“An Analysis of Increase in Volume of Payroll Queries and Streamlining the Payroll Process”

INTERNSHIP REPORT

Compiled by: Dennis Joseph Koshy (50)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First and foremost we offer our sincere gratitude to our project manager, Suresh SR, (Associate Vice President & Lead HR Operations (Global Payroll)) who gave us the opportunity to work with his team on this project. He supported us throughout our project with his patience and knowledge whilst giving us the liberty to work in our own way.

We are grateful to Saraswathy MS (Senior Manager - Global Payroll and International Transfers), for her constant encouragement, guidance and support throughout our project. We would also like to acknowledge the valuable inputs that she provided which helped us to develop a better understanding of the entire payroll process.

We wish to express our deep sense of gratitude to Fanny Florence (Senior Officer - HR Global Payroll), for her timely guidance and useful suggestions, which helped us in carrying out the project work.

Sincere thanks to Shalom Thomas (HR Business Partner–Corporate Support) and Julie John (Assistant Manager-PMO) for their timely guidance and valuable assistance in the conduct of our project work.

I would like to thank Prof. J. Philip, President, XIME for instituting the Summer Internship Programme (SIP) which has helped us prepare better for corporate life. I also thank Prof. Reji Mathew, Dean, XIME for his support. I extend my warm gratitude to Prof. Binu Modoor, Associate Dean, XIME and my Project guide for his time, encouragement and able guidance.

Finally, yet importantly, we would like to express our heartfelt thanks to our beloved parents, friends and the entire payroll team for their help and wishes for the successful completion of this project.

Contents

 List of Tables……………………………………………………….3

 List of Figures……………………………………………………..4

 Abbreviations………………………………………………………5

 Executive Summary………………………………………………6

 Introduction to the Industry…………………………………....7

 Introduction to the Company…………………….…………...10

 Introduction to Payroll & Project...... 14

 Research Methodology...………………………………………19

 Findings & Analysis…………………………………………….25

 Limitations of the Study……………………………………….38

 Recommendations……………………………………………..39

 Conclusion………………………………………………………43

 Bibliography…………………………………………………….45

 Annexure...... 46

List of Tables

Table 1.1 Category of Queries 27

Table 2.1 Types of Salary 32 Queries Volume of queries Table 3.1 from each business 35 tower

Table 4.1 Volume of queries 36 from each level

Table 5.1 Volume of queries 38 from each location

List of Figures

Figure 1.1 IPM Stakeholder’s 17 Inputs

Figure 2.1 Data Flow in Payroll 18 System

Figure 3.1 L1 & L2 Queries v/s 25 Month

Figure 4.1 Types of Queries v/s 26 Month

Figure 5.1 Clarifications v/s 29 Month

Figure 6.1 Updates v/s Month 30

Figure 7.1 Errors v/s Month 31

Figure 8.1 Salary Issues for 32 different months

Figure 9.1 Category v/s Month 33

Figure 10.1 Business Tower v/s 35 Month

Figure 11.1 Level v/s Month 36

Figure 12.1 Location v/s Month 37

Abbreviations

 AWOI – Absent Without Information  C & B – Compensation & Benefits  ESI – Employee State Insurance  ETW- Employee tagged Wrongly  FFS - Full & Final Settlement  FLM – Front line Manager  HRA – House Rent Advance  HRHD – Human Resource Help Desk  HRMS – Human Resource Management System  IPM – Integrated Pay Master  LAAS – Leave and Attendance Automation System  LOP – Loss of Pay  MDS – Master Data System  MTP – Medically terminated pregnancy  ML – Maternity Leave  MSI – Merit Salary Increment  OMS – Offer Management System  PIP - Performance Incentive Plan  PS – PeopleSoft  RMG – Resource Management Group  R & R – Rewards & Recognition  SABL – Sabbatical Leave  SAL – Shift Allowance  TAT – Turn Around Time  VPF – Voluntary Provident Fund  VP/VD – Variable pay/ Variable deduction

Executive Summary

The HR-Payroll and HR-Helpdesk teams handle any kind of salary discrepancies or queries that are brought forward by the employees regarding their payroll variables and components. This project attempts to identify the reasons for the large number of payroll queries and aims at finding ways and means to reduce them.

In order to conduct the study we extracted the data i.e. the payroll queries from November, 2011 to April, 2012 from PeopleSoft (PS) which constituted the primary data. Apart from analyzing queries I also spoke to a few members of the payroll team and the HR Helpdesk.

The study gave fresh insights about the functioning of HR-Payroll and HR-Helpdesk in answering payroll queries. I observed that the steps taken to raise a query on PeopleSoft were a cumbersome process and some of the queries raised did not require the need for a team member to address it. I became aware of the facts that some managers’ overlooked uploading important details on IPM, employees failed to regularize their attendance, and the level of employees’ awareness on critical issues like company policies, how to navigate through PeopleSoft, etc.

