2024: Key Global Payroll Trends

It is a new year of global payroll delivery and management at multinational companies around the world. Many of the problems, difficulties and challenges faced by global payroll professionals last year still exist in 2024. They will continue to exist unless the global payroll department and process is prioritized and supported with investment in automation and integration technology that has the capability to transform how multicountry payroll is processed.

We know from talking to global clients and industry experts, that many organizations really want to change their payroll process in 2024. Another year facing the same frustrations is simply unacceptable, especially now that we're in the era of AI powered automation which has the power to transform how payroll is delivered.

There is a route away from manual and outdated payroll system processes and over to fully digitized, end to end multicountry payroll processing. This is what is needed to generate the level of visibility and control required over data, process, people and vendors.

In this article we will take a look at a number of likely global payroll trends in 2024.

AI-Powered Automation

AI Technology dominated the news headlines in many ways last year and we're expecting this narrative to continue in 2024. There are valid reasons for this, the biggest among them is the genuinely transformative power of AI powered automation. It could signal the end of excel spreadsheets and manual data entry once and for all. There is not a global payroll professional in the world who will miss this aspect of payroll delivery and dispensing with this outdated method is long overdue. Diligent and hard-working global payroll professionals deserve to be served with advanced technology that can help them work in smarter and faster ways.

AI-driven automations have the ability to completely automate payroll delivery: from pre- payroll data gathering and cleansing right through to crucial last mile reporting. What we are talking about here is the automation of the end-to-end process, whereby payroll departments enter a new era of digitization where AI driven technology does the heavy lifting, enabling busy payroll professionals to create more time for priority tasks. AI-powered global payroll management can result in massive time savings as well as major cost efficiencies. Less human error, far fewer trial runs and faster turnaround times will introduce new levels of speed and accuracy in payrun management.

Integrations-as-a Service

We also expect to see integration functionality evolving into Integrations-as-a Service. Multi country payroll delivery and management cannot exist in isolation, it requires bi-directional data flows from multiple related dependencies such as human resource systems, financial services applications and benefits software. An integration as a service offering can help connect these crucial and co-dependent business services, so they operate in a more seamless and efficient manner.

IaaS trends are leaning toward ensuing payroll fits neatly into the broader ecosystem and complex tech stack which many organisations have today-HCMs/ERPs and more. This is understandable and also completely necessary because we have never yet met somebody who has all of their pre-payroll data conveniently located inside their HCM -this just doesn't happen.

The managed service providers are good at what they do which is providing services and they have all built some level of platform over recent years, but mostly just to exchange data and documents. And while they may have built functionality to integrate with the big HCMs like Workday and SuccessFactors, they do not have options for the myriad of other applications that employers use. We find that it is common for 7-9 other apps to be in use, this is a lot and solution is required to connect everything so that all of the needed data flows.

Integration as a service is required to enable the receiving, standardizing and transfer of data between employer systems which need to connect and share global payroll data. This will help employers to manage and control their entire global payroll operations, resources, data, and vendors in a cloud environment. Integration as a service simplifies complex tasks and saves valuable time and resources, so expect to hear a lot more about this in 2024.

A Global Management Framework

Global payroll has a lot of moving parts-a mistake that many organisations have made in the past is to move forward without considering how to manage everything on a global level. People, data, process and technology all need to be managed inside a framework that offers high level visibility and operational control so that key stakeholders across the business can see and understand what is happening with their largest business expense.

In 2024, we expect to see more and more global payroll departments taking a step back and figuring out how to manage their process under a global framework. Without such a process, they are essentially flying blind, with different processes across countries, no standardisation and no reporting and analytics ?to highlight what is happening.

Payroll will always be local and the diversity within each country needs to be accommodated and supported, while having one global management solution. This solution needs to be tech driven in a way that lets you manage everything to do with payroll in a single location. This means a single way of working across countries, standardised data, insightful reporting and full visibility and control over the network of local country payroll vendors that you cannot do without. Will 2024 be the year that the penny drops, and global organisations cease to look for the magic silver bullet solution and instead focus on a technology framework for managing multicountry payroll on a global level? We shall see!

Vendor choice and control

A common area of dissatisfaction among global payroll leaders around the world is the surrendering of choice and control over local country payroll providers. Many who have chosen to go down the route of the aggregator model are now looking back with regret. This model forces them to surrender choice and control- they can work only with the local vendors inside the aggregator model and direct communication with them because this is handled by a middle manager. This slows everything down and there are often issues around accuracy and service quality.

What global employers want is the ability to choose, swap out and change local vendors anytime they want. They want to work with local payroll providers who understand their specific payroll requirements and business needs. They want to manage them all in a single location and crucially, they want all of the data from all of their vendors to be easily accessible and extractable for reporting and analytics.

In 2024, we expect that there will be a renewed interest in taking back control over how they choose and manage vendors . They want it to be on their terms and not on the terms of a third-party service provider who doesn't really understand or care about their business.

This article originally appeared on payslip.com