Editor’s Note: Felipe Madeira is the Payroll Department Manager at CASAN (Companhia Catarinense de Águas e Saneamento), a public water and sanitation utility in Santa Catarina, Brazil, where he leads payroll operations for approximately 2,500 employees. He has more than 12 years of experience in public-sector payroll, Brazilian labor compliance (eSocial, CLT, FGTS, and INSS), and internal controls. Felipe serves on PayrollOrg’s Board of Contributing Writers, Global Payroll Editorial Advisory Board, and Global Payroll and Government/Public Sector Best Practices Subcommittees of the Strategic Payroll Leadership Task Force (SPLTF). He holds two MBAs and is completing a master’s degree in human resources management.

How did you get started in your career?

I passed a public-service examination—placing seventh—and the position available happened to be in HR and payroll. I knew the position would be an administrative role, but not exactly where I’d land. Looking back, I’m grateful for that twist of fate, because it introduced me to a field I’ve found genuinely fascinating.

My background was in finance, and I’d always been drawn to working with numbers, so payroll felt like familiar ground at first. But what made me fall for it was watching the manager I sat next to in those early days. I paid close attention to his concern at every close—the care he took with the calculations, the statutory contributions, the discipline of getting every detail exactly right. Little by little, I realized payroll wasn’t just numbers on a screen. It carried real weight: people’s livelihoods, legal obligations, and the trust of an entire workforce.

That realization is what kept me in the field and pushed me to grow—eventually to leading a payroll division. What started as a coincidence became a career I’m proud of.

Which of your professional accomplishments have had the most impact?

One that stands out is recent, and it changed how I see my own role. Our organization was spending heavily on overtime, but no one could really say why—which areas, which causes, which patterns. It was treated as a normal cost of doing business. That bothered me, so I decided to investigate.

When I opened the data, the surprise wasn’t the total—it was the shape of it. A significant share of the overtime wasn’t extraordinary at all. The same locations, and even the same people, appeared month after month. What the organization had been calling “exceptional” was structural—built into how the operation ran. That single distinction reframed the entire conversation. Structural overtime isn’t a scheduling problem you approve away each month; it’s a design problem you must solve.

The numbers were sobering, and leadership felt that. But rather than defensiveness, the analysis was genuinely welcomed—it’s now driving a series of strategy sessions on how to address the root causes. Seeing my work move from a report into real decisions was deeply rewarding.

More than that, it taught me something I carry with me: leading payroll is the baseline, but the real value is in the analysis. Any detail, looked at carefully, can shape how the whole organization is managed. That’s the part of this profession I find most exciting.

What is your management and leadership approach?

I lead a team of six, and I see myself as a mentor and a partner more than I do as a boss. I have my responsibilities as a leader, but I never stop rolling up my sleeves alongside the team. I keep a close, open relationship with the team and protect the harmony of the environment—and I believe that’s a big reason we’ve consistently delivered every pay cycle on time.

Payroll runs on relentless deadlines, so my most important job under pressure is to stay calm. I’ve learned that if I get anxious, things start to go wrong and the whole team absorbs that tension. So, when the pressure is highest, I try to manage it quietly and pass it to the team in a softer form, so they can keep working with a clear head. The other half of the equation is delegating well—when everyone owns their part, we reach the end of the monthly cycle with everything in order.

For example, a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) was signed with a deadline that was, frankly, almost impossible given how many operations and verifications it required. Instead of panicking, I calmly mapped out everything that needed to happen, then sat with the team and was honest: this would be a real challenge, but I knew we could do it together. They stood with me. I told leadership we would deliver—and we did. It was demanding, but we made it.

That’s the heart of my approach: stay steady, be honest about the challenge, share the load, and trust the people around you.

What strategic advice would you give to a colleague moving from domestic to global payroll?

My advice comes from a particular vantage point. I run payroll in Brazil—one of the most complex jurisdictions you’ll ever encounter—so I tend to see this from the side of the country you’re expanding into.

The biggest mistake I see is assuming that following a few laws is enough to close payroll correctly. No country’s payroll is simple, but Brazil is especially demanding: layers of legislation, unions with their own CBAs, constant statutory detail, and zero tolerance for error. Someone coming from the outside who treats it as “just another country” will get caught off guard fast.

So, the real shift isn’t technical—it’s a mindset. In domestic payroll you live inside one rulebook, one calendar, one culture. Going global means accepting that there is no single rule. Every country has its own regulations, its own rhythm, its own way of operating, and you must learn each one on its own terms.

The most important thing I’d pass on is humility. I couldn’t run U.S. payroll the way I run Brazilian payroll—the laws are different, the culture is different, the whole way of working is different. The professionals who succeed globally are the ones who respect local expertise instead of exporting their home-country assumptions. Listen first, and treat each jurisdiction as something to be understood, not just processed.

What do you feel is the responsible use of AI in global payroll?

I think the starting point is caution—we shouldn’t assume artificial intelligence (AI) will replace everything. I don’t rely on it in my own day-to-day processes.

Where I have started using it is for building specific, customized reports: I give the commands, AI helps me produce them faster, and I save real time. But I always check the output carefully to confirm it’s correct. It’s a powerful tool, yet I don’t trust it 100%—it’s still prone to errors, and in payroll an unchecked error isn’t a small thing.

Looking ahead, I believe AI will genuinely help—speeding up verifications, catching errors faster, helping surface solutions. But the human element will always be there. So much of payroll still depends on interpretation, on judgment that AI simply can’t replicate. The tool can accelerate the work; it can’t own the decision.

What concerns me most is threefold: the privacy of sensitive data, the errors that creep in when there’s no proper review, and the risk that people start using AI for everything—no longer stopping to do the work themselves, to think, to analyze. That last one worries me as much as the technical risks. The day we stop exercising our own judgment is the day the profession loses something essential.

So, to me, responsible use comes down to a simple principle: let AI support the professional, never replace the judgment. Use it to remove the repetitive load, but keep a human accountable for accuracy, compliance, and the care that people’s pay and personal data demand.

How do you manage stress and stay balanced?

Two things keep me grounded. The first is Brazilian jiu-jitsu—I’ve trained for about two and a half years and I’m a blue belt. It’s done more for me than fitness: it’s taught me focus, discipline, and how to stay calm under pressure. And the parallel to payroll is almost exact. On the mat, you learn to face a difficult position with patience and technique instead of panic—which is precisely how I try to lead through a tight close or a near-impossible deadline.

The second is my family. When I’m with my wife and my two daughters, I can switch off, relax, and leave the day’s stress behind. That balance—the discipline of the mat and the peace of home—is what lets me bring a steady head back to work.

Also, read the article “Payroll Governance—Applying COSO to the Function that Needs It Most” by this author in this issue.