Confessions of a Control Freak
I have a confession to make. I am a control freak. I keep lists. I have five calendars each year to keep track of my work and home life. I love Moleskine and in addition to my calendar I have a Moleskine notebook that I write down my to dos and activities for each day. And yes, this overlaps with my calendars.
So what is a girl to do? I can’t go without my calendars and lists and notebooks cold turkey! I would be up at nights worrying if I could have missed something by not keeping careful track of my responsibilities and my life. My to do lists and my shopping lists! When would I know to change the air filter in my house’s heating unit or when to send out a birthday card to my neice? How would life look without my precious lists?
Well! I am not willing to find out. I have tried before to cut back on the number of calendars I keep. And I will try again this year. I am going to try to limit it to three! One for home, one for work and one for my staff so they can find me at all times (and never need to)! But every once in a while something comes along that helps me get rid of a list. Or lets me accomplish something early so it never even makes it to a list in the first place!
And what you may ask yourself does this have to do with payroll? Well, I would venture to guess that I am not the only person out there with multiple lists and multiple calendars. I happen to know that many in the HR field may be just like me and are the people responsible for the details in life! So how do we slowly step away from being obsessive about our responsibilities?
One way in payroll is to use the tools available to you so that you don’t have to keep folder after folder of changes to be made and updates that have to take place three months down the line. If you use an online payroll system like the one we provide at The Payroll Factory® there are often “set it and forget it” features built right into the software! So in our payroll I can go online and make a change to my whole company’s health insurance premiums right now and put in a date to activate it. Instead of remembering that on my first pay in 2010 to increase my insurance rates it is already done. Date activation. You have to love that!
There are other set it and forget it features that I find helpful in our payroll software as well. One that I used last week was to put a note in the system so that when our staff logs in to view their check stubs they get a reminder to fill out a new W4 for 2010 and to hand it into our HR person. I date activated this note to start running this week and to stop running at the end of January. I really enjoy this date activation feature and you just know that the staff loves getting my little notes on pay day!
What ways could you be using date activation fields in payroll to help you stop making lists? Or keeping multiple calendars? Do you think that if I stopped keeping so many lists and calendars that it might free up some time for me? What would I do with that time? Hmmm? It gives a girl some room for thought!
Your Payroll Control Freak,
Meg Eynon, Vice President