The start of a new year often marks the beginning of new habits and activities, and the same is true for every business and organisation when a new tax year gets underway. As the 2025/26 tax year starts, here are some simple steps to help freshen-up your payroll by exploring the benefits of outsourcing, to ensure your payroll is efficient, accurate, and compliant.
Alleviate Payroll Stress
Running a business can be busy and challenging. From maintaining day to day operational efficiencies, to recruitment and retention, administration and finances.
Getting payroll right and on time is essential, but keeping abreast of changes, such as the new National Minimum Wage rates, and changes to Employer’s National Insurance and the Employment Allowance introduced this month, as well as new legislation to ensure compliance, is a full-time job in itself.
This is where a legitimate, ethical, knowledgeable, trusted and compliant outsourced payroll partner can really add value. Outsourced payroll companies enable process efficiencies and overhead savings, with payroll expertise and resources in place so you don’t need them. Not only does outsourcing payroll save you time so you can focus on running the business and keeping things operating smoothly, it also gives peace of mind that payroll is compliant – because the payroll provider has the knowledge, resources, expertise and responsibility to ensure your payroll is on time and accurate every time.
Why Outsource?
Payroll outsourcing ensures payroll processing and HMRC submissions are managed efficiently by a business that specialises in payroll and its associated legislation and best practice, without the need for you to hire and manage an in-house team.
It is the outsourced payroll provider’s job to ensure all relevant tax and NI is taken at source through its PAYE payroll process, so payroll will comply with HMRC and The Pensions Regulator regulations, and there won’t be any unexpected demands for underpaid tax.
For extra peace of mind, choose a payroll provider that has its payroll processing approved and independently audited by Professional Passport, which is one of the industry’s leading independent bodies for compliance checking. Find out more about Professional Passport here.
Get Compliance Right
Navigating the complex landscape of tax regulations and employment laws in the UK can be daunting. By choosing a legitimate, experienced and compliant payroll provider, you benefit from fully compliant PAYE support. Plus it is their responsibility to stay abreast of legislative changes, and modify payroll systems and operations accordingly to ensure compliance with these, which in turn mitigates your risk of non-compliance, penalties or legal issues for your business.
Elevate Employee Engagement
A fall in global workplace engagement is estimated to be costing the global economy $438 billion in lost productivity, according to research findings published this month (April 2025) by Gallup.
Gallup’s annual global study found that the percentage of engaged employees fell from 23 percent in 2023 to 21 percent in 2024. The data for Europe revealed it has the lowest percentage of engaged employees at 13 percent, well below the global figure of 21 percent. Comparing engagement results across 38 countries in Europe, the UK ranked 30th with just 10 percent of employees engaged. The UK had the second highest percentage of workers reporting they felt sad at work with 26 percent.
Employee and worker engagement is directly linked to productivity and retention rates. The higher the engagement, the greater the productivity of the employee and worker. Low interest in work can be linked to several people issues that can limit business efficiency – from absenteeism and poor performance to employee burnout and wellbeing struggles.
More than ever before, it is vital that companies of all sizes take engagement seriously. If you’re struggling to attract the best talent, or your retention rates aren’t improving, then you might need to look at your employee engagement. The perfect start to better engage with employees, and also provide them with vital health support whilst maintaining a cost-effective business, is to explore an employee or worker benefits solution – even better, find an outsourced payroll provider that includes an employee engagement, wellbeing and benefits solution as part of its payroll services.
Benefits Portal
The Magic Umbrella Benefits Portal is exactly this. It is an included (no charge) 24/7 access pass to a world of unparalleled benefits and support for workers and their families. It’s also the central portal to vital employment and pay documents, sending alerts when new payslips or documents are uploaded, and securely storing vital information, payslips and employment history in one place on the individual worker’s app.
Efficient and paperless
As understanding and awareness of the impact of unsustainable activities on the global environment grows, going paperless is a simple, easy step to take to boost your organisation’s own CSR and be greener and more environmentally friendly and aware. Switching payroll to a paper-free operation with digital reports and payslips, not only reduces environmental impact but also saves time and storage.
Magic Umbrella is committed to ensuring compliance, transparency, and best practices in everything we do. That’s why we’re proud to be an Approved Partner of Professional Passport. Found out more about us on the Professional Passport website here.
