In this project, the HR interim manager took over the management of payroll for Germany with 7 employees at an international certifier with 7,000 employees worldwide. At the beginning of the assignment, the focus was on a classic bridging task: the long-standing and very experienced payroll manager only stayed on board for a short time before retiring as planned. In order to ensure a solid induction, the recruitment process for a successor was initiated at an early stage. Unfortunately, no suitable candidate had yet been identified. The HR Interim Manager was to bridge this vacancy in order to ensure the stability of the payroll during the transition phase from the expert's departure to the induction of a successor.
There were long-standing and experienced HR colleagues working in Payroll who knew the company extremely well and were therefore happy to be used by employees from the specialist departments as contacts for non-payroll-related questions.
Reorientation in the transition phase
Shortly before the interim assignment, a comprehensive reorganization of the HR department had been initiated. The model with new processes, roles and tasks was still in the transition phase at the start of the interim mandate. HR colleagues and managers as well as employees from the specialist departments used the payroll team as an orientation aid for the HR reorganization. As a result, Payroll was only able to concentrate fully on payroll-related issues again shortly before the monthly payroll run, to the detriment of the quality of the payroll runs. The focus of the interim assignment was on ensuring and optimizing the quality and reliability of the payroll processes at short notice.
In a short space of time, the interim manager succeeded in restoring the usual quality of the payroll processes by:
- Trimming out the payroll processes, shifting non-payroll-related topics to the relevant departments, thus allowing payroll to focus on its core tasks again
- Introducing regular meetings with the payroll team and the HR departments
- Establishing a 3-day freeze phase before the monthly payroll run: During this time, the payroll departments were no longer "disturbed" by the specialist departments, and changes for the current payroll run were only accepted via escalation in exceptional cases.
- Introduction of software to automatically check the payroll run.
The information and communication during the change process with the company's own employees, experts and managers was particularly noteworthy. The HR Interim Manager handled this systematically, continuously and in a targeted manner.
On the one hand, the payroll team found it a shame and somewhat restrictive to hardly be available as a contact for questions that went beyond remuneration issues. On the other hand, the relief for individuals in the team was clearly noticeable thanks to the sharpening of the billing role. The appreciation of delivering billing topics as usual in high quality was another positive aspect.