To overcome these problems we came up with a few suggestions. Some of the major ones were:

 Customized tabs on PeopleSoft to raise queries effectively and efficiently.  Auto triggered emails for certain queries to route queries to concerned teams.  Constant communication regarding company polices to all employees.  Action against managers who fail to upload essential details on IPM.  Reminders to employees to ensure that they regularize their attendance.  Mandatory training hours on PeopleSoft (PS).

My main intention was to assist HRHD and the payroll team to function effectively and efficiently, keeping in mind the need for payroll team to concentrate on core payroll issues and HRHD’s long term goal of going off calls in the future.

Introduction to the Industry

The Information Technology industry in India has gained a brand identity as a knowledge economy due to its IT and ITES sector. The IT–ITES industry has two major components: IT Services and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO). The growth in the service sector in India has been led by the IT–ITES sector, contributing substantially to increase in GDP, employment, and exports. The sector has increased its contribution to India's GDP from 1.2% in FY1998 to 7.1% in FY2011.

According to NASSCOM, the IT–BPO sector in India aggregated revenues of US$88.1 billion in FY2011, where export and domestic revenue stood at US$59 billion and US$29 billion respectively. The major cities that account for about nearly 90% of this sectors exports are Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Kolkata and Coimbatore. Export dominate the IT–ITES industry, and constitute about 77% of the total industry revenue. Though the IT–ITES sector is export driven, the domestic market is also significant with a robust revenue growth. The industry’s share of total Indian exports (merchandise plus services) increased from less than 4% in FY1998 to about 25% in FY2012. According to Gartner, the "Top Five Indian IT Services Providers" are Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Cognizant, Wipro and HCL Technologies

This sector has also led to employment generation. Direct employment in the IT services and BPO/ITES segment was 2.3 million in 2009-10 indirect employment of over 8.3 million job opportunities is also expected to be generated due to the growth of this sector in 2010-11. Generally considered a dominant player in the global outsourcing sector, however, the sector continues to face challenges of competitiveness in the globalized world, particularly from countries like China and Philippines.

India's growing stature in the Information Age enabled it to form close ties with both the United States of America and the European Union. However, the recent global financial crisis has deeply impacted the Indian IT companies as well as global companies. As a result, hiring has dropped sharply, and employees are looking at different sectors like the financial service, telecommunications, and manufacturing industries, which have

been growing phenomenally over the last few years. India's IT Services industry was born in Mumbai in 1967 with the establishment of Tata Group in partnership with Burroughs. The first software export zone SEEPZ was set up in Mumbai way back in 1973, the old avatar of the modern day IT Park. More than 80 percent of the country's software exports happened out of SEEPZ, Mumbai in the 80s.

The economic effect of the technologically inclined services sector in India—accounting for 40% of the country's GDP and 30% of export earnings as of 2006, while employing only 25% of its workforce

Today, Bangalore is known as the Silicon Valley of India and contributes 33% of Indian IT Exports. Two of India’s largest IT companies, Infosys and Wipro are head-quartered in Bangalore, as are many of the global SEI-CMM Level 5 Companies.

Mumbai too has its share of IT companies that are India's first and largest, like TCS and well established companies like Reliance, Patni, LnT Infotech, i-Flex, WNS, Shine, Naukri, Jobspert etc. And these IT and dot com companies are ruling the roost of Mumbai's relatively high octane industry of Information Technology.

Such is the growth in Information Technology; it was revealed that Cap Gemini will soon have more staff in India than it does in its home market of France with 21,000 personnel+ in India.

A joint EU-India group of scholars was formed on 23 November 2001 to further promote joint research and development. On 25 June 2002 India and the European Union agreed to bilateral cooperation in the field of science and technology. India holds observer status at CERN while a joint India-EU Software Education and Development Center is due at Bangalore.

India's IT industry (in USD bn)

FY FY FY FY FY Particulars 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

IT Services 10.4 13.5 17.8 23.5 31.0

- Exports 7.3 10.0 13.13 18.0 23.1

- Domestic 3.1 3.5 4.5 5.5 7.9

ITES-BPO 3.4 5.2 7.2 9.5 12.5

- Exports 3.1 4.6 6.3 8.4 10.9

- Domestic 0.3 0.6 0.9 1.1 1.6

Engineering services, R&D and Software 2.9 3.9 5.3 6.5 8.6 products

- Exports 2.5 3.1 4.0 4.9 6.4

- Domestic 0.4 0.7 1.3 1.6 2.4

Hardware 5.0 5.9 7.0 8.5 12.0

- Exports 0.5 0.5 0.6 0.5 0.5

- Domestic 4.4 5.1 6.5 8.0 11.5

Total IT industry (including hardware) 21.6 28.4 37.4 48.0 64.

