Aider Polska and Worksmile Join Forces: From Employee Requests to Closed Payrolls

Key Information:

Aider Polska and Worksmile have formed a partnership that combines HR and payroll outsourcing with an HR platform that employees use on a daily basis.
Absences, time tracking, benefits, employee requests, and personnel changes are all recorded in one place and sent to the payroll team in a format ready for processing—no Excel spreadsheets, emails, or manual data entry required.
The biggest change concerns benefits: awell-organized breakdown by the Company Social Benefits Fund ( ZFŚS) and working capital replaces the monthly reconstruction in a spreadsheet.
The result: a faster month-end close, fewer follow-up questions, and fewer corrections after the deadline.

The fifth day of the month

Absence report exported to Excel. A separate file with benefits—broken down by what’s funded by the Company Social Benefits Fund (ZFŚS), what’s funded by operating funds, and what needs to be added to the employee’s income. A third spreadsheet with corrections, because someone changed their mind after the deadline. Everything was emailed to the HR and payroll department, followed by a series of follow-up questions about missing items.

From the employee’s perspective, the same month looks completely different. A vacation request approved on a smartphone. A benefit selected in the benefits menu. A document signed electronically on the way to a shift. One seamless process—and that’s exactly how it should be.

Both perspectives describe the same events. The only difference is what happens in between. And it is precisely there—in the gap between the system where the employee submits a request and the system where payroll is calculated—that work hours are lost and payroll errors arise.

This isn’t a problem caused by people. It’s a problem caused by the gap between systems. That’s why Aider Polska and Worksmile decided to join forces.

What is the partnership between Aider and Worksmile?

This partnership combines two elements that, in most organizations, operate separately: an HR platform that supports the employee’s day-to-day experience, and an HR and payroll team responsible for ensuring accurate calculations and regulatory compliance.

Worksmile ensures that information is created once—right where it actually originates—and entered by the person who knows the most about it. Aider ensures that this information is transformed into a correctly calculated paycheck.

For the client, this means a single data flow instead of several parallel ones: from the employee’s request to the finalized payroll.

What is Worksmile?

Worksmile is a Polish HR platform that combines three areas typically handled by three separate tools:HCM and HR process automation, internal communication, and employee benefits.

However, this isn’t just a list of modules—it’s an architectural decision: employee data is stored in one place, not three. There’s no separate system for requests, no separate benefits platform, and no separate intranet, between which someone has to reconcile this information.

From an HR and payroll perspective, the HCM module is the most important, because it is where nearly all the information that later makes its way onto the payroll is generated:

Employee lifecycle and workflow. A central database containing employee profiles, employment history, promotions, and an automatically generated organizational structure. The form builder and approval workflow builder allow you to map out the actual decision-making process—from pre-onboarding, through changes to employment terms and social benefit requests from the Company Social Benefits Fund (ZFŚS), to offboarding and whistleblower reports.
E-documents and electronic signatures. A template library with fields populated by data from the system, a version-controlled repository, and acknowledgments of receipt for the distribution of pay stubs or PIT forms. Electronic signatures—both SES and qualified—are built into the process, and a signature log with a complete history is ready for archiving or auditing.
Absences and work hours. Configurable leave allowances, policies tailored to organizational structure and location, and automatic calculation of balances. Work time tracking includes clock-in/out, overtime, time banks, and settlement at defined intervals.
Benefits and budgets. Records, limits, budgets, and settlement of benefits, along with information on their funding source.
Mobile app. The same features for employees without a work computer or company email address—in manufacturing plants, warehouses, and retail chains, these are typically the biggest bottlenecks in document flow.

The result is that a manager approves leave, and the absence record is updated immediately. An employee selects a health plan, and the benefits budget is recalculated automatically, along with the tax implications of that choice. A new hire goes through onboarding and has a complete set of data and signed documents from day one.

However, this is still only half the puzzle. The other half begins when this data must be converted into a correctly calculated paycheck.

