Payroll Management Insights

I am on my way to UNLEASH and I really want to know: Who is building a new payroll engine? I was watching my fellow passengers work and thought: wouldn’t it be cool if one of them was building a new payroll engine? I know the chance is slim, but still, when was the last time a new engine came to market? A new payroll engine that takes full advantage of the latest technology. That is designed with AI and ML at its core, instead of added-on. And no, I’m not talking about Gen AI, even though there might be areas where that could be useful too. So, if you’re at Unleash and are working on a new payroll, do reach out! I’d like to hear what you’re working on and especially for which country - or maybe even countries? Here’s what I like to see in a new payroll: - A modular, service-oriented architecture (SOA) that separates key modules - Real-time (continuous) processing - A compliance layer with country-specific modules - A rule engine with low‑code/no‑code rule management - AI / machine learning capabilities at its core to make handling easier for admins ánd employees - An API first architecture: seamless up and downstream integration - And of course multi-tenant, on a cloud-native infrastructure Just the I mportant items on my list (you know I have more!) I’m excited about the current opportunity for new payroll engines. We can finally rethink how we handle one of the most critical systems in any business. With the latest tech we can fully reimagine compliance, automation, real-time calculations, and flexibility from the ground up. It will be hard and take time, but I believe it’s where real innovation can happen! Am I missing something? What is the most important feature you wish for in a new payroll? And most importantly, who should I speak to? #futureofwork #payroll #aid

I had the pleasure of talking to Eynat Guez from Papaya Global on the latest episode of the Payroll Podcast, where we dove deep into the future of global payroll and payments. We explored some big questions: - Why is the "last mile" of payroll—payments—so critical? - How is AI transforming global payroll to be faster, smarter, and more accurate? - What does it take to pay a workforce seamlessly in 130+ currencies? This conversation came at the perfect time because Papaya Global just launched their latest AI-powered platform! It’s designed to solve some of the biggest challenges multinational companies face, from ensuring compliance across 160+ countries to reducing payroll processing time by 80%. Innovation in payroll isn’t just nice to have—it’s essential for global businesses. If you’re curious about how Papaya Global is disrupting global payroll & payments, this is a must-listen! Check out the full episode in the comments below!

Payroll compliance is not just about fixing errors after they occur—it is about preventing them in the first place. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is helping organisations take a proactive approach by: 📍 Identifying anomalies before payroll is processed—reducing the risk of underpayments or overpayments. 📍 Enhancing audit processes, scanning thousands of transactions in real time. 📍 Detecting award misclassifications that could result in backpay claims. AI does not replace human oversight—it enhances it, providing payroll teams with smarter insights and greater confidence in their compliance efforts. How is your organisation using AI to improve payroll accuracy? #PayrollTech #AIinCompliance #HRInnovation

In an effort to better understand the challenges that companies face in global hiring, payroll and compliance, Deel commissioned a new study from Forrester, surveying over 300 Finance, HR and payroll decision makers across the globe. The way most organizations operate “global” payroll today is anything but that, and the vast majority cited serious challenges with their payroll solutions. Here’s the topline: Though work has become increasingly global and distributed, payroll systems haven’t adapted to the changing landscape. Many companies use at least 6 payroll tools and multiple vendors. The result is an often chaotic, distributed process for tackling global payroll, with unreliable and fractured vendor support leading to errors and delays, and overwhelming regional compliance needs. ➡️More vendors, more problems - 75% of respondents said that complexity was driven by a perceived need to use different vendors specific to each region and country  - 86% of payroll leaders use a hybrid approach—some managed internally, some by external vendors. ➡️Payroll costs are only increasing - 85% of respondents expected costs to climb - Costs related to compliance, errors, and poor experience were ‘hidden’ and generally overlooked, meaning costs could climb even more than projected. ➡️Payroll issues make for a bad employee work experience  - Payroll leaders said increased errors, decreased efficiencies, and confusion with regional compliance added up to a lot of time wasted and frustrated employees. - Consistent employee experience across regions, inefficiencies through multiple systems, and regional compliance were top challenges. ➡️Poor vendor support makes challenges more difficult - Distributed vendors with varying degrees of responsiveness makes for a confusing inefficient process.  - Vendors often outsource support, making responses to payroll errors, delayed payments even worse. - Payroll employees spent nearly half of their week on manual work and escalations with vendors. 🌏All-in-one global payroll is key - 97% of payroll leaders agree that consolidating global payroll into a single solution would be valuable. To keep up with the increasingly global world of work, a truly global solution that offers an all-in-one view of all employees regardless of location or worker type is a must. With in-house Customer Success Managers, globe-spanning local payroll experts, and 80+ integrations to sync data and automate workflows, Deel Global Payroll has the power to revolutionize payroll operations for companies looking to hire and pay global talent. Check out the study: https://lnkd.in/edAfc7vz Learn more about Deel Global Payroll: https://lnkd.in/e3fmEjiZ