Introduction to the Company

MphasiS a unit of Hewlett-Packard Co., is an Information Technology services company based in Bangalore, India. MphasiS is certified with ISO 9001:2008, ISO/IEC 27001:2005 and is assessed at CMMI v 1.2 Level 5. MphasiS is ranked #7 in India IT companies and overall #165 by Fortune India 500 in 2011 with more than 38,000 employees as of 2011. The company has 29 offices in 14 countries with delivery centers in India, Sri Lanka, China, North America and Europe.

History

MphasiS (then, MphasiS BFL Limited) was formed in June 2000 after the merger of the US-based IT consulting company MphasiS Corporation (founded in 1998) and the Indian IT services company BFL Software Limited (founded in 1992). MphasiS Corporation was founded in 1998 in Santa Monica, California by Jerry Rao and Jeroen Tas.

In June 2006 Electronic Data Systems (EDS) purchased a controlling stake in the company (52%) for $380 million and operated as an independent EDS unit. On May 13, 2008, Hewlett-Packard confirmed that it had reached a deal with Electronic Data Systems to acquire the company for $13.9 billion. The deal was completed on August 26, 2008.

In September 2009 MphasiS changed its brand identity by dropping EDS association to become "MphasiS, an HP Company" after HP retired EDS Brand to become "HP Enterprise Services". MphasiS operates as an independent HP subsidiary with its own board and continues to be listed on Indian markets as "MphasiS Limited". Currently HP owns close to 62% in MphasiS.

MphasiS marked $1 billion in revenues and registered a consolidated revenue of Rs 5,037 crore ($1,099.3 million) for the year ended October 31, 2010 becoming the sixth Indian IT company to do that. MphasiS headquarters at Bagmane Tech Park, Bangalore.

Services MphasiS is engaged in providing information technology services to its customers around the world. MphasiS provides integrated solutions that include business process outsourcing, infrastructure technology, and application services. The application services offered by the company include application development as well as applications maintenance and support services. The markets served by the company are financial services & insurance, healthcare, manufacturing, government, transportation, communications, and consumer & retail industries.

MphasiS- BPO

Fortune 500 companies globally are served through voice and contact center by the MphasiS BPO. Personalizing near shore, offshore and onshore solutions are part of the field of expertise of the company. Value added and efficient customer service care is provided by the business process outsourcing unit. The various processes include finance and accounting, tax and compliance, research and content management and customer relationship management

The company has BPO operating in Mangalore, Pune, Noida, Mumbai, Bangalore, Pondicherry and Ahmadabad. All these centers offers English language customer care services. The Latin American clients are routed normally to the Tijuana and Mexico units.

The support service in various sectors as provided by MphasiS business process outsourcing includes comprehensible solutions. For instance in research and content management processes the customer service helps you to clean, and manage through integrated and aggregative mediums. This enhances access to information and data. Similarly in financial processes effective management and awareness is provided by conforming to company rules and policies. Customer relationship management helps in enhancing interactivity with customers. This includes leveraging in a seamless way through phone, web and effective communicating devices. Human resource outsourcing includes effective utilization of Human Resource policies and practices.

The MphasiS BPO operates through an efficient management system. This management is dedicated to allotting processes and structuring them. A team of management information systems, quality assurance and business analysts handles the operations of each individual processes. Customer service improvement is handled by the Six Sigma team. The business process outsourcing unit works on a three step process principle: Transition, stabilization and finally optimization.

Offices

With more than 38,000 employees, MphasiS has presence across India with centers in Bangalore, Raipur, Chennai, Pune, Mumbai, Noida-NCR, Indore, Pondicherry, Ahmedabad, Bhubaneswar and Mangalore.

HR Organization Chart

SVP & Head - Global HR Operations

SVP & Business HR Head – BPO Domestic

SVP & Head - Global Staffing & Learning

Executive Assistant SVP & Head - to CHRO Technical Learning Chief Human Resource Officer SVP & Head - Global Compensation & Benefits

SVP & Apps Bus HR Head-Matured Mkts Benefits.

SVP and Business HR Head – ITO core &Talent Management

SVP and Head HR – BPO International, Service desk & Corporate Support

Introduction to Payroll and the Project

In a company, payroll is the sum of all financial records of salaries, wages, bonuses, allowances, incentives and deductions for an employee. In accounting, payroll refers to the amount paid to employees for services they provided during a certain period of time. In the case of most Indian companies that being on a monthly basis. Payroll plays a major role in a company for several reasons. From an accounting perspective, payroll is crucial because payroll and payroll taxes considerably affect the net income of most companies and they are subject to laws and regulations. From an ethics in business viewpoint payroll is a critical department as employees are responsive to payroll errors and irregularities: good employee morale requires payroll to be paid timely and accurately. The primary mission of the payroll department is to ensure that all employees are paid accurately and timely with the correct withholdings and deductions, and to ensure the withholdings and deductions are remitted in a timely manner. This includes salary payments, tax withholdings, and deductions from a paycheck.

