OMG Case Study

You are the Payroll Manager for OMG, an expanding agricultural supplies manufacturer located in Manitoba, and have been with the company for three months. OMG is currently going through a re$-$organization and you will soon be reporting to the Vice$-$President, Human Resources rather than the Controller.

OMG has been in business for $60$ years and has grown slowly, except in the past four years when they introduced a new product that was successfully marketed to large agri$-$businesses. They expect growth will be exponential over the next decade as they begin to sell this product internationally.

Following are some characteristics of the organization and the current payroll environment:

$$ You are a Certified Payroll Manager $($CPM$)$ and the payroll team is currently composed of yourself and two Payroll Administrators, one of whom is a Payroll Compliance Practitioner $($PCP$).$ During the three months you have been at OMG, you have noticed that there is no documentation of payroll procedures, nor is there a payroll continuity plan in place.

$$ The $600$ plant employees record their hours worked on paper time cards. The supervisors complete any absence reporting when approving the employees$$ time cards and must sign each time card before it is forwarded to payroll for processing. The payroll staff must resolve any time card issues before manually inputting the hours to the payroll system.

$$ The $125$ management employees submit paper time cards only when they have to report any exceptions to regular time $($for example, sick leave, vacation, or professional development time$).$ These time cards are also input manually to the system.

$$ Payroll is processed using an in$-$house legacy system that was implemented in $1995.$ It has been well maintained and is updated when required by the internal IT staff.

$$ The payroll system has limited reporting capability; it can only produce monthly reports on overtime, sick leave and vacation absences$.$ Due to the increased growth in business, the Operations Manager is requesting information on job costing.

$$ All employees are paid bi$-$weekly by cheque.

$$ Employee Human Resource information, including benefits, is captured on a separate HRIS system.

$$ The company is unionized through Unifor.

The Vice$-$President of Human Resources is a proponent of benchmarking using best practices. In your initial meeting with the Vice$-$President, you discussed the current practices and processes in the payroll department and where you felt efficiencies and effectiveness could be improved.

As a result of that meeting, it was agreed that your focus for the next twelve months would be to begin transforming payroll into a high performance team by benchmarking current processes against established best practices. The actual implementation of any new systems would begin after the twelve$-$month benchmarking period.

You have another meeting with the Vice$-$President in four weeks. Prior to that meeting you must submit a report for her review detailing your plans and recommendations for implementing payroll best practices at OMG. She is also interested in your thoughts on increasing payroll$$s role in the organization and wants you to include an outline in your report of how you feel that can best be accomplished.

In your report, you must address the following issues and you should also ensure that you include any other issues you feel would best respond to the Vice$-$President$$s request.

Benchmarking with Best Practices:

$$ Current payroll processes and procedures

$$ Current time reporting system, and potential efficiencies

$$ Current payroll system and potential changes

$$ Current disconnect between Payroll and Human Resources information sharing

$$ Short term potential accomplishments $($within twelve months$)$ and long$-$term potential accomplishments $($greater than twelve months$)$

Payroll$$s Role in the Organization:

$$ Current role

$$ Opportunities for expansion

$$ Recommended plan for expansion $-$ Short term $($within twelve months$)$ and long$-$term $($greater than twelve months$)$

Final Report

The final report should be a minimum of ten $(10)$ pages and include the following:

$$ Cover Page $($does not count as one $(1)$ page$)$

$$ Introduction and background

$$ Report for the Vice$-$President

$$ Conclusion