ideal way to manage time-off requests and separation policies, including accrual payoffs. Providing accurate information for liability and financial reporting curbs unnecessary costs.

Manage Labor Costs

With a globally dispersed workforce, organizations must optimize their workforce management strategy to balance labor costs, productivity, and compliance risk. Labor represents your largest expense, so it needs to be carefully planned for and managed. Configurable pay rules, including overtime and schedules as well as accruals and attendance insight, give you the flexibility you need to manage both your hourly and salaried staff.

The right workforce management solution can give your organization the tools it needs to allocate skilled resources to meet short-term and long-term strategies.

Workforce management solutions can help organizations control labor costs, minimize compliance risks, and maximize productivity of their entire workforce, both salaried and hourly. Questions? Please contact a PayNorthwest specialist toll-free at +1.866.729.6920.

Are You Ready for the New DOL Overtime Regulations? Here’s a Handy Checklist!

Posted on June 8, 2016 by paynorthwest

From our partners at Kronos

On May 18^th, 2016, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) published its final rule updating overtime regulations for U.S. businesses. Effective as of December 1^st, 2016, the new rule is expected to extend overtime pay protections to more than four million Americans not currently eligible under federal law.

Now is the time for your organization to start getting ready to comply with the new regulations!

Click here to download our comprehensive readiness checklist.

Guest Blog Post: Human Capital Management – How to Elevate the Value of Your HR Department

Posted on September 23, 2015 by paynorthwest

By Lynette Hatscher, SPHR

The human resource (HR) function is one of the foundational pillars of an organization’s success. Employees are a company’s most valuable asset right at the heart of everything it undertakes – no employees means no management, no product development, no customer service, no sales and marketing. But to effectively attract, retain, manage, and motivate employees, a business must not only seek out HR leadership with a broad range of skills, such as business acumen, analytical skills, big-picture thinking, and highly developed people skills, it also needs to support that leadership with the adequate internal infrastructure that will enable them to deliver effective human capital management (HCM) across the organization – a very tall order indeed!

In my 20-year business career, I have sadly, more often than not, encountered HR as an under-resourced function due to varying degrees of value placed on the resource itself. When HR is in charge of delivering so much endless, yet vital paperwork and documentation (payroll, expense management, scheduling, onboarding, leave management, talent acquisition and management, benefits administration, time management, risk avoidance, etc.), how can it be expected to have the time to elevate its role and become an essential foundation of a company strategy? There just aren’t enough hours in the day.

To be able to break out of this vicious cycle, truly provide the foundational value it is expected to deliver, and receive the recognition it deserves, HR needs to have the right tools at its disposal. The good news is that the latest technological advances in cloud, mobile technology, platforms, and workflows give today’s HR leaders a real opportunity to make their mark and become better business partners by playing a much more strategic role within their own organizations when given real-time employee data to base their decisions on. Since employees are a key component of driving business results, it is important for companies to have a strategy that includes up-to-the-minute people data that can be tied to the business analytics strategy. And this is where HR process automation comes in. If a business invests in the right automated tools to streamline its HR processes, it will free up HR to become more impactful at both levels – tactical and strategic.

Implementing a suitable automated HR solution is no longer the sole privilege of large corporations. It doesn’t have to be complicated nor break the bank. As an HR Manager and Consultant, I have experienced the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to payroll, time attendance, and HRIS systems, and in that process, have found that not all HR solutions are created equal. Always make sure to ask yourself the right questions when preparing to embark on a system upgrade:

What current processes are taking the majority of the HR resource and how can we automate them?
What are our business objectives and how can a more strategic approach to HR help us accomplish them?
What HCM vendor would be a good fit for us?
What are reasonable timeframes for implementation?
Does the HCM system we want extend beyond corporate administration?
What kind of reports do we need and who in our organization needs them?
What kind of customer service do we need?

The bottom line is, your employees are your most valuable asset and they deserve to be managed effectively. When you invest in your HR department, you invest in your employees, and ultimately invest in the success of your business.

About Lynette Hatscher

Lynette Hatscher is CEO of Shared HR Services LLC, a human resources consulting company based in Seattle, Wash. and a member of PayNorthwest’s Referral Partner Network.

For more information on or to contact Lynette, please visit her LinkedIn page at https://www.linkedin.com/in/lynettehatscher.

White paper: The Family Medical Leave Act – A Path Forward

Posted on June 17, 2015 by paynorthwest

Striking a balance between your business, the rights of your employees, and FMLA

Success in business requires a reliable and dependable workforce. However, even with the most responsible employee, unforeseen circumstances may arise that require time away from work. The Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) passed in 1993 provides basic rights to job protection for absences related to an employee’s own serious health condition, the birth or adoption of a child, and the care of a family member with a serious health condition, or a military member. Employers who have 50 or more employees in a 75-mile radius for at least 20 weeks of the current or preceding year are covered under the FMLA, and therefore must follow the act’s provisions. There is a shared responsibility between the employer and the employee – employers must educate employees about their FMLA rights and employees must communicate their need for leave and supply appropriate and timely medical certifications.

You might think that FMLA isn’t really a big deal or that it doesn’t affect you or your business. You may be surprised to hear that a recent U.S. Department of Labor survey indicated that nearly one in seven of covered employees took leave for a FMLA reason in the previous 12 months. Societal changes, such as an aging workforce, increased participation by men in child-rearing activities, and the increasing desire to balance work and family obligations lead experts to believe that the use of FMLA leave will only continue to rise.

To help employers ensure a successful implementation to address all these challenges, Mike Anderson, Founder, President & CEO of PayNorthwest, and Mike Komola, President & CEO of HRnovations, have co-authored a white paper in which you will:

Discover the reasons why non-compliance is not worth the risk
Find out the top five challenges of employee leave administration
Learn what you can do to start meeting the FMLA challenge

Click here to download a copy of the paper.

Integration Beats Best-of-Breed in HR Systems

Posted on March 25, 2014 by paynorthwest

Couldn’t have said it better: Integration beats Best of Breed when it comes to HR systems. Silo systems, no matter how sexy or cool, cannot deliver value to HR departments if the data is scattered, out of sync, inaccessible or not connected to the rest of your organization. Check out this great post from BLR that gets it exactly right:

Integration beats Best of Breed in HR systems

Category: HR