April 2007 NEWSLETTER: 5 Minutes to Improve ...
"5 Minutes to Improve ..."
This newsletter is a free service to the North American not-for-profit community from William Harper Associates. Its focus is on helping organizations that do good, do better ... by identifying practical ways that small- to mid-sized organizations can improve their operations, one small step at a time, in just a few minutes.
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April 2007: 5 Minutes to Improve ... Your Payroll Processing and Web Accessibility
This month's '5 Minutes to Improve ...' ideas are to improve your payroll processing; and to move toward a more inclusive and accessible Web site.
Improve your Payroll Processing
If you prepare payroll cheques in-house or through your bookkeeper, then this tip is for you!
Have you
- been late with employees' payroll cheques?
- caused your employees to have to go to the bank every payday to deposit their cheque?
- had an employee misplace or lose a paycheque?
- forgotten to deduct something and have to go back to your employees to adjust it?
- used out-of-date tax tables?
- had to scramble to prepare payroll cheques because of a vacation or illness?
- wondered if all withholdings have been remitted on a timely basis (particularly since failing to do so can give rise to directors' personal liability)?
- gotten employees' withholdings wrong, leaving them with a big tax bill in April?
These are not happy scenes! If any of them have ever happened to you, or if you think any of them could happen, then it's time to invest 5 minutes in your peace of mind.
An outside payroll service can alleviate all of these headaches, free up some of your valuable staff or bookkeeping time, and give you the peace of mind that you deserve. That's not to say, of course, that a third party payroll service will be perfect, but most of them have a pretty good track record at getting it right, every pay. They have to, or they wouldn't stay in business! The service doesn't come without a cost, however, which you have to balance against all these other considerations.
The point here, which you can apply to many different activities in your not-for-profit, is for you to focus on your core "business", and leave non-core functions to those who make it their core business. This is particularly so for something that, even though it's not a core activity, it so critical to keeping your organization running smoothly!
For many people, two large payroll processors come to mind, and they are certainly options to explore. Any organization that serves tens of thousands of organizations' payroll needs is doing something right! But, there are other players in this field, and you would be wise to explore some of these as well. Sometimes - especially for the smaller NPO - working with a smaller supplier is a better fit.
Modern payroll services come in many different shapes and sizes, many tailored specifically for the smaller organization. On-line, secure Web access is common, and you should easily be able to find the service that will mesh well with the way you want to work.
Where to Start
The Canadian Payroll Association provides a listing of its members that offer payroll service bureau/outsourcing options at:
Call three or four suppliers and ask for a fee quote and references. Before you call, gather some basic demographic information about your employee base: number of full-time, part-time and seasonal employees; basis of pay (salary, hourly, etc.), number of terminations/hires annually, and so on. Suppliers should be able to quote you pricing quite quickly.
Look for a company that is responsive to your needs and questions, appears to understand your organization and its way of operating, and is reasonably price-competitive. Once you decide who you want to go with, they should work with you to smooth the transition from your existing approach.
One last tip: take this opportunity to move to mandatory direct deposit for all employees. It may take a bit of chasing to get banking information for everyone, but it will be easier, more secure and more convenient for everyone once the transition is made.
Make your Website More Accessible
We all know that we can post information on our Website, and the whole world can access it, right?
Well, not quite, even allowing for the fact that many in the world still don't have computers or Internet access. The focus of this discussion, however, is on how information is presented on the Web, so that as many Web users as possible can access it.
With an aging population, and with technology reaching out to many individuals with disabilities that in the past could never hope to lead independent lives, we must do our part in ensuring that people with visual impairments and other challenges can access our message. Not only is it fair to them, but it's fair to us, to give our important messages the best chance of being read, seen or heard.
Two initiatives are of particular interest and value: the first is the international Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the global standard-setter for the Web; and, the second - given the importance of text material even in our iPod world - is the Clear Print guidelines of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB).
The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
This global initiative develops and promotes standards, tools and resources to facilitate improved accessibility to the Web by people with all manner of disabilities. There is a variety of valuable information here, and this should be your starting point for any comprehensive embracing of accessibility standards.
Of particular interest are the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), addressing how users can access your Web content. The coming "gold standard" of compliance will be adherence to the WCAG 2.0 requirements, which are still in draft, but "may be completed in 2007". We suggest that you start working with version 2.0 now, and aim to be in compliance with them, with your next major Web site revision. The WCAG 2.0 high-level guidelines are as follows:
- Provide text alternatives for all non-text content
- Provide synchronized alternatives for multimedia
- Ensure that information and structure can be separated from presentation
- Make it easy to distinguish foreground information from its background
- Make all functionality operable via a keyboard interface
- Allow users to control time limits on their reading or interaction
- Allow users to avoid content that could cause seizures due to photosensitivity
- Provide mechanisms to help users find content, orient themselves within it, and navigate through it
- Help users avoid mistakes and make it easy to correct mistakes that do occur
- Make text content readable and understandable
- Make the placement and functionality of content predictable
- Support compatibility with current and future user agents (including assistive technologies)
- Ensure that content is accessible or provide an accessible alternative
Underlying the guidelines are extensive "success criteria", recommended techniques, common failures and related discussions. These detailed documents are fairly technical and are best directed to your Web development team for study and implementation.
For multimedia, content-rich sites, accessibility is a major issue. Ensuring accessibility can be a complex development task (well beyond the scope of this article), and needs to be addressed by your design and development team right from the initial, pre-production design stage. For example, video content should be closed captioned, or signed, and text alternatives to audio should be available. There are also a number of important design considerations (for example, limiting the use of tables for layouts) that facilitate the use of assistive devices and software, such as text readers.
The key to complying with these standards will be to incorporate them into your next Web iteration right from the initial, conceptual design phase, and mandating their adherence at each step along the way, through development, to roll-out and in ongoing maintenance.
In the meantime, however, much of the Web is still heavily text based. For this text, there are specific and easily addressed guidelines to help ensure its readability, as discussed below.
Clear Print, by the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB)
Given the importance of printed text, these guidelines are a good, practical starting point for making your Web content accessible to as many users as possible. Notably, these guidelines apply equally to printed materials as well, and should become part of your communications culture throughout your organization.
The Clear Print guidelines address items like contrast and colour, font size and style, use of adequate white space (in margins, as well as letter- and line-spacing), and overall design considerations. They are realistic, practical and readily adaptable to all of your publishing efforts.
Access the Clear Print guidelines.
(CNIB is a nationwide, community-based, registered charity committed to public education, research and the vision health of all Canadians. CNIB provides the services and support necessary to enjoy a good quality of life while living with vision loss.)
Where to Start
There are two things to do immediately: first, download and start applying the Clear Print guidelines to every new Web page (and every print piece) you prepare from now on. Circulate them internally to everyone in your organization that produces content for external audiences.
Second, start integrating WCAG into future Web site revision plans. Forward the above link to your Web designers (in-house or external) and tell them to start embracing the standards as they are able. If your Web designers seem reluctant to embrace these standards ("they constrain our artistic freedom!"), consider changing Web designers, because they have their priorities all wrong. Insist that the WCAG becomes a requirement in your next major site overhaul.
William Harper Associates has broad experience in developing, implementing and managing practical and effective operational processes. If you could benefit from improved operations, please contact us - we can help!
A post-script: We, too, are working to have a more accessible site. We've embraced the Clear Print guidelines, and are working at achieving a base level of WCAG compliance. Please use the links above to tell us how we are doing!