New types of employee benefits are appearing all the time, as part of the drive to help attract new employees and retain existing ones. However, these new benefits need to be handled efficiently and effectively through the payroll ? and that adds extra administration time. In this article we look at five new benefits that are becoming popular.

Five new benefits for Payroll to Administer

• Car Salary Sacrifice. Car salary sacrifice is again becoming more attractive for carbon friendly employees, especially for hybrids or electric cars. Great for a company’s Corporate Social Responsibility.
• Every Penny Helps. Forgetting about your loose change in your pay packet is a great way for employees to give to charity. EPH works by rounding the pennies down in the pay packet, with the ?loose change? being automatically donated to a chosen charity. This means that just a little is paid out every single month, without the need to commit to a fixed sum to the charity. These pennies soon add up for any charity and give the donating employees a feel-good factor.
• Paid leave without a reason. This is becoming popular in the USA and that normally means it will do so in the UK. Keep an eye out for it.
• Telemedicine/ Telehealth. Waiting times for doctors’ appointments is becoming a difficult issue. This new employee benefit is where doctors’ consultations are done online through private insurers and could well become popular, just as the types of healthcare benefits currently provided by employers.
• Unlimited vacation. Yes, this is on the horizon. It is a potential headache as not establishing the difference between paid and unpaid absence, especially when unlimited vacation is added into the equation, could mean you get a lot of payroll queries.

What do More Benefits Mean for Payrolls?

More employee benefits are being introduced in order to attract to attract and retain good employees. To stay competitive the employee benefits packages on offer in addition to normal pay and conditions are growing. Larger companies often have over 25 such benefits to administer. Even small companies have several, and they all have to go through the payroll.

This means increased workloads for the payroll administrators. Businesses need to ensure the right people to run the payroll are in place as well as the right systems and support to deal with it.

If you are struggling to run your own payroll, especially if you are a smaller business, without a dedicated hr/payroll department, why not consider an outsourced payroll bureau. We can run your entire payroll, including your employee benefits, so that you don’t have to.

If you need help or advice contact us or call us on 0121 422 0550 for an initial chat.