The pace of the City of Helsinki’s efforts to correct recent payroll errors has intensified as the city’s payroll administration competence grows. Some 1,700 errors in wage and salary payments were rectified in the last week. By next week, all of the employees of the city’s public enterprise Financial Management Services (Talpa) will have returned from their holidays. After this, the objective is to complete 2,000 corrections per week.
Customer service rates have also improved, as there are now 3,584 contacts in the queue. Approximately 5,000 contacts are fielded at Talpa each week as part of its normal operations. The processing speed of these contacts is approximately 1–5 days. In cases in which municipal employees have not received their wages or salaries at all, payment is carried out within about two business days of having received notice of the error. If, for example, a payment error is due to the employment contract being missing from the system, correction of the error may take 1-4 business days.
As of 25 August 2022, the payroll error situation was as follows: 95 employees are in the queue to correct absent payment of entire salaries, over 500 euros missing 1 586, under 500 euros missing 2 634, other 4 201.
The current estimate forecasts that it will take the entire autumn season to stabilise the situation and have things return to normal. Several different measures have been taken into use to remedy the situation and ensure that the smooth running of work by payroll employees, HR personnel and supervisors is the number one priority.
Photo: Sakari Röyskö
Updated on August 29 with the latest figures on payroll errors.