The biggest challenge in our work is rarely the calculation itself. It’s the completeness and quality of the input data—and this data comes to us from several sources at once, in various formats, and at different times. Working with Worksmile changes this starting point: we receive data that is organized, approved, and annotated, along with information about the source of funding for benefits. This speeds up month-end closing and significantly reduces the number of adjustments.

Kinga Miszyn, Senior Payroll Manager, Aider Polska

What data is exchanged between Worksmile and Aider?

This partnership streamlines five data flows that, in most companies, are still handled manually.

1. Absences and Work Hours

Vacation requests, sick leave, and other absences are submitted and approved in Worksmile— with a complete history of decisions. Time tracking includes automatic calculation of hours and overtime within defined pay periods. The payroll team receives a ready-to-use timesheet for the period, rather than a collection of emails and screenshots.

2. HR Data in Both Directions

Changes to job titles, work schedules, organizational structure, or vacation balances are visible right where employees and managers look for them—in the app, rather than in a request to HR to check.

3. Requests and employee matters

This is the broadest of the workflows. Advanced workflows allow you to create any type of employee request: a custom form with field validation and required attachments, a multi-step approval process that mirrors the actual decision-making structure (employee → supervisor → HR → payroll), automatic assignments by department or location, and notifications of status changes.

The scope covers the entire employee lifecycle: from pre-onboarding, through HR and leave requests, changes to employment terms, social benefits from the Company Social Benefits Fund (ZFŚS), training requests, and business expenses, all the way to offboarding. Added to this is reporting: request processing times, bottlenecks in approvals, and statistics by category.

The result for the HR and payroll team: every matter affecting compensation is processed as a closed, approved, and documented process—rather than as an email requesting that a change be implemented “from scratch.”

4. Documents for Employees

Electronic pay stubs, PIT-11 forms, and PPK documents are sent to the app that the employee opens every day anyway—with a confirmation of receipt. No separate portal, separate login, or separate instructions on how to log in.

5. Benefits on the Payroll

This is the most underrated sticking point in the entire process and a topic that deserves its own discussion.

Benefits and Payroll: Where Adjustments Most Often Occur

Every non-wage benefit has tax and social security implications, which depend on the nature of the benefit and its source of funding. The same benefit, when funded from the Company Social Benefits Fund versus from working capital, is accounted for differently. Added to this are changes during the month, employee contributions, benefits for family members, and benefit packages of varying values within a single company.

In the traditional model, someone reconstructs this information once a month in a spreadsheet—based on an export from the benefits platform, a list of changes from HR, and their own memory of exceptions. This is where most adjustments originate.

In the partnership model , Worksmile provides the benefits statement in a structured format: broken down into the Company Social Benefits Fund (ZFŚS) and operating funds, with values assigned to specific employees and time periods. Tax and contribution classification and calculation remain where they should—in the hands of Aider’s experts. What changes is where they start their work.

How this works in practice

Area

How it typically looks today

Worksmile + Aider

Absence tracking

Export to Excel, email by the 5th of the month

Approved record for the billing period, with full history of decisions

Benefits

Separate spreadsheet, manual allocation to the Company Social Benefits Fund (ZFŚS) and working capital

Report showing amounts assigned to each employee, period, and funding source

Personnel changes

Email: “Please include this from the first day”

Closed, approved request with effective date and attachments

Corrections

Third spreadsheet with corrections submitted after the deadline

Changes visible in the source before data transfer

Documents for the employee

Separate portal, separate login, separate instructions

E-pay stubs, PIT-11 forms, and PPK documents in the app that the employee opens anyway

Follow-up questions

A series of emails during the calculation process

Complete set of input data

What Each Party Gains

HR isno longer just a liaison between employees and the HR department. Instead of collecting, verifying, and re-entering data before every month-end close, HR oversees a process that runs on its own. This frees up time for tasks that can’t be automated: recruitment, development, and team meetings.
Managers can view team availability, vacation balances, and request statuses in real time—and approve them all in one place, with a complete audit trail.
Employees have a single app for everything: requests, benefits, documents, announcements, and pay stubs. They don’t need to know where HR ends and the accounting department begins—and that’s just fine.
Executive management and the CFO gain consistent data on employment costs, benefit utilization, and organizational structure, available when they need it—not after two weeks of gathering information ahead of an audit or due diligence.
Aider Polska’s HR and payroll team receives complete, approved, and annotated data right from the start. Fewer follow-up questions, fewer late corrections, and a faster month-end close.

