Removal of Paper Payslips

A Case Study by Burton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Background

Burton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust provides a diverse range of services to a population of around 360,000 people across South Staffordshire, South Derbyshire and North West Leicestershire. To help facilitate this, the Trust employs over 3,200 substantive staff.

Removal of Paper Payslips

The suggestion of turning off paper payslips is one that has been mooted within the organisation for some time. However, with growing time pressures, the summer of 2017 seemed like the ideal time to start implementing the change.

In August 2017, we produced a paper outlining the case for turning off paper payslips and summarising the benefits/efficiency gains and the risks associated with implementing the change. The paper was taken to the Trust Executive Committee where the project was approved.

Project Group

Prior to the paper being approved, a group was established (that included the team that were responsible for the management of payslips in the Trust) to drive the project forward and to address any issues that might arise.  We developed an overall plan and timeline with tasks assigned to those involved.

We undertook a pilot with the Human Resources and Finance departments initially, as these teams had easy access to a computer and ESR. The pilot helped us identify and address any potential issues before the project was widely implemented across the Trust, and in September 2017 our pilot departments received their on-line payslip.

The switching off the paper payslip for the pilot departments involved a manual process which was quick and easily managed because of the small number of employees affected. 

We produced helpful information guides and a frequently asked questions documentation to support those downloading their online payslips from ESR for the first time.  This helped keep the number of telephone queries coming into the Human Resources department to a minimum.

Following a successful pilot we began to plan a ‘big bang approach’ to switching paper payslips off for all employees in the Trust.  This would reduce the administrative burden and involved simply changing the top-level ESR settings, rather than turning them off employee by employee. 

To support this approach we worked with our Communications Team to produce a range of internal communications including content for our intranet, screen savers and FAQs; these helped our employees understand the change.  The last paper payslip to be distributed to all our employees was in October 2017.

Benefits

• We have reduced the time taken in relation to the distribution of the payslips, both within the HR department and across the organisation. Switching to on line pay slips has released two members of staff for 1-2 days per month from having to sort and distribute paper payslips to the relevant departments across the organisation.
• Online Payslips are easily accessible via ESR and can be downloaded by our employees if they want to keep their own copies.
• We have removed the IG risk associated with paper payslips being misplaced or lost; the online payslips are secure within ESR.
• Staff can access their payslips from work or at home.
• There is no longer a delay in staff waiting for payslips to be delivered; they are available to view in ESR before the pay day.
• We have reduced the waste associated with uncollected payslips being returned back to the Human Resources department taking up storage space.
• We have seen an encouraging increase in the number of our employees accessing the ESR Portal. As a Trust we have amended our desktop icon so staff are taken directly to the Portal log in page and our latest statistics (at the end of January 2018) showed that 86% of our staff are logging into ESR Employee Self Service, via the Portal.  This puts us in 1^st place in the West Midlands and fifth across England and Wales for Portal usage.

The overall reaction across the organisation has been a positive one.  Our employees found the communications and FAQs helpful, and during the implementation - and in fact since, we have not received any queries.  The team whose role previously involved separating the payslips out and sending them across the organisation prior to payday are now free to carry out other duties.

Things to Consider

• To ensure your employees don’t encounter any issues when wanting to view their online payslip at home you need to ensure they understand that they need set up remote ESR access.
• Think about the staff who are off on long term absence or maternity/adoption leave and how you will communicate to them.
• Prepare your internal communications and give your employees sufficient time to understand the change.
• If your employees want to keep copies of their payslips, ensure your communications covers how to do this securely.
• Explain that when employees are leaving the organisation, if they wish to keep any of their historical payslips, they need to download local copies prior to leaving. They will no longer have access to them in ESR once they have left – even if they move to another NHS organisation.
• If paper payslips are turned off at employee level rather than at Trust level, if an employee has more than one assignment within ESR, all of their paper payslips will be turned off.

Further Information

If you would like more information about our project to switch to online payslips please email Grazyna Leonowicz, Learning & Workforce Manager/ESR Lead - grazyna.leonowicz@burtonft.nhs.uk