I am sitting in the Warsaw airport writing this article, so the memory is still very fresh.

We had the pleasure of hosting a wide range of global payroll leaders, coming to Warsaw from Krakow, Gdansk, Wroclaw, and even the UK! In a beautiful location, we had three hours of insightful presentations, after which we opened up networking opportunities. Personally, I love doing presentations but above all, I love observing others forging new connections and sharing their stories. That, in essence, is what these events are all about: unlocking those hidden best practices in global payroll. And that's just what we did.

For those who couldn't make it, please check out our YouTube channel for the recordings. Should you be interested in receiving the slides, send me a message on LinkedIn and I’ll get that over to you personally. Our agenda included presentations and inspiring talks such as:

• How to elevate your Global Payroll to the strategic seat at the table, by Paul Simpson (Senior Director Payroll & People Operations at Ralph Lauren), and Sylwia Korhonen (Associate Director, Global Payroll Transformation at Fresenius Medical Care)
• What (tech) trends are we moving from and trending towards, by Trevor Townsed (COO & Co-founder at Payzaar).
• Fred’s Story Chapter III, by Max van der Klis-Busink, that’s me! (Head of Service Delivery at Payzaar)
• Payroll Transformation with Payzaar, by Remi Champ Champeix (Lead Global Payroll Transformation at Danone)
• Global Payroll Industry Report, by Max van der Klis-Busink, that’s also me! 

In this blog article, I’ll give you a run-down of the key insights that inspired me personally.

Insights from our event

Changing the perception of payroll - your action is needed

Sylwia and Paul made it very clear: elevating global payroll to the strategic level is possible and not a utopian state. But how? I think the beauty sits in its conceptual simplicity:

• Understand your company’s objectives and mission
• Detail how you from global payroll can support those
• Go out there and make how you do this visible
• That means you need to interact with employees and stakeholders

Is it that simple? Well, in theory yes. But in reality it means that you as global payroll leader or manager, need to understand how you support the organisational goals. In order to do that, you need to articulate how you support them and then implement practices, processes, and systems to deliver on them.

One example given by Paul was that within his organisation, the employee experience and,  in particular the financial wellbeing, of the employees is crucial. For the employees to deliver on the brand promise they need to be supported, and that’s where Paul made Earned Wage Access (EWA) happen. He shared that his CEO (yes, the CEO!) mentioned that global payroll is a prime example of how functions can support the business. The EWA initiative was singled out by the employees as the most crucial benefit.

Another example shared by Sylwia is how she supports the company goal of agility in financial planning. With global payroll sitting on a wealth of strategic data, she has unlocked this and supports her finance colleagues to bring actionable insights to the business.

To summarise, the main takeaway for me is that if you want to elevate your own internal brand, you need to be visible and put yourself out there. Don’t sit and wait, own it. 

Your new tech hammer won’t turn challenges into nails

Never short of a platitude of analogies, Payzaar’s very own Trevor Townsend gave his down-to-earth view on how the latest technology trends fit into today’s reality. While AI, ML, and other innovations are awesome, they won’t just solve your problems tomorrow. He argued that we need to shift from trying to change everything, and move towards microservices. Sorry, what’s that? In Trevor’s own words:

“ A move away from monolithic systems of the past to deploy smaller units to solve point problems. Faster to deploy, lower cost, less disruption.”

Let’s unpack this for a moment, as this is important. If you have issues bringing all your (5+) data sources together for payroll processing, that doesn’t mean you need to change your entire global payroll provider landscape. Instead, you can focus on solving one specific problem without disruption. If you have trouble getting the payroll journals into your Finance ERP, solve that specific issue. If you have trouble getting your payslips out to the workforce, solve that specific issue. You get it.

I truly was inspired by Trevor with his strong argument that it is all about data, and zooming into the specific data issues and solving those with targeted microservices. Just let that sink in when you are preparing for your very disruptive, comprehensive RFP.

Hybrid is the one size fits all, with Payzaar

Our customer and friend from Danone, Remi, shared how he is breaking the global payroll compromise: achieving both standardisation ANd flexibility. You no longer need to sacrifice one for the other. Much like many other (very) large multinational companies, there is no one-size-fits-all approach for a heterogeneous environment with a ‘push and pull’ between global and local demands. Arguably, as I have been advocating for the past 10+ years, the only ‘size’ that really fits all is hybrid. 

