How do you plan to celebrate National Payroll Week?¹ An initiative of the American Payroll Association, NPW coincides with the week of Labor Day each year. Here’s a look at NPW and who’s celebrating what and why. Naturally we’ve included ideas for how you, too, can celebrate the week, the payroll industry, and your workforce.
What is National Payroll Week?
The inaugural National Payroll Week kicked off in 1996 to recognize and honor the many cultural, social, and economic achievements of America’s employees. It goes a step further, highlighting all week the importance of relationships between employees, payroll professionals, and the various government agencies and programs supported by the payroll industry’s collections of tax withholdings. In fact, payroll and income taxes typically fund a large percentage of a state or federal treasury’s annual revenue.
Who celebrates National Payroll Week?
National Payroll Week can be celebrated by any company. It’s a time to honor all the hard work your payroll team performs when it comes to getting employee paychecks out correctly and on time. Ideally, the entire workforce gains a better understanding of what’s involved in processing the paychecks they look forward to on payday. It’s an opportunity to learn more about the payroll withholding system, your payroll team, and the inner workings of your payroll department.
Ideas for celebrating National Payroll Week
If you haven’t celebrated National Payroll Week in the past, this is the year to do it. Let’s take a look at some simple ways you can bring paycheck and payroll awareness to your employees.
1. Become an NPW supporter
The American Payroll Association makes it easy to sign up to be a supporter of NPW. All you have to do is spread the word about NPW throughout your company and sign up to be a supporter. In return, the American Payroll Association will provide a corporate link to your business via NPW and additional free publicity opportunities.
2. Decorate with NPW swag and hand out gifts
Decorate your office with some NPW swag. The National Payroll Week website has a store where you can purchase themed balloons, pens, T-shirts, and employee gifts.
3. Host a celebration to honor your payroll department and employees
Once you’ve decorated to raise the curiosity and interest surrounding NPW, host a celebration to honor your payroll department. You could provide drinks, food, and educational materials. You may also want to honor your top payroll team performers and tell everyone about their accomplishments for the year.
4. Educate your employees
Many employees don’t fully understand their paychecks and benefits and compensation packages. You can share useful information pertaining to employee pay, benefits, and how to qualify and use those benefits.
5. Schedule a casual lunch and learn
Arrange an extended lunch break during which 1 or more of your payroll staff presents to their coworkers the inside scoop on payroll and benefits. They can field payroll questions and share in-depth insights that other employees might not have thought to ask about. This is a great way to get important conversations started and bring your associates from different departments closer together.
6. Partner with other local companies
Use National Payroll Week as an opportunity to partner with other companies in your local area. There’s a good chance that you’re not the only business celebrating NPW in your town. Take the time to get to know your industrious neighbors. Take turns visiting each others’ places of employment and sharing knowledge while explaining your business.
7. Plan and host a community event
Consider hosting and planning a community event for National Payroll Week. You could partner with local restaurants to provide the food and organize various payroll-themed games. Perhaps hold a contest in which employees win prizes. This could provide another great opportunity to invite speakers to share expertise.
8. Encourage discussions around payroll and benefits
Encourage your employees to talk about payroll and benefits. Pay and benefits transparency is becoming a popular topic on all organizational levels. Perhaps your payroll team can brainstorm new benefits and present them to the workforce or upper management. To add a layer of excitement, this could be framed as a contest by which those whose ideas are chosen to be implemented receive recognition and a reward.
9. Take photos and showcase your dedication to payroll and employees
Document and post about your company’s NPW events to showcase your dedication to your payroll administrators and workforce as a whole.
National Payroll Week can help your company improve its culture, use of benefits, and understanding about how their paychecks are calculated and processed. It can also help your business further engage within your local community.
Business has its challenges. We have solutions. Find ongoing news, tips, tools, and resources for HR, people ops, business management, and more at Workest.
1 National Payroll Week – Working for America