It consists of details regarding the employee ID, employee name, date of joining, daily attendance record, basic salary, allowances, overtime pay, different types of bonuses, commissions, incentives, pay for holidays, vacations and sickness, and accommodation etc. Various deductions such as PF, taxes, loan installments or salary advances taken by employee are deducted before releasing the salary to the employee.

Calculation of gross salaries and deductible amounts is a tedious task which involves risk. Some of the organizations use the traditional manual method of payroll processing and some go for the advanced payroll processing software.

In today’s computerized environment, payroll system has developed into automated software that performs every action needed by the payroll process. It helps in calculating the payable amounts and deductions very easily. It also helps in generating the pay slips in lesser time. MphasiS however, belongs to the first category, and still use the traditional manual method.

Automated calculations minimize errors. Data is validated automatically by the software. It needs professionals to make use of the software for its efficient working.

IPM Inputs Integrated Pay Master (IPM) is an internal tool developed with the help of Chief Information Office (CIO) team for collating all the payroll inputs. The various payroll inputs for all India & Overseas employees or their respective managers are provided through IPM. All the inputs given by the stakeholders on this tool are considered as approved. All the inputs have to be provided before 15th of every month after which the data uploaded on IPM, will be processed by the payroll team.

Features of IPM

. Ensures data security and confidentiality . Removes person & email dependency (multiple handovers) . Audit Trail . Reduction in effort & time taken by the payroll team

IPM Stakeholders

IPM gets the inputs from various stakeholders for the Payroll Processing. The major stakeholders are:

 Recruitment  Offer Management System (OMS)  Delivery  Compensation & Benefits (C & B)  Finance  Human Resource (HR)- Talent Management Group  Resource Management Group (RMG)  Admin

Figure 1: IPM Stakeholder’s Inputs

Validation of Payroll System

Payroll system proves to be an integral part of any company’s efficient and successful running. At MphasiS, the payroll system comprises of 4 elements:

 IPM  PS  MDS  Delphi

IPM – Integrated Pay Master is an internal tool developed with the help of CIO team for collating all the payroll inputs

PS - PeopleSoft is being used by MphasiS as the Human Resource Management System (HRMS).

MDS - Master Data System is where all these details get accumulated and is sent to other downstream applications. It is currently used only for VP/VD inputs.

Delphi – It is the system used by the Finance team to integrate the payout details of each employee.

IPM PS MDS DELPHI

Figure 2: Data Flow in Payroll System

Validation Process In order to reduce the number of payroll related queries coming to the payroll team, a study was conducted to identify the major issues or errors in the existing process.

Sample: A sample of 7989 payroll queries was pulled out from PeopleSoft, for doing the study. The dump was from 1st November 2011 to 30th April 2012.

Validation: Each query was manually looked up on PeopleSoft and then categorized. Validation was done in Excel with the help of “vlookup” formula to extract essential details.

Research Methodology

Research in common parlance refers to a search for knowledge. Once can also define research as a scientific and systematic search for pertinent information on a specific topic. The Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English lays down the meaning of research as “a careful investigation or inquiry especially through search for new facts in any branch of knowledge.”

According to Clifford Woody research comprises defining and redefining problems, formulating hypothesis or suggested solutions; collecting, organizing and evaluating data; making deductions and reaching conclusions; and at last carefully testing the conclusions to determine whether they fit the formulating hypothesis. Research is, thus, an original contribution to the existing stock of knowledge making for its advancement. It is the pursuit of truth with the help of study, observation, comparison and experiment. In short, the search for knowledge through objective and systematic method of finding solution to a problem is research.

The purpose of research is to discover answers to questions through the application of scientific procedures. The main aim of research is to find out the truth which is hidden and which has not been discovered as yet. Though each research study has its own specific purpose, we may think of research objectives as falling into a number of following broad groupings:

 To gain familiarity with a phenomenon or to achieve new insights into it (studies with this object in view are termed as exploratory or formulate research studies)  To portray accurately the characteristics of a particular individual, situation or a group (studies with this object in view are known as descriptive research studies);  To determine the frequency with which something occurs or with which it is associated with something else (studies with this object in view are known as diagnostic research studies);  To test a hypothesis of a causal relationship between variables (such studies are known as hypothesis-testing research studies). 19

Statement of the Problem: The large amount of payroll queries that was coming to the payroll team was considered more than what it should be getting each month. Some of the issues caused by this were;

 Increasing number of payroll queries lead to: low employee satisfaction and increased man-hours.