Global payroll: “One vendor, one solution” … or is it? If you’ve ever had the joys of being sold to by a global payroll solution (and/or services) provider, you’ll have heard something along the lines of “we do global payroll in 120+ countries, one contract, one platform, one throat to choke, etc”. #SpoilerAlert: that’s not exactly true. The Tech Reality is that what’s sold as a “global payroll platform” is almost always a patchwork of dozens of others with dozens of integrations. Country A’s thing talking to country B’s thing, routed through a core payroll/HRIS thing, with loads of other things talking to loads of other things all over the place (purposefully non technical!). The reality is that data bounces through 3rd/4th/5th/6/7/8/9/nth party systems before it lands anywhere near your payslips. The Services Reality is very similar and sorry to break it to you but your “global provider” isn’t running payroll in every territory, they’re orchestrating a network of in-country partners, local bureaus, single-country specialists and sometimes even relying on their own competitors. You sign with Provider X in the UK, but Provider X subcontracts to Provider Y in France, who could quite possible lean on Provider Z for tax filing (the alphabet isn’t big enough for all the possible examples) Who really cares? This isn’t inherently bad right? it’s just how global scale gets delivered isn't it? Maybe so. But personally I think that the transparency, ownership and management of risk matters, and for me the problem is ‘opacity’ (I love that word!) Beyond the commercial declarations about “subcontractors and third-parties”, most buyers have zero visibility into things like who exactly processes their payroll data in each country, where the single points of failure sit, what cyber, data privacy or business continuity risks exist, and how data flows (and where it sits) across multiple jurisdictions. Without that, the sense of who owns those problems becomes ‘opaque’. Just remember, when you sign with a “global provider”, you’re not buying a monolith. You’re delegating the orchestration of a fragmented ecosystem to them. It still belongs to you. They might bear the commercial risk of managing the complexity, but the underlying fragility is still there, and you're just one more arms-length layer away from managing the framework yourself. Global payroll isn’t one ring to rule them all. It’s a managed supply chain. And like any supply chain, you need to 'manage' it, and you need to see the whole map before you embark on lobbing your global payrolls to a 'global provider'. Over to you…. What’s your experience been with “global payroll” reality versus the sales deck? Have you ever experienced the reality of a hidden failure in one of your territories? Let me know, share it with this lovely community. #GlobalPayroll #Payroll #MCP #PayrollTech #TheLeppingtonGroup #SupplyChain #RiskManagement #BPO #outsourcing #TLG 

In the last few weeks, rules changed where we operate. Part of running global payroll is knowing and adjusting to these changes. A few examples: 🇮🇹 Italy: you can no longer ask a candidate their salary history, and job ads have to show a pay range. Larger employers now report their gender pay gap. 🇨🇦 Prince Edward Island, Canada: the standard work week moved from 48 hours to 44, with new overtime, scheduling, and termination rules. 🇧🇪 Belgium: the minimum hours for a part-time contract dropped from a third of full-time to a tenth, and dismissal notice is now capped. 🇻🇳 Vietnam: from July 1, the ceiling for social and health insurance contributions rises, so the same salary produces a different payslip. 🇨🇴 Colombia: a new annual public holiday takes effect, landing on July 13 this year. A paid day off to account for. None of these will make global headlines, and that is what makes them easy to miss. Any one of them, overlooked, can mean a contract that does not hold up or a payslip that is quietly wrong. Multiply that across every country a company hires in, and you see why so many give up and stay local. At Remote, we keep tabs on this for our customers. Every country is its own little universe. Talent is everywhere - rules are too.

