One third of employees don’t check their payslips regularly
6th November 2019
A survey has revealed that nearly a third of UK employees (31%) do not check their payslips regularly.
This is despite one in seven (15%) of the 1129 employees surveyed by IRIS Software Group indicating that they were worried about the accuracy of their payslips.
The research showed that somewhat surprisingly, it was people working in the finance and accountancy sectors that were among the least likely to regularly check their payslips (41%), along with those employed in media, marketing and sales (47%) and education (42%).
A number of high-profile cases in recent years have underlined the importance of employees reviewing payslips to check for errors.
It was only a couple of years ago that Tesco had to pay out nearly £10m in underpayments to 140,000 of its employees due to a payroll glitch. Argos too have fallen foul of payroll errors and ended up with a whopping £1.5m HMRC fine on top of owed backpay topping £2.4m.
Nick Gregory, chief marketing officer at payroll experts, IRIS Software Group, said: “We find that one of the main reasons employees don’t read their payslips is because they do not fully understand them.
“Organisations could do more to help staff understand their pay. Providing fact sheets and visual guides to explain all the terms on a payslip would be one way to make this easier.”
The survey also revealed that many small and medium-sized businesses are sticking to paper payslips over electronic methods. Nearly a quarter of all employees stated that they still received paper payslips, four out of five of which (84%) worked for SMEs.
Nick Gregory continues: “The survey results suggest that SMEs may be slower in making the move to digital than larger businesses. But the added risk associated with paper-based payslips arriving late or going missing means going digital should be a priority for any size of business.”
To help employees learn how to interpret their payslips, read IRIS Software Group’s essential guide: www.iris.co.uk/payslipdecoder.
To see how we help organisations get things right today and look forward with confidence, visit www.iris.co.uk or following IRIS Software Group on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram.