 Apart from that, this caused the payroll team to divert their focus from hard core payroll issues.  Increasing the workload of the HR Helpdesk

Assumptions: Few assumptions regarding the study were that;

 Since BPO employees were not used to the corporate setup, the initial assumption was that maximum queries would come from the BPO Tower.  The main location from where the queries were coming in was considered to be Bangalore and Pune, since they had the highest number of employees.  The assumption was that the new employees would be asking more queries than the older employees.

Hypothesis: Since the study conducted was descriptive in nature, I did not have a hypothesis for the same.

Sample: A sample of 7989 payroll queries was pulled out from PeopleSoft, for doing the study. The dump was from 1st November 2011 to 30th April 2012.

Universe: All queries that were coming to the HR Helpdesk, from 1st November 2011 to 30th April 2012 would be the universe for the study.

Limitations of the Study: This study had its share of limitations. Some of the major ones were:

 Data was not accurate that was pulled out from PS- The L1 queries that were pulled out for the November, December and January were all Salary queries, unlike for the other months, which was purely data from payroll category.  Difficult to categorize since they were very similar- Some of the queries were so similar in nature that it was difficult to put it into a category sometimes. The categorization was done on the basis of our understanding of the query or solution provided.  No proper Summary - Some of the L1 queries did not have a proper summary. Because of this, there was no clarity on the issue. Therefore we were not able categorize them.  Time Limitation – Since the report has to be submitted before the results of the implemented recommendations are still unknown, estimations can’t be based it. Due to the time limit, this study can’t be compared to any other organizations that have implemented similar recommendations.

The target population for the purpose of our analysis were all the permanent, contract basis, pre-separated and separated employees of MphasiS Ltd, both onsite and offshore employees, who have raised payroll related queries on PeopleSoft via calls and e-mails, from November, 2011 to April; 2012.The duration of study was from May 7th – June 29th, 2012.

The data was collected by, extracting reports from PeopleSoft by using the following steps:

Main MenuReporting Tools  Helpdesk Reporting Tools 9.1  Helpdesk Query Manager 9.1

The command for each category being:

RC_CASE_SUMMARY L1 Queries

RC_CASE_SUMMARY_1_PAYROLL L2 Queries

The entire payroll dump was analyzed by using their respective case ID’s on PeopleSoft (PS). Based on our observation we were able to classify them on the following basis: updates, clarification and errors.

Those queries which were grouped under clarifications were raised because:

 The employees were seeking general information  Employees needed clarity on certain issues

Those queries marked as updates were done for the following reasons:

 Employees faced difficulties in updating their bank account and PAN card details so they required the assistance of the payroll team for the same.  Employees made requests with respect to application of leaves, salary advance and VPF requests.

The Errors were classified taking into consideration the following:

 Technical errors  Human errors

After going through the queries, on the basis of our understanding we were able to classify them into the following categories:

Advances: Queries were based on employees’ requests to apply for salary advances for medical reasons, house rent etc. as they required the payroll team to apply for it on their behalf and forward the same to the finance team.

Allowances: Queries based on shift/on-call special, deputation, onsite, leave travel allowances.

Bank Accounts & Pan Card Issues: Requests to update the bank account numbers or deletion of the previous accounts and updating the employee PAN details on People Soft.

Bonus Issues: Issues relating to joining, longevity, referral, skill and retention bonus were placed under this category.

Deductions: This consisted of issues involving deductions with respect to taxes (Professional & Income), transport and insurance premium deductions.

Employee tagged wrongly: These were queries regarding incorrect Band, Level, Designation and location of employees on their pay slips or on PS.

Gratuity and Superannuation: Employees want to know the status and breakup of the gratuity amount for the tenure of the employees. The status of the gratuity cheque sent is also clarified at times.

Incentives: Employees raise their concerns of the amounts due to them with respect to rewards and recognition (R&R) amounts, PIP, and training incentives.

Leave Related: Requests’ relating to employees extending their LOP for the following months, LOP reversal issues, leave balance and leave encashment for the year.

PF issues: Employees raise the cases for reasons of discontinuing the VPF or information regarding PF transfer, withdrawal, contribution, balance enquiry etc.

Reimbursements: Joining /discontinuing transport and Car and fuel reimbursements policies.

Salary Issues: Discrepancies in the Salary credited for the month and clarifications as to why the salary hasn’t been released. These queries were sub categories on the solutions provided to the queries stated below:  HRMS Stoppay  LAAS Stoppay  Bank Stoppay  Released Through Cheque  Interim Payout  Raise case on PS  Salary deductions  Others

Miscellaneous Issues: Employees raised cases requesting for information purposes on various issues like car enrollment policy, Change of LAN ID, payment of summit award etc.

Findings & Analysis

The total amount of queries analyzed over a period of 6 months from November, 2011 to April, 2012 was 7989. Out of which 4502 (56.4%) were L1 Queries and 3487 (43.6%) were L2 queries, handled by the HR- Helpdesk and HR- Payroll team respectively.

