Top Industries with the Highest 13th Month Pay Bonus

Posted on December 10, 2015 by Nix Eniego

In just a few days, you’re going to be receiving your hard-earned 13th month pay from your employer. Although some have already received theirs as early as November, majority of the Filipino workforce regularly receives their 13th month pay during December.

Yes… Just in time for your Christmas shopping! (Check out our Top 5 Christmas Shopping Hacks for 2015 here).

But not all 13th month pay in the Philippines were created equal.

Some industries generally offer higher bonuses than the rest. Check out this infographic from MoneyMax.ph to find out which industry is the most generous when it comes to 13th month pay.

If you want to know how to easily compute your 13th month pay, you can check out our quick guide here.

So what can you say about this? Are you happy with your bonus?

Let us know in the comments section below!

Year End Update – Philippines: Alphalist, BIR DAT Files and 2316 Forms

Posted on December 8, 2015 by Nix Eniego

This is one of PayrollHero’s biggest releases this year. You can view the original post here:

In a nutshell:

Updated 2015 Alphalist
Alphalist DAT Files
Updated Multi-Inserts for Previous Employer and Additional Dependents
BIR 2316 Forms (New)

What’s new this release?

For 2015, the BIR Exemption amount has been increased to Php 82,000.00 of the total amount of exclusion from gross income for 13th month pay and other benefits. This change was effective from Jan 1, 2015.

You can now download DAT Files. These files are the upload-version of BIR’s Alphalist.

You can now add previous employer details so you can generate accurate 7.1 and 7.5 Alphalists. This can be added through the Previous Employer Multi-insert form.

You can now add additional dependent information to be used in your 2316 forms. Additional dependent information can be added through the BIR Update Multi-insert Tool.

2316 forms can now be downloaded individually through the employee profile.

Where can I download these forms?

You can download the Alphalist and the DAT files by going to “Payrolls > Reports > Forms (click view)”. You can allow the employee access or download their 2316 form by going to their “Employee Profile > Documents > BIR 2316”.

What do I need to do?

Accounts that have complete payrolls for 2015 shouldn’t have any issues downloading the Alphalist.

To setup your account for Alphalist and the 2316, please contact our Client Success Team, they would be happy to help!

If you have any questions please let us know by clicking here.

Top 5 Christmas Shopping Hacks for 2015

Posted on December 7, 2015 by Nix Eniego

It’s December, and everyone’s rushing off to the nearest malls to buy Christmas gifts. It’s not a very pleasant picture — especially if you’ve been stuck in traffic for nearly 2 hours and you’ve yet to buy anything for your family and friends.

Unfortunately, traffic in Manila during Christmas season is inevitable (even on a regular day traffic in Manila is horrendous, but that’s another story). The best way to make your 2015 Christmas shopping a much better experience is to hack your way around it.

With that said, we’ve listed 5 Christmas Shopping Hacks for 2015 to ensure that your shopping experience is better than most.

Start Early

Okay, as of this writing, it’s already the 2nd week of December, and this doesn’t really qualify under “Starting Early” since malls are ALREADY packed and crazy traffic has begun. But shopping as early as now is still better than joining the crowd on the last week before Christmas.

You can try going during non-peak hours. If there’s a nearby mall in your office, you could try to go for a quick shopping trip so you could avoid the crowded malls and horrible traffic during after-office hours.

Book an Uber / GrabCar

One way to get around the Christmas rush traffic and hassle is by booking an Uber or a GrabCar in advance.

With their Waze integration, you at least have a shot to avoid traffic (as much as possible) with an Uber. You could also drive your own car, but again, it would be better to relax and let the friendly Uber / GrabCar partners drive you to your destination.

Be mindful of Uber’s rate “surge” though, as you might end up biting more than you can chew. Try to book when there’s no surge so you don’t get shocked with your total bill.

