As part of Dataplan Group, Dataplan for Charities are proud to be the winners of the Global Payroll Outstanding Award in 2020.
The Global Payroll Awards, organised by the Global Payroll Association, are an annual event recognising “technical excellence, professional development and teamwork with the Global Payroll industry.”
The prestigious awards are held in high regard within the industry, and Dataplan are delighted to be amongst the winners in 2020.
The new GPA Outstanding Award
In 2020 the Global Payroll Association introduced the new ‘Outstanding Award’ in a nod to all of the hard work and dedication that payroll teams have put in to support their colleagues and clients throughout the global Coronavirus crisis.
The award celebrates a team who showed outstanding support and performance during the pandemic, and is judged on the following criteria:
- Client satisfaction during this time of crisis
- Knowledge of constant changes in compliance and local legislation
- A clear demonstration of the use of creativity, initiative and leadership during these uncertain times
- Examples of the support and guidance provided to colleagues and the payroll profession as a whole
How have we provided outstanding support during the COVID-19 pandemic?
Throughout these unprecedented times our focus has been to provide the crucial support and stability to our clients and colleagues. Because of this, we took the decision to take on Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) claims which was the UK Government’s main support initiative for employers.
Richard Rowell, our CEO explained;
“We felt it was our moral duty to support our clients throughout this challenging period, so at the end of March we made the decision not only to handle the CJRS claims for our clients, but to do this at no extra cost, despite the fact that it would involve a great deal of extra work on our behalf."
It just didn’t feel right to be benefitting from this situation when so many businesses were going to be facing really tough times.
8 months on and we have put in around an additional 4,000 hours of work to process these claims.”
To adapt to working through the nationwide lockdown our teams had to apply a quick and efficient transition to working at home. This involved a huge effort from our teams including IT, internal software development, operations and marketing to deploy new equipment and systems.
Since the CJRS and other Government initiatives were completely new, and introduced at a very fast rate, it was vital for us to maintain knowledge of these changes in order to keep our clients up to date with the legislation and for staff to maintain compliance on their behalf. We built a rigorous programme of client communications and internal briefings to keep on top of this. In our most recent satisfaction survey, 88% of our clients rated these communications as excellent or outstanding.
Throughout the UK lockdown our teams have shown their resilience by innovating and adapting to challenges like never before. We have been utilising new tools and technologies, like RocketChat and Zoom for communication, and our in-house Development Team even built new processes to deal with new demands such as furlough calculations.
What do our clients say about us?
We value feedback from our clients, as it allows us to recognise our colleagues who have gone above and beyond their role, as well as highlighting areas where we perform well or perhaps where clients may have additional needs that require some extra support.
The global pandemic has been a very uncertain time for organisations across the UK, so we decided to ask some of our clients about their experiences of working with us through this time.
“I just want to say a big thank you for all you do in always administering our payroll so efficiently even during these strange times. The turn-round on the CJRS scheme application was amazing – we received the payment from HMRC today! Thank you for all your help.”Education client
A corporate client summed up the views of many about our handling of CJRS claims,
You dealt with it all and didn't charge for it - we couldn't have asked for more!
We are proud to be on the frontline of UK payroll helping to keep organisations paid on time, even during a global pandemic
Accepting the award at the virtual event, Dataplan Group CEO, Richard Rowell said;
“It has been a spectacular team effort over the last 8 months. COVID has affected everyone and we have just been pleased to be able to support businesses in the UK."
"Our team have really ‘pulled it out the bag’. We’ve put in thousands of extra hours in supporting businesses access the funding available from the UK Government."
"It’s been a huge burden but the teams have stuck at it because we know how important it is to get everyone paid. I couldn’t be prouder and to be recognised on this global stage is an amazing achievement.”
For a full list of winners of the Global Payroll Awards, click here
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