Figure 3.1

As shown in figure 3.1 the month of November 2011 had a sum total of 1536 queries. This was because for the month of November, December and January the data received was not purely Payroll data, but queries were extracted from the salary category as well.

Figure 4.1

7989 queries were then classified into 6393 Clarifications (80%), 1283 (16.1%) request for system updates and 313 (3.9%) technical or human errors.

As shown in figure 4.1 the queries that have hit payroll every month have been relatively of the same type over the last six months. The clarifications seem to have reduced over the months, but the updates have seen an upward trend till the month of March. The errors have been relatively low on a month on month basis.

Table 1.1

Category Number of Cases Percentage Salary Issues 3783 47.4 Bank A/C & Pan Card Issues 1102 13.8 Leave related 816 10.2

Deductions 543 6.8 Allowances 520 6.5 Incentives 214 2.7 Bonus Issues 210 2.6 Gratuity & Superannuation 181 2.3 PF Related 179 2.2 Employee Tagged Wrongly 162 2 Advances 101 1.3 Miscellaneous 107 1.3 Reimbursements 71 0.9 Grand Total 7989 100

Observations:

 Majority of the queries raised were because of salary issues 47.4%, bank account and pan card updates 13.8%, leave related 10.2%, deductions 6.8% and allowances 6.5%.  From Salary Issues, cases raised were largely due to LAAS Stop pay that constituted 26% of the salary issues and 12% of the total queries.  Incentive issues which were 2.7% of total queries were raised because employees did not receive their incentives, as their managers had not updated the inputs on IPM.  2.6% of total queries were concerning Bonus issues. 50% of them were cases regarding Joining and the rest were referral, skill, longevity, and retention bonus in descending order. 27

 Gratuity and superannuation constituted around 2.3% of total queries where employees inquired about their gratuity status.  PF issues were 2.2% of the total queries where employees raised queries about their PF calculations, statement, and information on transfer or withdrawal of PF. Queries were also raised with respect to alterations in VPF contribution.  Issues relating to incorrect information shown in PS or on Pay-slip of employees with regard to Band, Designation, Level and Location represented 2% of total queries.  Advances and Miscellaneous issues were 1.3% of total queries.  Reimbursements amounted to 0.9% of total queries.

Figure 5.1

As seen in figure 5.1 Clarifications were primarily because of salary issues 57%, deductions 8%, leave related 7% and bank account and pan card issues 4.5% of total clarifications. The rise in allowances and deductions were mainly because of the change in shift allowance policy and transport policy for the month of April and March respectively.

Figure 6.1

As seen in the above figure 6.1, Updates were largely because of requests for bank account and pan card updates (61.6%) and leave related issues (21.2%) as a percentage of total updates.

The reason for the increasing trend in bank account updates from the month of February was because the data received for the month of November- January wasn’t purely Payroll data, majority of the queries were extracted from the salary category.

The leave related issues were considerably high for November and December because of LOP reversals as employees would have gone on leave and on resuming work they would have been on LOP.

Figure 7.1

As depicted in figure 7.1, Errors were mainly because of salary issues (30%). Employees raised queries on salary deductions as they would have been on LOP after resuming from December vacations.

Allowances were 28% of total errors, due to manager’s carelessness as they failed to upload the shift allowance and incentive inputs on IPM. 15% were leave related LOP reversal cases, which has been stopped as of June, 2012.

Figure 8.1

Salary Issues

1005

710 638 465 508 457

Nov Dec Jan Feb March April

As seen in the above figure 8.1, Majority of the queries raised were because of salary issues, 47.4 % of total queries. The number of queries raised for the months of November to January is relatively higher because the data received for those months wasn’t purely Payroll data, majority of the queries were extracted from the salary category.

Salary Issues cases raised were largely due to LAAS Stoppay that constituted 26% of total salary issues and 12% of the total queries. Whereas for the months of February till April the queries related to salary issues have been relatively stable.

Table 2.1

Queries Cases Grand Percentage Total HRMS Stoppay 159 7989 2.0 Bank Stoppay 314 7989 3.9 LAAS Stoppay 993 7989 12.4 Interim Payout 411 7989 5.1 Raise Case 143 7989 1.8 LOP 222 7989 2.8

Figure 9.1

As shown in figure 9.1 the queries raised were bank account and pan card updates 13%, leave related 10%, deductions 6.7% and allowances 6.5%.

 Bank account was 86.8% and pan card updates 13.2% of the total bank account and pan card issues.  Leave related issues were mostly LOP reversals which will be stopped from June, 2012 except in the case of technical issues or where the manager had failed to regularize.  Allowances were more often than not raised because of disputes in Shift and on- call allowance 74.8%. This increase was due to the change in shift policy in March/February which the employees were ignorant of.  More than half of the deductions related to Transport (54%). This was because of the change in transport policy which the employees were unaware of. 26% of deductions were because of Income tax queries which should have been routed to the finance team through E-payroll and Professional Tax.

