ADP has released the results of its survey, The Potential of Payroll in 2025: Global Payroll Survey, which gathered insights from 1,825 payroll leaders in 20 countries between August and September 2024. The findings highlight both challenges and opportunities in payroll transformation, with a strong focus on enhancing the employee experience, increasing productivity, and leveraging data for strategic decision-making.
To drive these transformations, organisations are prioritising automation, integrating payroll data with key business systems, and reinforcing cybersecurity measures. These initiatives aim to improve efficiency, elevate employee trust in payroll accuracy, and position payroll teams as strategic partners within their organisations.
Enhancing the Employee Experience
A fundamental expectation of employees from the payroll department remains accuracy, compliance, and timeliness. However, many organisations still struggle to achieve payroll accuracy rates above 90% across all regions. Beyond accuracy, employers are focusing on enhancing financial wellness for employees through innovative pay practices, including:
- A mix of alternative pay methods, such as mobile wallets, prepayment cards, and earned wage access
- Increasing the percentage of direct deposit payments
- Offering more frequent pay cycles to meet evolving workforce demands
Additionally, payroll teams are prioritising improvements in how employees access and understand their pay. Initiatives such as self-service tools, dedicated payroll helpdesks, chatbots, and accessibility features like payslips for the visually impaired are becoming increasingly common. These enhancements align with a broader push to provide a seamless payroll experience that fosters employee satisfaction and trust.
Boost Productivity, Accuracy, Automation
Payroll leaders recognise the need to reduce time spent on manual processes such as fixing payroll data errors, data entry, and reconciliations. To address these inefficiencies, organisations are focusing on:
- Expanding integration between payroll and other core business systems, including accounting, finance, and a strong emphasis on HR
- Implementing artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic process automation (RPA) to streamline workflows
- Centralising payroll operations within shared services to enhance efficiency and reduce costs
The rise of AI and automation presents an opportunity to shift payroll professionals from transactional tasks to more strategic roles. AI-driven insights can support compliance, forecasting, and workforce planning, thereby reinforcing payroll’s value in business transformation. However, these automation and efficiency initiatives in the payroll process must be balanced with the human aspect: namely, the payroll professionals.
Pivotal Role of Skilled (Global) Payroll Professionals
With these advancements, payroll professionals are expected to go beyond processing payroll to provide actionable business insights, support transformations, and put the employee experience at the heart of their processes. To meet these new expectations, payroll teams must develop a well-rounded skill set that includes:
- Data analytics for workforce and business insights
- Business process improvement to drive efficiency and productivity
- Compliance expertise to navigate evolving regulations
- Cybersecurity awareness to protect sensitive payroll and employee data
Despite the demand for skilled payroll professionals, attracting and retaining talent continues to be a challenge. According to ADP’s survey, 83% of organisations intend to expand their payroll teams, yet many find it difficult to identify the necessary expertise externally. Organisations address this by upskilling their existing payroll teams, training existing non-payroll staff to work in payroll, and outsourcing any other gaps. This highlights the significance of professional development.
Supporting Professional Development Through PayrollOrg
The focus of organisations to invest in the skill development of their payroll professionals is very much aligned with PayrollOrg’s (PAYO) vision “to empower payroll professionals throughout the world to be strategic partners within their organisations, armed with the knowledge and skills to drive business results company-wide.”
There is no better time for both organisations and payroll professionals to review PAYO’s education, courses, and conferences to equip themselves with the skills and knowledge required in 2025 and beyond. Of special interest are the payroll analytics courses: Foundations of Payroll Analytics and Intermediate Payroll Analytics.
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Max van der Klis-Busink, BBA, is the Owner of Passion For Payroll and Vice President of Global Strategy on PayrollOrg’s Board of Directors.
