Webinar Explores the Potential of Payroll in 2024

Technology has transformed the payroll profession from a role that was considered little more than a back-office function into a vitally strategic leadership position.

While compliance, timeliness, and accuracy are still top priorities of every payroll professional, the evolution of the payroll profession has introduced new challenges for 2024.

In the webinar, “The Potential of Payroll in 2024,” sponsored by ADP, Graham Wylie, ADP’s Vice President, International Marketing, discussed the significant changes that have led to payroll’s evolution in recent years and how payroll leaders have had to adjust to meet difficulties head-on.

“There’s been so much change, not just in terms of the critical business issues we all face with everything that has happened over the last seven years, but also the daily changing context of payroll legislation, organizational expectations, inflation, the rising cost of living, conflict and uncertainty, and cyberthreat,” Wylie said. “We live in uncertain times and our industry operates in uncertain times. But the fundamentals [of payroll] don’t change that much. This is one of the most important jobs in the world.”

In 2023, ADP released its annual survey outlining payroll’s potential in 2024. For this survey, ADP interviewed 1,700 senior leaders working in multinational businesses across 19 countries who are responsible for global payroll operations.

The survey examines the various strategies, challenges, ambitions, and drivers of payroll, as well as how payroll is performing and how it is changing.

Although payroll has experienced its fair share of challenges and uncertainty in recent years—largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic—there has also been opportunities for growth.

“What happened with the global pandemic really thrust payroll into the spotlight, and heightened expectations of what payroll could, and indeed, should do,” Wylie said. “For many organizations, this led to promises of additional resources and investments, and therefore, perhaps, a-once-in-a-generation opportunity to help our organizations change how they think about payroll because of changing business needs, technology, and a changing ambition for the payroll professional.”

There are several factors that are behind global payroll transformation. These four key business drivers include:

1. Cost efficiencies
2. Digitisation
3. Operational/productivity efficiencies
4. Improved employee experience

As every payroll professional knows, pay is a critical component to the employee experience and is in many cases considered the “reward center” of every organization.

As a result, the employee experience is impacted by payroll. According to the People at Work 2023: A Global Workforce View survey, 23% of the workers polled said they were underpaid for their work, while 15% reported being underpaid—possibly due to failed payments, incorrect tax codes, etc.—while 17% reported they weren’t satisfied at all with their employment experience, due to their pay being late or incorrect.

Of course, payroll professionals who took part in an informal poll during the live webinar indicated they are providing a positive employee experience, with nearly 70% of attendees reporting a 90% to 100% accuracy rate with payroll.

However, ADP’s annual poll indicated that the average payroll accuracy rate of most organizations was just 78%—up from 75% in 2023, but down from 89% reported before the start of the pandemic.

“The potential of payroll is to do better,” Wylie said. “More accuracy drives better employee experience, less queries, and more scope for the payroll function to be strategic. We are seeing some improvements, but we can collectively do better as an industry.”