Observations

The following were the shocking observations when we compared the figures as a proportion to the number of employees active in the system as on May 2012:

 It was alarming to see that a large amount of the queries were raised by the CS business tower which was 30.9% and not the BPO and APPS towers which would be the normal assumption.  The location which had the most queries in proportion to the number of employees was Indore 39.8%, Mumbai 26.1% and Vadodara 25.9%.  A vast majority of the queries were raised by employees from levels 4 (30.5%), 5 (29.6%) and 6 (25.9%).  Queries raised by employees who joined in 2005, 2006 and 2008 were the highest at 29% in proportion to the total number of employees who joined that year. Second highest were those who joined at 2011 (23%).  The number of queries raised by employees’ onsite was 12% while those offshore were 22.3% in proportion to the employees.

Figure 10.1

As depicted in figure 10.1 the queries raised by the APPS, BPO and ITO towers have been considerably large. But when compared as a proportion of the total number of employees active in the system as on May 2012, it was alarming to see that a large amount of the queries were raised by the CS business tower which was 30.9% and not the BPO and APPS towers which was shown in figure 1.9. BPO was 21% and APPS 21.2% as a proportion of total employees active in the system as on May, 2012.

Table 3.1

Business No. of No. of Employees Percentage Tower Cases APPS 2505 11796 21.2 BPO 3135 14906 21.0 CS 406 1313 30.9 IS 91 588 15.5 ITO 1631 6697 24.4

Figure 11.1

As seen in figure 11.1, a majority of the queries were raised by levels 4, 3 and 2.

But when compared as a proportion of the total number of employees active in the system as on May 2012, vast majority of the queries were raised by employees from levels 4 (30.5%), 5 (29.6%) and 6 (25.9%).

Table 4.1

Levels No. of Cases No. of Employees Percentage 1 1343 6731 20.0 2 1418 9116 15.6 3 1477 7412 19.9 4 1534 5024 30.5 5 1086 3673 29.6 6 628 2422 25.9 7 288 1361 21.2

Figure 12.1

As observed in figure 12.1 a vast majority of the queries were raised by employees from locations like Bangalore, Pune and Indore in descending order.

But when compared as a proportion of the total number of employees active in the system as on May 2012, the location which had the most queries in proportion to the number of employees was Indore (39.8%), Mumbai (26.1%) and Vadodara (25.9%).

Table 5.1

Location No. of Cases No. of Employees Percentage Bangalore 2236 10872 20.6 Chennai 1008 5082 19.8 Indore 1378 3458 39.8 Mangalore 295 1510 19.5 Mumbai 372 1428 26.1 Pune 1664 8435 19.7 Vadodara 417 1612 25.9

Limitations of the Study This study had its share of limitations. Some of the major ones were:

Recommendations

Sr. Problem Impact Solution No 1. Responses to queries  Employees are not Standardization of are wavered and lack communicated responses to certain clarity at times. efficiently. issues.  Increased no. of re-opened cases. 2. Employees are not  Increased LAAS Alerts of LAAS systems regularizing their stoppay cases and Computer Systems attendance in time. (wallpapers). 3. Lack of awareness -  Increased Bank On-boarding SPOCs Bank Account and Pan and Pan card must ensure that card details. Related Queries. employees are well informed. 4. Employees are Increased Updates for Refresher /training unaware of how to Payroll. courses on PS. navigate through PS. 5. Managers fail to: Employees are : Managers should  Upload the  Unable to claim without fail details on IPM. their allowances  Upload details  Regularize and incentives.  Regularize attendance  LAAS Stoppay attendance  Inform policy  More cases raised  Inform policy changes changes (Action taken if found lacking) 6. L2 Queries specific to Increased TAT HD has to make sure payroll are not being that they clearly assign routed to payroll. queries to the respective departments. 7. Employees have too Wrong category chosen One category for payroll. many options in thus increasing workload. categories. 8.. Employees do not read Unaware of the change in Change in structure of email alerts for policy policy. email alerts conveying change. policy changes.

9. Employees are Increase in salary status Running scrolls on E- unaware how to check queries. payroll requesting their salary status. employees to check their status

10. Employees sending tax Unwanted increased Auto triggered mails to related queries to number of L1 payroll ensure employees raise payroll, instead of queries. a ticket on e-payroll. raising a ticket on e- payroll. 11. Employees are Increase in L2 payroll Clearly state the exact confused about when queries with reference to date the employee can they will receive their bonus. expect to receive their bonus amounts. bonus amounts.

Recommendations in detail:

1. Reminders for regularization of attendance

 Reminders should be sent in the form of wallpapers on monitor screens for those employees who have access to computers just before payroll dates.  For those who do not have accessibility to computer systems, reminders will be showcased on the LAAS system in the form of running scrolls.

