Their new Bristol office is the second office that the company has opened this year. They have five in total: London, Esher, Manchester, Edinburgh and now Bristol. 

 

Paragon are reacting to a demand for business in the South West, thanks to increased development investment in the region such as the £350million Temple Meads enterprise zone. The company merged with Bond Davidson in May, creating a £22 million company which employs nearly 200 people. 

 

They plan to hire 12 people over the next two years. 

 

Joint managing director Robert Perry, said: “At the time of our merger we said we were actively exploring a South West presence, and we’re excited to see this come to fruition.

 

"We’re always looking for ways to remain ahead and spot the next opportunity – a Bristol office is this opportunity."

 

“We are making excellent progress in our strategic growth plans. This move will bring further commercial advantages to our clients and even more career opportunities for our people.”

 

Paragon director Paul Arthur, added: “There’s a great deal of commercial opportunity for us in Bristol, as well as an impressive talent pool. We think our distinct approach will make a big impact here.

 

“Our clients and the wider industry are showing increased interest in the South West as a hub for investment – the region is primed for huge growth.

 

"Having feet on the ground in Bristol enables us to provide local services for clients and make the most of new opportunities for both their benefit and ours.”

 

Source: South West Business.co.uk

 

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Opening a new office and hiring new staff are impressive signs of a growing and successful company. 

 

However, it is very common for a growing company to forget about “back-room” tasks such as processing payroll. The phrase “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it,” is completely wrong here. If you ignore these tasks and never investigate how to improve and optimise them, eventually they will “break”. This could take the form of your staff making errors in the payslips due to an overstuffed workload, or unscrupulous employees taking advantage of lax processes to commit time fraud and take home money that they didn’t actually earn. 

 

So the earlier you can maximise efficiency and accuracy in these processes, the better off your business will be in the long run.

 

The least effective type of time and attendance management is the self-reporting paper timesheet. This is far too open to human error, such as forgetting to hand it in, filling it in wrong or payroll staff misreading bad handwriting. 

 

The timesheet method is also the easiest for employees to fake entries for time they never actually worked. This fraud becomes more and more likely the less likely the manager is to carefully check every entry: i.e. if a shift manager has too many people underneath them or isn’t given enough time in their working week to go through the timesheets thoroughly. 

 

As your company grows, it becomes a steadily better idea to introduce some automation into your time and attendance management processes. For example, our clocking terminals remove the need for (and the risk of) employees reporting their own hours, because every entrance and exit is automatically recorded and sent to the central system. Managers can check the times on the software, which is easier than shuffling through bits of paper, and the data can be quickly and easily exported to all leading payroll programmes.