“For years, people have talked about ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ HR as if they were two separate worlds. For the employee, they never were. A vacation request, choosing a benefit, and the pay stub are, for the employee, a single sequence of events—not three departments and four systems. We’re building Worksmile right at this intersection—where the organization meets the individual on a daily basis. Our partnership with Aider completes the picture: the data we generate becomes the direct basis for payroll calculations, rather than just another file to reconcile.”

Tomasz Chaciński, CEO, Worksmile

Who is this solution for?

A partnership makes the most sense in organizations that meet at least one of the following conditions:

a workforce of more than 100 employees, with some staff members lacking a work computer or company email address;
an extensive catalog of benefits funded from various sources, including the Company Social Benefits Fund (ZFŚS);
multiple locations or subsidiaries with differing leave policies and regulations;
month-end closing preceded by several days of collecting data from spreadsheets and emails;
a planned change to the HR and payroll service model or the implementation of a new HR system.

If you recognize your organization in this description, the starting point is a short workshop where we map out the data that is actually being sent to the HR and payroll department today. This is usually enough to see how much of it is being duplicated.

Two Worlds, One Process

The distinction between “soft” and “hard” HR has shaped thinking about the HR function for years. Engagement, communication, and benefits on one side; staffing, payroll, and compliance on the other. In practice, these were never separate worlds—they were simply divided by the tools used.

The data collected during onboarding is the same data used to calculate the first paycheck. A benefit selected in the benefits portal is an item on the payroll. A request approved by a manager marks the start of the HR process. The only difference is whether the transition between these stages requires a person using Excel or happens automatically.

The partnership between Aider and Worksmile is moving precisely in this direction: HR and payroll expertise combined with an HR platform—working together, not side by side.

About Our Partners

Aider Polska is one of Poland’s largest providers of accounting, HR, and payroll outsourcing services. Nearly 400 specialists work out of offices in Warsaw and Katowice, serving both international corporations and Polish companies, including in English. Aider Polska is part of the Nordic Aider Group, which combines a Scandinavian approach to technology and long-term partnerships with a deep understanding of the Polish business environment: labor law, ZUS, PIT, PPK, PFRON, and reporting requirements. In 2025, the company received the international Global Payroll Awards.

Worksmile is a Polish HR platform that combines HCM, internal communication, and employee benefits into a single solution. It automates HR processes throughout the entire employee lifecycle: from pre-onboarding, through requests, absences, e-documents with electronic signatures, and benefits, to offboarding—with a mobile app also available to employees without a work email address.

FAQ

- This is an integration of the HR platform (Worksmile) with the HR and payroll outsourcing service (Aider Polska). Data on absences, working hours, benefits, employee requests, and personnel changes is generated in Worksmile and sent to Aider’s payroll team in a structured format, ready for processing—instead of having to be collected from emails and spreadsheets every month.
- No. The billing layer remains with Aider Polska and operates on the HR and payroll system used as part of the service. Worksmile is the layer used by employees and managers, as well as a source of structured input data.
- Worksmile maintains records of benefits, including information on their funding sources, and provides a breakdown by the Company Social Benefits Fund (ZFŚS) and operating funds, with amounts assigned to specific employees and time periods. The Aider team is responsible for tax and social security classification and calculations.
- Yes—that’s one of the main scenarios. The Worksmile mobile app provides employees with requests, documents, and notifications even if they don’t have a work computer or a company email address, which is usually the biggest bottleneck in document flow at manufacturing plants, warehouses, and retail chains.
- In the Worksmile app, along with other employee documents, with a confirmation of receipt. No separate portal or separate login required.
- We determine the scope and schedule on a case-by-case basis—they depend on the number of employees, the number of companies, leave policies, and the benefits package. We start with a brief workshop to map out the data you currently provide to your HR and payroll department.