The moment payroll and payments drift apart, complexity starts creeping in. For years, companies treated payroll and payments as separate things. Payroll teams focused on calculations, compliance, taxes, filings. Banks or payment processors handled the movement of money across borders. On paper, the split looked logical. In practice, it introduced a pattern everyone eventually recognizes — handoffs, delays, reconciliation loops, mismatched data, and an uncomfortable amount of manual intervention. The issue is that two interdependent processes were forced to operate in silos. One system determines what people should be paid; another entirely different system is responsible for actually moving the funds. As organizations scale, that gap widens. Each new country adds another banking partner, another workflow, another approval path, and another place where things can break. This fragmentation is predictable. Teams start stitching together whatever works — a regional bank here, a payment gateway there, a set of spreadsheets to reconcile the difference. It works for a while, until the volume of payments grows and the stakes rise. Then, one payment slips through the net. It's a compliance failure, an employee experience issue, and a credibility problem rolled into one. This is why we’re seeing a shift. Instead of treating payroll and payments as two separate problems to solve, companies are moving toward a unified platform model — a single, stitched-together layer that handles everything from calculation to disbursement, across currencies and jurisdictions, without the handoffs that used to define the process. When payroll and payments run through one consolidated workflow, data is consistent. Transfers are predictable. Errors drop because the system eliminates manual reconciling. Finance teams gain clarity on global spend without chasing inconsistent reports. And employees feel the impact where it matters most: Getting paid accurately and on time. We should stop overcomplicating things. Bundling payroll and payments together determines whether operations can scale without being dragged down by their own internal complexity. #hr #eor #payroll #consolidation

I talk to global payroll teams every week and one thing I hear over and over? “We’ve made it work… but it shouldn’t be this hard.” Outdated platforms. Endless spreadsheets. Country-specific workarounds. No visibility. And despite it all, payroll is still expected to be 100% accurate, on time, and compliant. Sound familiar? At some point, it’s not about fixing what’s broken it’s about asking whether it still serves the business at all. Here are the red flags I see from companies on the edge of change: ⚠️ Endless manual fixes just to get payroll over the line ⚠️ Zero real-time visibility across your global footprint ⚠️ Compliance always playing catch-up ⚠️ Burnt-out teams constantly firefighting ⚠️ Scaling plans blocked by inflexible payroll systems If you’re expanding globally, but your payroll can’t keep up you have a risk problem and a growth problem. Before jumping into demos or vendor calls, take a step back: 🔹Have you defined what good looks like in your payroll operation? 🔹 Are your processes scalable — or just patched together? 🔹 Does your payroll team have a seat at the table? 🔹 Are you planning for the next country… or the next 20? Great payroll isn’t just about paying people it’s about protecting your business, building trust, and enabling scale. If you’re not getting that today, maybe it’s time for a bigger conversation with Deel

A €2 rounding discrepancy stalled a global payroll program in France for 24 months. Why?   It's common for CEOs to treat a global payroll rollout as an IT modernization. But in practice, especially across Europe, it’s closer to a diplomatic negotiation.   I was brought into a program with 20,000 employees that had already been running for two years. The platform was stable. The calculations were technically correct. Every system test passed. And yet, the rollout was blocked.   The issue wasn’t system performance. It was proration.   The new platform calculated part-time pay differently than the legacy system. For some employees, the variance was under €5.   At the board level, that looks like statistical noise. But in a French Workers’ Council, it’s a unilateral reduction in agreed compensation. From their perspective, the problem wasn’t the amount. It was precedent. If pay can change by €2 without consent, it can change by €200 later.   That single gap left unexamined during requirements led to council escalation, legal review, and 2 years of delay.   The lesson for senior leaders: 1. Compliance is not just legal. In much of Europe and LATAM, payroll sits at the intersection of law, collective agreements, and trust. You cannot “optimize” pay logic without social alignment. 2. Standardization creates exposure. The more aggressively you harmonize calculations across countries, the more likely you are to surface historical inconsistencies that local stakeholders will defend. 3. Change management starts at the pay-code level. If a €2 difference can’t be explained, justified, and agreed upon, the organization isn’t ready to go live, regardless of how much has already been spent.   More often than not, a €10M transformation isn't in jeopardy because of bad software, but rather because leaders underestimate what payroll means to employees. Payroll is, in fact, the most concrete expression of the employment contract.   Ignore the €2 questions, and they will eventually stop a €10M program in its tracks. ---- #Globalpayroll #PayrollTransformation