Remi shared that their business model would be characterised as “transnational” (you can find out more about how this works by listening to this webinar recording). He shared that his goal is to deploy an errorless culture, fitting service delivery models, standardising processes and controls, and rationalising the vendor landscape. Yet, there is strong autonomy for the local business. So, how do you balance these global goals and local demands? 

You give the local teams a level of influence and low disruption (i.e. changing providers becomes a choice, not a demand) and still implement global standards through a modular global payroll platform: Payzaar. Remi decided to split his landscape into two archetypes which act as guidelines to transform against, and smartly deploy the Payzaar modules for each:

• Large Countries (>1.500 EEs): Top-tier suppliers with global presence and direct servicing, unique platform, and a preference for in-house model. Deploying the Payzaar modules Reporting & Analytics (global self-service reporting) and Accounting Connect (global self-service GL integration).
• Medium/Small Countries (<1.500 EEs): Tier 2 suppliers with global presence and direct servicing + Payzaar and a preference for outsourcing. Deploying the Payzaar modules Operations Control  (standardised processes, workflow, and controls), HR Connect (harmonising and digitising data flows), as well as Reporting & Analytics, and Accounting Connect.

What he achieves with this smart approach, is globally consistent reporting and integrations to accounting with varying levels of outsourcing and integrations, whilst empowering the local business to choose their local payroll provider. Super smart, and how you should be approaching your global payroll strategies. This is the new standard.

Fred has won the hearts of the audience once again

We first gave airtime to our Global Payroll manager Fred in October of last year during our inaugural event in Amsterdam. Ever since, he has been the relatable virtual friend of global payroll professionals around the world. Who is Fred, does he exist? He exists in all of us! He is relatable and is yours as much as he is ours.

In Chapter III of Fred’s story he finds himself as the focus of a full internal audit, after experiencing a data breach while trying to finally break away from the status quo. You can check out his full story (Chapter I-III) on YouTube, but the main message of this chapter is: you can pivot disappointment and setbacks into opportunities.

Fred received a brutal audit report rating his processes as “poor” and not up to par with industry standards and internal policies. While he had already expected that (hence his desire to challenge the status quo), seeing this result in an official report hurt. It hurts.

But when he then sat down to vent about it with his wife, she said: why don’t you use this for your business case? “Dziękuję moja droga” (Thank you my dear!) he said to his wife. He then went on to submit his business case, and waited for the outcome. This cliffhanger will bring us to Chapter IV of Fred’s story, so stay tuned to find out in our next Payzaar-on-the-go event.

The trend is undeniable, and our inaugural benchmark proves it

At this Warsaw event, I gave the audience the first sneak peek into the Global Payroll industry report we’re releasing. It covers useful global payroll insights, supported by tangible data points on various different topics that matter today such as trends, strategy, controls and more. For me personally, next to hosting global payroll events, this report really is a dream come true. While there are many great industry reports out there, I find ours so in depth, that it truly is one of a kind. Go and claim your full report here, and in the meantime, let me summarise our key findings at our event:

On average, 65% of global payrolls process 5+ more data sources per country, per payroll cycle. This is a lot of data that needs to be received, validated, processed and transformed by the payroll teams. Interestingly, the main root cause of payroll errors are poor data quality and manual processing of data. And then to add, that 89% of payroll teams still process changes after cut-off. Do you see a trend here like I do?

So, we have many data sources, how they are processed is one of the main causes of errors and on top of that, we even allow changes after cut-off. In that case, it should not be a surprise to see that the top priority for 2024 is to automate inbound and outbound data flows.

In line with what Trevor shared about microservices, and how Remi solves these in his landscape (integrate point to point where needed and harmonise dataflows where practical).

I want to take the time to highlight the above as prime data points when you design your Global Payroll Strategy (and 80% indicated do have one, or are working on it). Consider how you balance standardisation and flexibility into your strategy, as 60% indicated that both are equally important.

Now those are true insights you can and should use, all the details are in our industry report. You’re welcome!

Your network is golden; so invest in it

I hope you have found this write-up useful. Global payroll is everywhere, anywhere and we bring the insights to you live from across the world. Our next stop? Stay tuned to find out!

I would personally encourage everyone to participate in as many networking events (like ours) as possible. 

Why? Because you get to extend your network and gain outside perspectives that in turn, help you develop your professional skills. Your network is the aorta of your career - invest in it. That’s at least what I have done, still do and will continue doing. Join me.