A New Payroll Shared Services System

22/6/2013

Just recently, the payroll department for each affiliate Janssen, J&J Medical and J&J Consumer have been discarded to make the switch to a shared services payroll system. From what I have learnt in management accounting there are many benefits to shared services such as the improved quality management of standardised services and the focus on internal customer needs. Not only that, economies of scale can be achieved and there is also the reduction in the duplication of services.

However as a result of the transition from the old payroll system to the new shared services it meant that there was no proper system of payslip distribution. As the shared services team sits across the road each month’s payslips for all employees at Janssen (about 200+) were handed to finance to distribute to the rest of our departments. This proved to be a massive task as they were not all grouped in the correct teams and we did not know who the manager of each team was either. The process of distribution ended up taking almost a week as I had to firstly send a company-wide email asking for people to come collect it from me or they could have it posted to their addresses if they liked. For those who did not come to collect them I had to go find them in the building. Many people were also annoyed at this distribution system as it was messy, envelopes could go missing and the only way to reassure them was to communicate with the new payroll team that another system of distribution was necessary such as electronically via email.

However one good thing did come out of this task and that was I met so many new people from different departments and not only was that a lot of fun but I learnt more about what other people’s roles were as part of the organisational whole and it helped me relate names to faces when people requested work from me. All in all it was a great learning experience for me!