Organize and Prioritize

If you’re like 99% of our blog readers, you must have countless family and friends to give gifts to. An awesome way to make your Christmas shopping experience smoother is if you actually know what you’re going to buy.

Prepare a list in advance. Just pop out your smartphone, open an app like Evernote or Google Docs, and type in the name of the people you’ll buy gifts for and what you’re getting them.

Here’s a look at my personal checklist (done through Evernote).

Still a long way to go.

If you prepare a list before you go to the mall, you’ll be able to save a lot of time and energy.

Shop Online

Avoid the traffic mayhem COMPLETELY by doing your Christmas shopping online.

With Zalora, Lazada, OLX, Shopee, and other online stores, you can easily find gifts for your loved ones without leaving the house.

Order as early as possible and have the products delivered at your doorstep. All you have to do is wrap these gifts, and you’re all set. I’m personally buying some of my gifts online this year.

BONUS TIP: You can also check out independent online stores that sell awesome T-shirts (like The Perfect White Shirt). Rather than going to the mall and falling in line, you can save a lot of time and hassle by ordering online.

Make or Bake

Or… you can forego Christmas shopping altogether and just make personalized gifts for your loved ones.

If you’re not artsy, you can give baking a try. You can easily bake cookies or delicious cupcakes like this:

Not only can you save time and money, you’re also going to be making a lot of your family and friends happy. After all, effort trumps material gifts 10 times out of 10.

Enjoy your Christmas Shopping!

PayrollHero Security

Posted on December 2, 2015 by Nix Eniego

We value our customer’s security and work hard to ensure that our platform and procedures are focused on security of our clients data. A PayrollHero account contains all employee information and confidential material. For that reason, we take security, encryption, and system permissions very seriously.

Below we have listed a complete guide of our security processes for your reference.

User Security

Mutual Non-Disclosure Agreement

At the onset of our business relationship, we sign a mutual non-disclosure agreement as part of our commitment to your company confidentiality.

Password Strength Policy

We have a Password Strength Policy which ensures that a PayrollHero user will be able to log in with high security measures.

We require all passwords to use the following:

– One lowercase letter
– One uppercase letter
– One number
– 8 characters in total for password length

Two Factor Authentication Log In

As an added layer of security for users, we have implemented a Two Factor Authentication (2FA) log-in, which makes logging in more safe and secure.

With 2FA, users are blocked from sharing passwords – giving the user complete ownership and responsibility for his or her personal account.

Every time a user logs in, they get a time-based, one-time password to authenticate the log in process. This password changes every time you log in, and only you, the user, will be able to know this generated password.

To enable 2FA, you would need a device, usually a smartphone, and an app to generate these one-time use passwords. Here are some of our recommended apps:

Google Authenticator
Authy (recommended if you want to use multiple devices e.g iPad, desktop)

Click here for a complete guide on how to set up Two Factor Authentication for your PayrollHero account.

Platform Security

Encryption at Rest

All data within PayrollHero is encrypted in transit and at rest, meaning that it is not only encrypted when moving from application to application but it is also encrypted when idle.

HTTPS

All communication in and out of the PayrollHero platform is done through HTTPS. “Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is a communications protocol for secure communication over a computer network, with especially wide deployment on the Internet”.

** For both security and non-security incidents, we have employ an urgent and critical process that brings a certain priority level to the team. There is an incident commander appointed during any of these incidents and is responsible for involving the necessary resources.

Architecture

The PayrollHero System is designed to only expose access to customer facing services. All other access requires an encrypted administrator connection.

Only vetted senior staff members have access to production data.
All access requires encrypted access to the system.
All access to the system requires either an encrypted VPN connection or two factor authentication to access anything.
All access to production data is logged.
All systems are isolated from each other, regularly replaced, and security patches are applied as soon as they are available.

Customer data is stored on a multi-tenant environment, as such it does exist within the same databases. Extreme care is taken to never allow customer data to get mixed up.

