PayrollOrg, in partnership with Payslip, recently ran an extensive survey getting the views of hundreds of global payroll professionals around the world. They were asked a broad range of questions covering pressing concerns and trends in multi-country global payroll delivery and management today.
The results were insightful, revealing, and at times surprising. Global payroll is a fluid, ever-changing environment that is complex and multilayered. The diligent professionals and industry leaders working in global payroll have a lot on their minds.
Key Survey Results
Some of the key survey results included the following:
- 47% of respondents state that their biggest priority this year is automating payroll dataflows to replace manual workflows.
- 40% of respondents say different processes are across countries—no standardization is their biggest frustration.
- 51% of respondents state that variance and error detection automation technology would add the most value to their payroll operation.
A lot has happened in the global payroll space in recent years. A global pandemic has seen the emergence of a drastically changed workforce environment with hybrid and remote working now the new normal. This has created additional complexity and resulted in a new range of challenges.
Dedicated payroll professionals are dealing with a lot: manual data entry, with 37% saying they are fully reliant on Excel, limited reporting, different processes across countries (61% confirm this), lack of integrations, compliance, with 33% of those surveyed saying this is their biggest current challenge, and data security worries. The urgency to find a solution that covers all these concerns is growing.
Overall, the survey revealed a strong desire for change and assistance in the form of technology solutions—26% describe their payroll as being stuck in the 1990s. Below is just a selection of some of the key concerns for global payroll professionals who responded to this survey:
- Manual data entry creates payroll error risk and is a massive drain on time and resources—it must be replaced with automation
- Non-standard data and different processes across countries are a real barrier to productivity and operational efficiency. It also makes meeting compliance obligations much harder.
- Lack of reporting and analytics tools makes it difficult to respond to C-suite requests for global payroll data and reporting
A recurring theme in the survey involved managing everything in the face of all the complexity. Interestingly, there was an acceptance that complexity is part and parcel of global payroll delivery and management, with the focus on a management solution that could leverage technology to make it all work. An example of this is the general acceptance of the hybrid model: a mix of whatever number of service models and local country vendors you need to deliver payroll. Then it becomes about managing it all via a global payroll control platform: service providers, local vendors, dataflow sources, extended workforce, compliance, and data security.
This important survey is a timely pulse check for the industry that focuses on some of the priorities, challenges, and concerns across the global payroll landscape in 2023.