When we hear about a pay increase for crewmembers it can be easy to get lost in the glee and celebration- after all getting paid for boarding is a huge win for our friends over at Delta…

What- or more accurately whom no one ever talks about, is the payroll department. While the flight attendants over at Delta are celebrating a pretty huge win, one that many crewmembers of other airlines view with hopeful, anticipatory glee, I’m willing to bet that Delta’s payroll people feel an overwhelming sense of impending, catastrophic doom.

I guess one man’s celebration is another man’s financial albatross around the neck.

The most majestic symbol of oppression we’ve ever seen

Clearly Gwen Stefani wrote her fruit-themed hit on airline payroll

Let me be clear- our pay system at my airline was the most complicated, and I hear that’s standard across various airlines. Pretty sure decoding a letter from the Zodiac killer would have been easier than attempting to interpret a pay stub. Factoring in every variable for every trip…I honestly don’t know how payroll even did it.

Because normal pay could be such a hassle, anything out of the ordinary, like premium pay, international pay, profit sharing, etc., was a prime opportunity for error. You had to study the paystub you didn’t understand like you were studying to ace a final so you could play in the big game against that one school/ finally earn your father’s love. That’s why, just implementing standard payroll procedure around boarding time pay seems daunting to me…

But this is aviation, so imagine (if you can) the seemingly infinite amounts of variables; did the flight push back on time? Was it delayed? If so for how long? Did everyone have to deplane? But the crew stayed on the plane so are they still getting paid? Did the plane leave and then come back to the gate? Did everyone stay on? And on and on it could go; as you celebrate, my dear Delta friends, let’s have a moment of silence for your payroll department and their anguished cries.

Are you ready to automate everything you hate? We hope so, because we happen to have a fully customizable, flexible payroll program designed to help you through standard payroll procedures as well as one- off specials like profit sharing or premium pay…or you know, huge changes to the overall pay procedure itself…like getting paid for boarding.

ELP’s own payroll expert Susan has some thoughts of this new development; “This is just another example of the challenges facing the airline industry, and how desperate airlines are as they try to adapt and retain front-line employees. But with every new challenge comes the opportunity for change and innovation…where ELP comes into the equation and makes the impossible become reality.” She would know, too, since she’s got experience in airline Payroll itself and actually worked with the innovations ELP provided her team during her time in aviation.

Enter the hero who’s here to save us all, ELP CrewPay. Now complicated payment variables are programed into a software that interprets and adjusts as needed. Crewmembers can follow along throughout the month and communicate errors before they happen on their actual deposit. Manual calculations are rarely required, and yet the parameters are adaptable to any changes big or small that may come along. It’s a new dawn, it’s a new pay, it’s a new way.