The PayrollHero system is designed to deal with server failures. We perform offsite backups, and frequent onsite backups. We also have an offline mode for the clock in/out feature.

If you want to learn how to use TeamClock while offline, click here for a quick tutorial.

Servers

In an effort to ensure that all your data is kept secure, we only use one of the best names in server and cloud computing – Amazon.

Technically speaking, we secure our data with the following services.

PayrollHero utilizes AWS Services that are ISO 27001 and PCI DSS L1 Certified:

Amazon Web Services Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Amazon Web Services Simple Storage Service (S3)
Amazon Web Services Relational Database Service (RDS)
Amazon Web Services Elastic Load Balancing (ELB)
Amazon Web Services Identity and Access Management (IAM)
Amazon Web Services Elastic Block Storage (EBS)

PayrollHero will use commercially reasonable efforts to make the PayrollHero platform available with a monthly uptime percentage of at least 99%, in each case during any monthly billing cycle (the “Service Commitment”). In the event PayrollHero does not meet the Service Commitment, You will be eligible to receive a Service Credit as described below.

Service Level Agreement

Service Credits are calculated as a percentage of the total charges paid by you (excluding one-time payments such as upfront payments) for the monthly billing cycle in which the platform was unavailable.

If the monthly uptime percentage drops below: 99%
Service Credit Percentage: 20%
Service Credits are applied to Your next months invoice.
To receive a Service Credit, You must submit a claim by opening a support case (support@payrollhero.com).

To be eligible, the credit request must be received by us by the end of the second billing cycle after which the incident occurred and must include:

the words “SLA Credit Request” in the subject line;
the dates and times of each unavailability incident in respect of which You are claiming;
the affected PayrollHero account;
and your request logs that document the errors and corroborate Your claimed outage (any confidential or sensitive information in these logs should be removed or replaced with asterisks).

Our most up to date Terms of Service.

If you have any other questions about our confidentiality, data security, or encryption, please feel free to contact us at support@payrollhero.com.

Happy Bonifacio Day |Philippine Holiday

Posted on November 30, 2015 by Stephen Jagger

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Andrés Bonifacio y de Castro (November 30, 1863 – May 10, 1897) was a Filipino nationalist and revolutionary leader. He is often called “the Father of the Philippine Revolution”. He was a founder and later Supremo (“supreme leader”) of the Kataas-taasan, Kagalang-galangang Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan or simply and more popularly called Katipunan, a movement which sought the independence of the Philippines from Spanish colonial rule and started the Philippine Revolution.^[1]^[2] He is considered a de factonational hero of the Philippines,^[3] and is also considered by some Filipino historians to be the first President of the Philippines (through the revolutionary government he established), but officially he is not recognized as such.^[4]^{[5] *wikipedia}

Top Work Benefits Millennials Actually Want

Posted on November 27, 2015 by Nix Eniego

Millennials are taking over.

Sure, there are countless of articles about how millennials are “entitled”. A quick Google Search will yield a handful of results. But it’s not a secret that millennials are rapidly taking over the workforce.

By 2030, millennials will be making over 75% of the entire workforce. I’m not good at math, but I know that’s A LOT.

So if you’re a hiring manager, or a business owner, it’s important to take note of exactly what millennials value in terms of work benefits.

You will find more statistics at Statista

This shows that majority of millennials actually care more about two things over monetary bonuses.

Most managers assume that in order to keep millennials happy or attract them to join the company, money should be dangled like a big slab of steak. While cash bonuses are very much appreciated, training and development and flexible working hours are valued higher by millennials.

When you think about it, the top two work benefits that millennials value the most actually will cost you LESS than cash bonuses.

Flexible Working Hours

Flexible working hours are becoming more and more popular these days. 77% of millennials actually prefer flexible working hours. They feel that they are more productive and have more freedom in the workplace. This, as studies and millennials claim, boost their productivity.

