Danish Refugee Council became less vulnerable

The Danish Refugee Council helps refugees in Denmark and in the world’s troubled spots. But when the organisation lost both its payroll employees it needed help itself safeguarding its 575 salary payments.

While the activities of the Danish Refugee Council were in full swing in spring 2008, including a new engagement in Syria and focus on the humanitarian disaster in Somalia, an internal crisis suddenly loomed.

“We had something akin to a meltdown of our own payroll administration. We had two employees. One left, and the other announced that she also wanted to leave, so the situation was urgent,” says Anders Maegaard, head of administration at the Danish Refugee Council.

Difficulty recruiting
Recognising the difficulty of attracting qualified staff, the Danish Refuge Council looked for alternatives, which ended with the whole payroll administration being outsourced to KMD.

“Obviously we also looked at other companies, but KMD stood out for two reasons. Firstly, they went straight in and took over the payroll administration as it was. And, secondly, they had a tried-and-tested, future-proof solution that we thought looked very interesting,” says Anders Maegaard.

Transition to digital pay
KMD continued with the existing processes and systems, which included several manual procedures. In parallel with paying salaries as always, KMD also prepared new processes and systems so that the documents circulating in the organisation could be digitalised and the procedures streamlined.

“We have seen highly qualified employees from KMD monitoring the assignment. Among others, one person who was responsible for the assignment in the beginning and who also helped to take us forward to the digital solution,” says Anders Maegaard.

The conversion will result in the manual routines being replaced by a portal solution that digitalises the entire flow in connection with payroll. The portal will take account of the continual changes in laws, regulations and agreements, and the optimisation and quality assurance in relation to the Danish Refugee Council specifically will be an ongoing process that will also take account of the special nature of the organisation going forward.

Special organisation and challenges
“We have a slightly complicated organisation and lots of different employment relationships, and here KMD has shown full flexibility in accepting the premises that we have set up. Overall, there has been responsiveness to our wishes, which we have appreciated. All in all, I see the first year as the beginning of a really good partnership,” says Anders Maegaard.

KMD took over the administration of the 575 monthly salary payments at the Danish Refugee Council in April 2008. All processes connected with payments are expected to be fully digitalised in summer 2009.