IT problems cause Next staff underpayments

After a botched IT upgrade, retailer Next has suffered chronic issues in paying employees. The business recently apologised to staff for underpayment problems, which first appeared in February and continue up-to today.

The Oracle payroll system is believed to be to blame for these challenges that have led to some staff being underpaid by as much as £200 per month.

While Next have not publicly commented on the extent of the payment issues, reports indicate that staff who are paid weekly and monthly have been impacted. Some workers have also had pension contributions taken off their pay. Next has promised that these issues will be fixed and no employees will lose money as a result.

Difficulties in implementing a new payroll system are not new, with supermarket Asda also facing payroll errors that have cost some staff £500 on payday.

With some workers being paid as little as £9.36 an hour, these deductions can represent a relatively significant amount of money for a number of employees. Before a fix can be implemented, Next have created a team that is tasked with finding errors and ensuring that the correct funds are paid to workers on a weekly basis.

In a statement, Next admitted there had been challenges with their new payroll system and are dealing with this as a “matter of urgency.”

“This is one of the very few instances where Next has outsourced critical software and we have learnt some important lessons about integrating our in-house applications with third-party platforms,” said the Next spokesperson.

“We are acutely aware of the problems these payroll errors have caused some of our colleagues. We sincerely apologise to all those affected and assure them that we are resolving these problems as a priority.”