The Basics: What is a Payroll Manager?

It seems simple enough. A payroll manager is the person in charge of maintaining a company’s payroll system and ensuring that all employees get the proper amount of pay and leave time. However, payroll management is not so easy. Depending on your company, there can be great complexity in the calculation of leave and other benefits, or the administration of overtime and work rules. All of this must be done, sometimes in rapidly, so that a payroll is distributed to employees accurately and on time. If payrolls are wrong or late there can be dire financial or legal consequences.

Being a payroll manager is often a thankless job. Your primary responsibility is to make sure things don't go wrong. No one pats you on the back when things go right. Finally, you must remain vigilent monitoring changing work, benefit and labor rules to make sure your employees are being paid properly, and that no one can come back later and sue your company with the claim of being shortchanged on a paycheck. 

The duties of a payroll manager seem straightforward enough. But there are nuances that create challenges.

Nice To Meet You

He’s the tenth person to approach you since you walked into the event.

He offers his name with a smile and a firm handshake.You smile back. “Nice to meet you.”

And, just like that, you shake hands and completely forget whatever he said his name was.

This article is arranged for you to have an efficient experience: the tips are first, followed by some supporting research, and then discussion about Employee Appreciation Day and its creator, Dr. Bob Nelson.

5 Employee Recognition Tips

1. Recognize when an employee does something well - in other words, a specific task or project.
   
   
2. Make recognition part of your work culture, meaning that it happens frequently and make it easy to do.
   
   
3. Make sure it happens in a fair and balanced way, meaning that it isn’t a politically-based activity where the manager plays favorites and only a few of your employees are ever recognized.

Before we start, we need to ask: "What makes a great supervisor today?" Here's a working definition: he or she has a set of critical skills that get the strongest performance out of his staff and retains the best employees. He also needs to strive to develop and improve these skills.  

1. Focus on retention. The job market is heating up, and employers are once again competing for top talent. In this environment, supervisors have to always have a handle on who are their best people and make sure they feel challenged and empowered.

The reason employees lie is they do not want to cause or get into trouble. In some cases, employee lying is to cover for another employee's lie. In other cases, they lie to cover for themselves.