A decade or so ago the role of the global payroll professional was to ensure that company employees in a single location got paid accurately and on time. It is fair to say that the role has evolved a lot since then. We have seen massive initiatives in technology, the globalization of companies and a global pandemic come along. Things have changed dramatically and unsurprisingly the role of the global payroll professional is now much more nuanced and a lot different than it was before.
The demands on their time have increased significantly as have the expectations around what they can deliver to the wider company. In this article, we are going to take a look at the changing role of the global payroll professional and examine some of the wider responsibilities they are expected to deliver on today.
Data analyst
A global payroll professional today is in many ways a data analyst. Part of their jobs will be to extract, analyze and make sense of multi-country global payroll data, this means getting to grips with understanding labor costs, locally and globally, local country pay elements, unique benefits and compensation packages, joiners and leavers, gender pay gap and lots more.
This is a significant part of the payroll professional role, as valuable data insights can provide crucial information such as what the best location to deploy resources is or bring on new employees in the future. Knowing what your payroll process is costing you in a particular area means that you can use predictive analytics to tell you what hiring a large amount of employees will mean for a particular payroll region and what this is going to cost the company. This payroll information and data insight is invaluable for business leaders and so it is an integral part of the payroll professional description to provide this kind of information.
In a previous iteration of payroll operations, it was really all about making sure the calculations were correct and applied. This is still a big part of the role, employees around the world need to get paid accurately and on time but payroll services have developed into something much bigger. There has never been a time where there is so much data moving around multiple connected systems in a multinational company.
Payroll data needs to feed into human resources reporting as well as last mile reporting from the financial operations team, often in the form of general ledger reporting. Increasingly, CFOs and finance leaders are looking to examine labor costs in an effort to get a better understanding of the company’s largest expense, payroll.
So, a global payroll professional now needs to become something of a data analyst and a data expert, there is no escaping the role of data in their role today. The more progressive and innovative digital tools they have at their disposal to extract, collate, and make sense of this data the better.
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People manager
Payroll is essentially a people business and there is a strong need for soft skills and interpersonal skills when entering a career as a payroll professional. The job involves regular communication and interaction with a lot of internal stakeholders within the organization as well as external stakeholders in the form of local country payroll providers or third party outsourced vendors who they may have to interact with, as a result of decisions taken around which global payroll model to deploy.
It is a complex and uniquely challenging environment. A lot of commitment and diligence is required as well as focus and concentration. Local country payroll providers are needed to pay people on the ground in the countries in which the multinational operates, payroll professionals need to interact with these local providers to ensure the calculations are correct and all of these people are getting paid correctly and on time. Any failure to do so would be damaging for the employee experience. Different time zones, cultural differences and unique currencies all come into play here, meaning that skillful, nuanced communication and interpersonal skills are required especially in the area of query resolution.
The global payroll professional of today is never simply sat at a desk pressing buttons, there is constant communication and stakeholder interaction. They will receive regular requests for data and information from their colleagues in the human resources department and the finance department too. It is a new responsibility in a new era for payroll, especially now that the makeup and nature of work is changing; remote and hybrid working is firmly embedded at the majority of companies today. A good deal of the communication skills need to be deployed over video conferencing tools and digital collaboration tools which just adds another challenge.
Strategic planner
Global payroll data has a lot to reveal about the financial health and well-being of an organization if revealed properly through innovative digital tools and reporting suites. So, there is now an element of strategy in the role of the global payroll professional.
Payroll provides a huge amount of data that includes key insights and information that can be used for effective strategic planning. Examining key trends and predictive analytics in payroll could provide a company with a substantial advantage over competitors. Putting this information and insight to use could strongly influence the overall strategic goals and objectives.
Payroll teams are in a position to advise, based on solid data, on strategically and financially advantageous countries to recruit new hires in. They can also give a great deal of information around specific pay elements such as taxes, bonuses, and commissions, all of this can contribute to bigger picture insights for strategic decision making. Real-time reporting can advise on gender pay gap and gender breakdown within organizations as well as nuanced information around diversity and inclusion statistics. The reporting can reveal how well or how poorly an organization is doing in line with desired benchmarks in these areas and others.
Leadership teams at multinational organizations can choose to invest or dis-invest in specific countries, regions, and territories. Data received from the global payroll department can inform these crucial business decisions and influence that strategic direction a company takes over the next five years. Global payroll managers and senior professionals are in a position to comment on and offer helpful insight into strategic matters.
The role of the payroll professional has changed a lot in recent years. From extracting and analyzing payroll data to gain valuable insights that can greatly influence strategic planning, to acting as people managers- are all just a few of the ways that the role has evolved significantly and become crucially important.
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