The retailer's employees missed their salaries after the introduction of Oracle software. The company has switched to manual processes

On July 18, 2022, it became known that the retail chain Next underpaid employees in connection with the implementation of the payroll system created by Oracle. The retailer was forced to switch to manual processes.

The company has been working for months to fix problems caused by the decision to hand over payroll functions to U.S. tech company Oracle. The first problems arose in February 2022 and affected workers with weekly and monthly payments.

Retailer employees miss salaries after Oracle software implementation

Next declined to say how many of its 43,000 workers were affected, but a company spokesman said the number was down from its peak period. A spokesman said the company was looking forward to "significant progress in the coming weeks."

According to The Sunday Times, the implemented payment system underpays workers up to £200 per month, and some employees were forced to resort to food banks or refuse vacation days to provide themselves with everything they need.

Next said it "tends to develop its own software," but has struggled to get Oracle software to work with its own. Instead, the company was forced to allocate a special team that was supposed to identify errors and manually transfer money to employees every week.

In some cases, pension contributions were deducted from employees' wages, which were then not sent to pension funds. Next said it would make sure these issues were addressed and that employee losses were offset.

Over the past few months, we have faced a number of problems with our new payroll system and are addressing them as a matter of urgency, a spokesman said. This is one of the few times that Next has outsourced critical software, and we've had some meaningful lessons in integrating our own applications with third-party platforms.

We are well aware of the difficulties caused by these errors in the accrual of wages for some of our colleagues. We sincerely apologise to all those affected and assure them that we are addressing these issues as a matter of priority.[1]

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