Entrust your payroll and pensions outsourcing to Cox & Co. Bristol’s award winning payroll team and co-founders of the Payroll Bureau Association. Find out how they’ve gone from strength to strength.
2020 started off with a massive bang for the team at Cox & Co. Winners of two awards in January 2020 from super giants Iris Software Group and announced co-founders of the Payroll Bureau Association, the UK’s first organisation to represent payroll bureaux across all four nations. And then along came COVID-19.
Covid provided a rare opportunity for business leaders to gaze into the effectiveness of their team culture and dynamics plus system infrastructure and resilience”
Tracy Jerram, Commercial Director | Cox & Co. Payroll Solutions Ltd
Tracy Jerram explains:
The COVID-19 pandemic and world lock down has certainly been the most stressful time in our payroll careers and has tested the resilience of all people and businesses alike. How well an organisation has coped during this time, has given a very rare opportunity for business leaders to gaze into the effectiveness of their team culture and dynamics plus system infrastructure and resilience.
During these months, as payroll specialists we had the extremely challenging role of interpreting over 17 changes in legislation in order to implement a brand new employment benefit scheme. Furloughing, COVID-19 SSP, Job Retention Scheme 1 & 2, full furloughing, flexible furloughing with reducing government support all had to be implemented alongside processing weekly, bi-weekly, 4-weekly and monthly payrolls – not to mention helping employers make the right decisions with regard to their employees, redundancies and undertaking year end, P60 and P11D hot spots. Yes, the payroll calendar keeps turning despite what disasters are afoot in the world.
It has been a tough time calculating payroll these past few months. Constant last minute changes in legislation have resulted in many long hours worked by our staff to help clients make sense of the furlough scheme plus weekend and evenings knee deep in mathematics to ensure employees get paid accurately and on time and JRS claims are made to keep business cashflow fluid.”
Resilient systems and seamless transitions
One aspect of our service that can only be described as stoic, was our IT infrastructure. Cox & Co.’s systems have been based in the cloud for over 9 years and that meant working from home really was as simple as turn on the laptop, log in to our hosted servers and carry on unfettered.
Communicating quickly in payroll is a must and we were early adopters of Zoom and Trello which helped us arrange staff and client meetings with ease and re-create fluid workflows – these tools made the transition pretty seamless all round. The change from office to home working was practically unnoticed by our clients and pleasingly we’ve received plenty of praises by them for remaining professional and attentive throughout. All of this we may add is despite home-schooling young children, working from the kitchen table and located in different parts of the west-country.
Massive thanks to you and your team for providing such a good service through these difficult times.
Shirley Payne, HR Manager – Inside Asia Tours
The past few months really have proven to ourselves and clients that we have an amazing team here at Cox & Co. Staff who will always put their professional foot forward despite what life throws at them.
and if furlouging wasn’t enough…
Launching a new UK association in the midst of a pandemic is another triumph that Cox & Co. are rightly proud of.
Following on from two wins at the Iris Software Customer Awards 2020 for Best Payroll Manager and Best Payroll Initiative, Cox & Co. have been instrumental in the launch of the first association to represent the payroll bureau sector in the UK.
The Payroll Bureau Association (PBA) is a UK wide association aimed at improving the payroll bureau infrastructure for all professionals that work within it. Its remit is to shape the education, software and policies that we rely on to deliver our services all of which will benefit employers and their employees.
Never has there been a better time than to place focus on payroll provision and the way those services are delivered and by whom.
Do you need to re-invent your payroll provision?
Ensuring your payroll team has robust services, proven business continuity
plans and remain at the forefront of improving payroll is now critical as the business community venture into the new-normal.
Never before has it been more important to look at the resilience of your payroll team and consider whether it needs to be re-invented.
Call – Tracy Jerram 0117 9323444
