Payroll progress: stepping into the future

01 November 2024

Maria Mason MCIPPdip, partner, BDO UK LLP, highlights how the payroll profession has moved forward and the strategic value it brings to business

I am always proud to say that I actively chose a payroll career more than 30 years ago and I am enormously proud to be part of the payroll community. As a payroll expert, I value our dynamic and changing industry and the many highly motivated professionals we work alongside. We’ve cultivated a collaborative approach, working with other business divisions to deliver strategic insights. We’ve invested in technology and embraced innovation, expanding our capabilities, accuracy and efficiency. And, possibly most importantly, we’ve elevated our profession, transforming it into a complex and fulfilling career path that attracts and rewards talent, offers diverse specialisms and skillsets, and provides education and qualification pathways to enable our success.

Payroll progress

It’s fair to say we’ve come a long way from the traditional view of payroll.

When I joined the industry, we were processing payroll on mainframes, still sending tapes to Bacs each evening by courier, producing money envelope payslips which Securicor would fill with the relevant cash and seal before passing to the client, or triplex printed payslips that had to go on special machines to separate. Reports were printed on hundreds of pieces of A4 paper, year end returns were manually reconciled and yellow books were everywhere! While having fond memories of times gone by, I certainly don’t miss the incredibly manual processing. This often resulted in long working hours under high pressure, so the payroll function was often seen as a major risk and a laborious administrative task.

Thankfully, things have moved on. While ensuring that staff are paid accurately and on time remains at the heart of our industry, through our hard work and willingness to embrace change, we’ve also positioned the pay and reward profession as a vitally strategic component of the business and have won a seat at the decision-making table.

We’ve achieved change through a systemic shift in how we work and the way we deliver value back to the business. I have watched us move away from these manual tasks and embrace new ways of doing things; Bacs is now sent electronically, reporting is automated, HMRC finally moved onto electronic filing with real time information and BDO hasn’t printed a client payslip since 2020! Artificial intelligence (AI) assists with the processing of payroll, along with tools to move and store the data that payroll holds, task management systems, data checking and analytic tools that enable us to be able to provide businesses with real time data that drive their business decisions.

Strategic partners

In today’s social and economic landscape, challenge and risk aren’t just a possibility, they’re a certainty. Environmental, social and governance and sustainability, workforce resilience, supply chain resilience, digital transformation, and evolving compliance and governance considerations all have a growing influence on the way organisations operate, and this seems unlikely to change. Businesses are adapting to this new environment not just by managing risk, but by turning it into opportunity. They’re achieving this through data and insights, and the payroll discipline is a vital component of this approach.

Payroll and reward professionals have continued to prove that we are agile, adaptable specialists who have learnt our skills through professional qualifications and years of experience. As the custodians of valuable data about a business’s most important asset – its people – we have the potential to influence strategic thinking across a variety of business opportunities and risks. Ultimately, we’ve positioned payroll as a critical component of business decision-making, enabling organisations to turn challenge and risk into opportunity.

We’ve fostered collaborative relationships with other business divisions such as sales, human resources and recruitment and finance, and built strong connections with the C-suite. In addition, we form deep and trusted relationships with our clients, managing their most trusted details.

A dynamic discipline

In recent years, the payroll systems and technology we leverage have also made significant strides, driven wider recognition of the value of the payroll function and our potential to support business objectives and influence decision making.

Expanding governance obligations and a growing focus on ecological and social impact require businesses to be increasingly transparent and agile in their reporting. Payroll data and technology can ease these processes, providing real-time, bespoke dashboard views of metrics such as gender pay gap reporting. Recognising that staffing is often the highest cost for most businesses, these same systems can aid businesses in controlling costs, drive efficiencies in staffing and scheduling, and improve resource allocation.

Global data legislation has changed how businesses and consumers manage the storage and transmission of their data. In response, the payroll discipline has developed data transfer protocols that ensure organisations remain compliant with laws while maintaining accuracy and efficiency, ultimately ensuring processing is carried out accurately and on time.

Understanding the human element of our work and the detrimental risk of errors, we’ve embraced robotic process automation. These technologies improve efficiency, reduce manual interventions and minimise the risk of costly inaccuracies that can have a serious impact on businesses and employees. AI applications are also beginning to support our processes, ensuring payroll runs are accurate and timely, without missing any steps or quality checks.

Many pay and reward functions have also invested in systems that integrate pay and benefits into a single view. These platforms aid staff in understanding

their organisation’s reward framework, ensuring they can make informed pay and benefits choices, and feel valued for their work. In turn, this aids in attracting and retaining talent.

These innovations and advancements create tangible opportunities for pay and reward professionals. They also highlight the importance of continual professional development, building skillsets, knowledge and systems to ensure that, as a discipline, we continue to be a strategic asset to businesses undertaking

digital transformation and tackling today’s challenges.

Supporting success

In recent years, we’ve seen remarkable transformation in the way the payroll discipline attracts, rewards and retains pay and reward professionals, and there are wide-ranging supported career pathways available beyond the processing of payroll that can lead to influential senior positions. There’s now a huge variety of roles common in the profession including payroll compliance, data and analytics, technology implementation and innovation, process transformation, systems and solutions consultation, account management and business development.

I’m immensely proud to be the first equitable payroll specialist partner in a top accounting firm. My position demonstrates the value that BDO places on its payroll delivery services to our clients and the importance of this as a business stream within the firm. I’m also delighted to see many of my peers and friends in the industry in similar roles in large corporations, earning salaries reflective of their experience and contribution to the firms they’re in. This is fantastic for the payroll industry and shows how far we have moved forward.

To support our success, our industry has developed education, qualification and accreditation frameworks, and it’s important that we take advantage of these as far as possible. Holding a qualification also boosts employability with further education seen as a sign of drive, self-motivation and dedication to career advancement.

Shaping the future

Like many industries, expectations of payroll have continued to rise and we, the payroll community, continue to rise to the challenges, shaping the future. I’ve been privileged to watch the changes occur and see the rise of the payroll profession and remain proud to be part of such a dynamic, diverse industry that now sits at the top table and drives change through businesses.

I am immensely proud to be part of our profession and continue to be excited as we carry on working to create a thriving and dynamic industry.