HSE pay system costly

The personnel, payroll and related systems (PPARS) health service salary system, is costing the taxpayer more than EUR6 million a year, writes The Irish Examiner.

It was heavily criticised in 2005 after a series of glaring errors were uncovered. New figures confirmed by the HSE show that despite the scandal over the human resources software, at least EUR100 000 is being spent on the project every week.

When the programme was developed in the 1990s, it was predicted it would cost the taxpayer about EUR8.8m. However, the cost of the PPARS has soared to over EUR180m.

A growing number of businesses are now applying technology to communicate benefits via an online portal, to administer salary sacrifice and broader flexible benefit arrangements, says HR Magazine.

According to Mercer, more than 37% of survey participants at a UK-wide Web cast event for HR and benefit managers said they were planning to introduce technology over the next 12 months to introduce new salary-sacrifice arrangements or streamline existing ones and to provide greater benefit choice and improved communication through on-line access.

Stephen Hempenstall, a principal and consultant at Mercer, said: "Many companies have adopted salary sacrifice for their pension arrangements in the past couple of years, appreciating the significant savings in employer National Insurance that can be had.”

Kenexa Corporation, through its wholly-owned subsidiary, has commenced a tender offer to acquire all of the outstanding shares of common stock of Salary.com, reports Trading Markets.

Kenexa is a provider of business solutions for human resources, while Salary.com is a provider of on-demand compensation management solutions. Both the companies are based in the US.

The offer is scheduled to expire on 30 September, unless extended. There is no financing condition to the offer.