Photo from http://www.bentley.edu/

Millennials hate the regular 9 to 5 cycle, so it’s understandable why they value a “flexi schedule” over cash bonuses.

But what’s more surprising is the top benefit millennials value the most…

Training and Development

And they said millennials were lazy?

This stat is the most alarming, yet also the most encouraging.

This means that millennials value being trained and learning more to become better at their craft. The best part about this is that training and development can actually cost less than giving a performance bonus (not saying you shouldn’t give your employees one though!).

The more you actually invest in training your employees, the more they’re likely to stay and produce better results.

Conclusion

You don’t need a gargantuan budget to give your millennial employees killer benefits. Invest on their training and development, or even consider implementing a flexible working schedule.

Millennial or not, all employees will surely enjoy these benefits. So if you consider some of these, you might just have hacked into boosting work productivity in your company.

Tweet us and let us know what you think!

How to Keep Your Employees Happy at Work

Posted on November 25, 2015 by Nix Eniego

One of the best kept secrets of the top companies in the world is also the most obvious.

Keeping employees happy is very important to the overall success of a company. The simple formula is “Happy Employees = Good Business”.

So what exactly makes employees happy?

Is it bigger pay? Unlimited vacation leaves? Big bonuses? Free lunch?

To get a better idea, take a look at this infographic from Manila Recruitment and find out what the best companies in the Philippines are doing to keep their employees happy.

Based on this infographic, money isn’t the only thing that motivates and makes employees happy. Employees value education, travel, fitness, and career growth just as much as they care about monetary bonuses.

You don’t need a HUGE budget to make employees happy. Sure, bonuses are great and will make employees happy, but if you don’t have the budget for it, don’t force the issue. Instead, you can focus on other low cost employee benefits such as additional vacation leaves or hosting sporting activities.

Are you doing some of the items mentioned above? Do share your company’s benefits and perks in the comments section below!

3 Reasons Why Employees Get Bored

Posted on November 25, 2015 by Nix Eniego

Happy, engaged, and hard-working employees are important for any business to succeed. That’s why business owners do their best to implement awesome employee benefits to make everybody happy.

But sometimes, despite the company’s efforts, employees are still disengaged and lackadaisical. Yes… employees do get bored.

In this post, we’ll drill down 3 reasons why employees get bored. So if you’re a business owner or CEO, you better take notes!

Repetitive Tasks

Sure, employees signed the contract completely aware of their job description and role… But doing the same thing over and over again will take a toll on ANYONE.

If an employee keeps doing tasks every single day, it’s expected that boredom will soon strike.

How to counter this? MIX IT UP.

As an employee:

If you’re an employee who’s starting to get bored, you should be upfront with your manager. Let him/her know that you feel like you can do more than what you’re currently doing.

Ask to be involved in other tasks. Have the initiative! Your manager won’t know you want to do more if you don’t say a thing.

As a manager:

Don’t be afraid to mix it up. Give your employees new tasks to do. You hired that person because you believe in him as an individual, so it wouldn’t hurt to try and entrust him with a new task.

By letting your employee do something new, you’ll likely give a jolt of excitement and a strong sense of responsibility to your employee – which is a good thing to boost productivity.

Lack of Compliments / Words of Encouragement

This may sound strange, but it’s a real issue. A recent study show that 65% of employees feel unappreciated at work.

When employees feel that they’re not appreciated in the office, they eventually get bored.

Employees VALUE their manager’s compliments and words of encouragement. An immediate boost in morale happens when an employee hears simple compliments like “Good job!” or “Nice work!”

As a manager, you can even take it up a notch and give your employee a reward or a token of your appreciation for a job well done.

These little things will go a long way.

Work-Life Imbalance

Working hard should always be top priority, but play time shouldn’t be neglected as well.

Employees who work too hard end up drained eventually. It’s not sustainable to render overtime every single night.

