Seasonal working is an issue that impacts on both HR and payroll departments. For some businesses, Christmas can see an increase of up to 60% in staffing numbers for as little as 6-8 weeks. At other times of the year, extra employees may be required for leisure activities in the summer or for seasonal agricultural work in the autumn. Seasonal workers are crucial to businesses at these times, however, this also increases the workload for both HR and payroll. Liz Hughes, Director of Payroll Services for outsourced payroll specialists Moorepay has outlined some top tips below, to ensure that seasonal working runs smoothly.

1) Plan ahead.
Allow a lot of time to recruit the right people fairly, especially if external employment checks are needed – for example if the employees will be working with children. Build in sufficient time to train workers, or at least to acclimatise them, and make sure that necessary equipment, as well as any uniforms, is ordered well in advance. Make sure you learn from any problems you’ve had in previous years.

2) Do things properly.
Use an up-to-date short-term employment contract that has been professionally drafted by an employment lawyer. This will ensure that any changes to employment legislation and taxation are incorporated into the contracts. For example, temporary workers are now entitled to holidays and holiday pay. Recruiters also need to be trained in equal opportunities legislation – including religion and sexual orientation, which came into force in December 2003.

3) Gather information once.
It really can speed up the process of entering new employees into payroll systems if you use a single form to collect both HR and payroll data. Ask employees for NI numbers, P45/46 or proof of student status early on in the recruitment process alongside their proof of ability to work. Don’t wait until the first day of work, or you may find that they are not entitled to work in the UK.

4) Be realistic.
Make sure that temporary employees know how the HR and payroll system works, when they can expect to get their first pay cheque, and who they should speak to if they have any issues or problems. The payroll run will take place 2-3 days before people are paid, and it may take up to 5 weeks to pay someone if a monthly payroll is used. Ensuring temporary employees have this information will cut down on the number of queries to HR and payroll that can take up valuable time.

5) Test your systems.
Particularly if you’ve had a new system or an upgrade installed recently, test that it can handle the numbers of temporary staff you need as well as any special cases such as students. Don’t forget the obvious issues such as having sufficient payroll stationery.

6) Get ready for weekly payments.
85% of seasonal staff are paid weekly. As well as making sure that your payroll systems can handle this, you need to be able to handle the volume of payments – and the attached costs of transferring the money to their banks, or handling four times as much cash.

7) Check you have the people resources in your HR and payroll teams.
You need to think through the extra demands that recruiting lots of new people will have on HR, and the effect that registering lots of new employees and weekly payrolls will put on the payroll system. Temporary payroll staff are difficult to find and expensive at short notice, and will need to learn your specific operating procedures. One of the difficulties with payroll is that when things go wrong, the workload spirals upwards. If you are using an outsourced HR and payroll provider, they will have more resources available, but you should give them sufficient notice.

8) Be careful when offering up-front cash ‘floats’.
If you overpay permanent employees you can reclaim the money from them fairly easily – for seasonal staff it can be uneconomic, especially if the individual moves location as well as job at the end of their contract.

9) Learn from your actions.
Don’t just breathe a sigh of relief in the New Year – see what improvements can be made for the future.