How to handle payslip queries efficiently and boost employee experience

People can sometimes find their pay information confusing, as research shows, triggering payslip queries. That’s why offering a list of frequently asked questions tailored to your organisation supports employees – especially new starters. It also saves valuable time for payroll and HR teams, writes Simon Lobb, Head of Customer Success – Insights.

We’ve reviewed the impact of the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) feature in our Zellis MyView self-service payroll platform, looking at data between January 2020 and June 2024.

The results illustrate how you can use FAQs to improve the employee experience while reducing the burden on payroll and HR teams.

FAQs are frequently used by employees

Every year, more than 30% of employees who open their online payslip in Zellis MyView MyPay Pro also use the FAQs feature.

In the year to June 2024, more than 700,000 employees across the UK and Ireland viewed their online payslip in MyPay, with 243,000 of them checking the FAQs for guidance.

There’s also evidence that employees are referring back to the FAQs, as well as their payslips, again and again. The same year saw a total of 1.5 million total checks of the FAQs section, out of a total 10 million MyPay views.

What are the common types of payslip queries?

The questions that we see employees click are driven by their circumstance and cover a range of topics throughout the employee journey including joining, leaving, illness, pension, holiday, parental leave, childcare vouchers, overtime, MyView PayNow (flexible pay app), explaining pay terminology, benefits, tax, expenses, salary advance/emergency loan, and what to do if the question they have isn’t listed.

How does the FAQs feature benefit employer and employees?

Offering FAQs adds value for both employers and employees, in the following ways:

For the employer, using FAQs:

• Saves time, enabling managers to focus resources on higher-value tasks, rather than answering the same routine payslip queries repeatedly.
• Delivers the correct, company-approved answer every time.
• Improved onboarding experience for new starters.

For the employee, using FAQs:

• Delivers instant access to answers, supporting financial wellbeing and improved decision making.
• Encourages the positive knock-on effect of better financial wellbeing on job satisfaction and engagement.
• Is convenient – accessible via the mobile app.

Leading technology brand Exertis is putting FAQs to great use

Our customer Exertis is one of the UK and Ireland’s largest technology and specialist service providers. They harnessed the power of FAQs as part of Zellis MyView and MyPay Pro, delivering major efficiencies for the team.

The FAQ section saves the team from having to answer the same questions repeatedly over email. Data from the app shows that 913 questions were visited in MyPayPro last month, equating to a potential 45+ hours saved by teams not having to process queries and respond manually to each. The new system has garnered positive feedback from senior leadership and encouraging comments from colleagues.”

Read the full Exertis case study

How we supported customers to make the most of FAQs

Back in January 2020, use of the FAQs was in its infancy stage, with only 1 in 5 MyPay Pro customers using the feature.

Recognising the advantages that FAQs bring to customers and their people, we introduced a few measures to help more of them benefit from the feature:

• We decided that MyPay Pro and FAQs would be included as standard when existing or new customers implemented Zellis HCM Cloud.
• We offered discounted pre-paid consultancy time (known as flexi-days) which customers could use to implement the feature.
• Our customer success managers promoted the MyPay Pro FAQs and encouraged greater adoption.

As of June 2024, nine times as many customers were using MyPay Pro, compared to before. Of those, more than 4 out of 5 were using FAQs. The number of employees using the FAQs increased by more than 50 times during that four-and-a-half-year period.

In the year from June 2023 to June 2024, we also saw a 79% increase in the number of different FAQs clicked by employees. This reflects the fact that our customers are including more questions and tailoring them to answer employee payslip queries more effectively.  

Supporting multilingual diversity and inclusion

A welcome innovation by Zellis customers has been the publication of FAQs in a variety of languages, reflecting the diversity of their employees and supporting inclusivity.

In addition to English and Welsh, languages include French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Lithuanian, Polish, Turkish, Slovak, Hindi, Russian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Hungarian, and Chinese.

What are employees saying?

Here’s some of the great feedback that employees of our customers using FAQs have shared with us.

• “Very easy-to-use interface and helpful FAQs if I get stuck.”
• “Easy to use and find documents, and find out answers to queries.”
• “Easy and convenient to use. Instant answers and information easily accessible.”
• “Easy to navigate and clear answers to holiday, pay etc.”

How to best answer payslip queries as FAQs: our recommendations

We’d recommend the following as good practice rules to follow when developing payslip FAQs to support your employees:

• Tailor questions to your organisation.
• Collaborate with stakeholders including payroll, HR, reward, and pensions teams to generate a wider range of questions.
• Work with your Zellis customer success manager and monitor what questions your employees usually ask.
• Regularly review and update your list of FAQs to add, change, or remove questions.
• Where relevant, publish FAQs in other languages.

Plus, the power to be proactive

Zellis HCM AIR and HCM Cloud customers can benefit from our Power Automate Connector, which enable them to create workflows that proactively send information to employees based on events including starting, leaving, and forthcoming parental leave. This will further enhance the ability of Zellis customers to keep employees informed and engaged, supporting retention.

Let’s talk

Have you used any other methods to answer payslip queries? Would you like to know more or discuss any of the ideas shared in this blog? Speak to your customer success manager or account manager, or get in touch below.