If you’re an employee who stays at work for 2-3 hours more than your required shift 90% of the time, you’ll eventually run out of gas and get bored at work.

The answer? Find a better work-life balance.

As an employee:

Your job provides for your family’s needs, but it is not your entire life. Don’t spend all of your time at the office. Leave some time for yourself and for your family.

Come home and have dinner with your family. Hang out with your friends on Friday nights. You have a life outside of work, so make the most out of it.

You can work hard without having to kill yourself with stress. Not only is it not good for your company, it’s also dangerous to your health.

As a manager:

Don’t put too much pressure on your employees. Giving unrealistic deadlines will leave your employee with no choice but to work overtime every day. That’s something that is proven to be unproductive in the long run.

If you notice that your employee is working too much or rendering too many OTs, talk to him and encourage him to take a vacation leave. Advise him that he doesn’t need to spend every working day on overtime. Not only will your employee become more productive, it will also be good for his health — which is something you should also prioritize.

Conclusion

Employees get bored because they don’t feel empowered. As a manager, it’s also your responsibility to make sure that your employees feel happy and valued at work.

As an employee… If you feel bored all the time, then you have to re-evaluate yourself. Discuss it with your manager and work on fixing the issue together.

Tweet us what you think!

The Future of Work Conference | Singapore

Posted on November 21, 2015 by Stephen Jagger

I was asked to speak at The Future of Work Conference in Singapore that Microsoft and Questex put on at the Marriott Hotel the other day. The conference was dedicated to the future of; HR, offices, scheduling, sales, and marketing.

I was asked to speak on the topic of HR and how technology can be an enabler to maximize productivity as well as attract and retain talent. So, I spoke from our experience.

Here is a quick recap:

1. Reasons for Employee Turnover – most reasons employees leave are related to something the company has direct control over.

Screen Shot 2015-11-21 at 6.04.04 PM

2. Adventure Engineering – We talked about PayrollHero’s #AdventureEngineering program and why it came about. Basically, we were looking for ways to compete for talent in a highly competitive worldwide market. Here is the video that we made that explains the program:

3. We chatted about how we work to get feedback from our teams, how we have made some products to help our clients do the same and how transparency helps us build our company culture. Some of the tools we talked about were PayrollHero’s DailyPulse, Xray Insights and tools like 7Geese.

4. Finally, we talked about how our jobs page is laid out on our website. How it is very specific about each role, how the company works, the rhythms we follow as well as a few easter eggs that some applicants find and mention in their cover letters.

After I was joined on stage with a few HR professionals for a panel discussion about HR and the future of work.

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Improve Your Restaurant Performance with HR Analytics – FREE Webinar from PayrollHero

Posted on November 20, 2015 by Nix Eniego

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Whoever said that nothing in this world is free was lying!

Because on December 8, 2015. At exactly 11 AM (UTC +8), Singapore Standard Time, we’ll be hosting an epic webinar that talks about leveraging HR Analytics to improve restaurant performance.

In this webinar, restaurant owners will learn about the following:

Learn how to respond to business in advance using predictive analytics for HR
Improving organizational performance
Optimizing talent supply chain
Benefits of HR Analytics to your restaurant’s sales performance
Data-driven decision making

And many more!

We don’t want to spill too much info, but we’d really love it if you could join our webinar.

If you’re a restaurant owner, or an HR director / manager of a restaurant, this is a webinar that you definitely shouldn’t miss.

We’re going to provide content that you can implement and leverage right after the webinar.

The best part about this webinar is that you will have instant learning in just 27 minutes of content!

^ It’s really that simple. You’ll be able to implement your learnings immediately and make a direct impact to your restaurant’s positive performance.

So to all restaurant owners / HR personnel, do spread the word and save the date:

December 8, 2015 (Tuesday), 11:00 AM (UTC +8) Singapore Standard Time

This webinar will surely be worth your while. Save your seat below!

We’ll see you there!