2. Handbooks

 On-boarding Handbook- A handbook containing details like:  Bank/ PAN Card Updates on PS  Medi-claim ( w.r.t. “now or never” )  Allowances

 Exit Handout at the start of the “notice period” - A handout containing information on :  PF withdrawal/ PF Transfer (especially sharing of personal E-mail ID)  Gratuity/ Superannuation  Pre-separation process  Full & Final settlement procedure

3. There should be only Single Category for employees to raise their queries regarding payroll. ( Check Annexure II for further categories)

4. Auto-triggered mails for:  Queries specific to Transport,  Tax ( e-payroll)

Suggestions that have been initiated:

1. Running Scrolls on e-Payroll

Though the salary is being processed for the current month, please do login to Self Service Portal (SSP) to know exactly what is your ‘Salary payout status’ for the current month. Use this link, which navigates you to SSP:

URL: https://appgate.mphasis.com/uniquesig6b474584fc2fa80679cd75f32eedf6b6253 cb4311c336d04850c4093eec403e1/uniquesig1/pfcab/aspx/PayStatusDetails.as px?ParentId=1&Id=58&Type=1

Expectations

 Strengthen HD’s processes in order to go off calls in the near future.  Help employees who are unable to elucidate their queries.  Increase the speed and efficiency of the HRHD Team  Clearly stated problems, avoids confusion among HD team members.  Number of re-opened cases will reduce as HD team will have a clearer understanding of Employees queries.  This will help streamline all queries to the correct stakeholders and there will be less room for error.

Conclusion

Every month the HRHD is hit by more than 10,000 queries, of which approximately 1,500 are payroll related queries. The project was conducted in order to reduce such queries by finding means to streamline processes and create awareness thereby utilizing company’s resources in the best possible way.

Primarily, the trend analysis conducted lead to the following conclusions:

 Majority of the queries were raised by the CS business tower and not APPS and BPO which was the supposition.  Locations which had the most queries in proportion to the number of employees were Indore, Mumbai and Vadodara.  A good number of the queries were raised by employees from levels 4, 5 and 6.  Queries raised by employees who joined in 2005, 2006 and 2008 were the highest in proportion to the total number of employees who joined that year.

Essentially, our recommendations for streamlining the entire process and thereby reducing the number of queries were to:

 Clear identification of L1 and L2 queries  Simplify the PS – CRM navigations/ drop down list to help employee to select the right option to raise the issue  Assign queries to the right stakeholder at the first place  Structure of responses can be more clear and understandable to employee  Conclusive closure to queries at first place rather than partial response or incomplete responses  Identify area of concerns which are of repetitive nature and highlight back to the stakeholders  Commitments made to employees should be tracked in system itself( PS-CRM)

While the overall communication can be improved by:

 Make it effective to the end customer (employees)  Any policy or process changes which are impacting the employees , should have multiple mode communication (email, FLM connects , running scrolls, wallpapers, etc)  Reviewing Manager tool kit and updating it on regular basis  Strengthening the on-boarding effectiveness in terms of mandatory do’s & don'ts  Mandatory training for employees/Front Line Managers (FLMs) on PS system

Our main intention was to assist HRHD and the payroll team to function effectively and efficiently, keeping in mind the need for payroll team to concentrate on core payroll issues and HRHD’s long term goal of going off calls in the future.

Bibliography

 Websites

 www.mphasis.com  www.mymphasis.com  www.humanresource.net.in  www.hrdc.in  www.humancapitalonline.com  www.shrmindia.org  www.wikipedia.org

Annexure

 This will have further categories that an employee can select from: o Leave o Incentives o Allowances o Gratuity and o Advances Superannuation o Bonus o Reimbursements o Salary o Deductions o Payslip o PF o Bank account details o Data upload in PS o Pan Card details o Others

 Each Category thereafter will have a Specific Summary. o Leave . LOP . LAAS . SABL / ML/MTP . Leave balance . Others

o Allowances . Dispute in Shift/On- Call allowance . Dispute in OT allowance . Dispute in Deputation allowance . Dispute in Leave travel allowance . Special Allowance . Others

o Deductions . Professional Tax . ESI . Income Tax . Medi-claim . Transport . Others

o Payslip . Attestation . Changes in Details on Payslip . Designation . Others

o Bonus Issues . Joining . Longevity . Referral . Skill . Retention . Others

o Gratuity and Superannuation . Gratuity . Superannuation

o Incentives . Training . MSI . PIP . Others . R&R

o Advances . Salary Advance . HRA / HDA . Medical Advance . Others

o Salary . Salary Not credited . Discrepancies in Salary Amount . Salary Status . Salary Deductions . Cheque not received . Wrong cheque . Others