THOUGHT LEADERSHIP | 41
done, no matter what. Isn’t that enough to see teams through? Payrollers will always get the job done. That’s what payrollers do, right? They show up and go to extraordinary lengths. But individual heroism isn’t a strategy for how you survive growing complexity. It can really start to kill the accuracy and efficiency of the team. You need systemic thinking. You need systems and processes which can absorb complexity without relying on somebody performing miracles every single pay run. Q: Payroll has a reputation for being quite an introverted function. How does that affect the way teams deal with the wider business? It’s a stereotype, but there’s truth in it. Payroll is quite an introverted profession, and teams don’t necessarily talk to the business about the direction it’s going in. And the business doesn’t think to talk to them. So, if they’re making an acquisition, for example, payroll is often an afterthought. The successful navigation of mid-market HR and payroll is about managing your stakeholder relationships: protecting the company through compliance and protecting long-term growth by understanding what the business is trying to achieve and building a system for it. Q: Since Covid, Governments seem to be asking more of payroll than ever before. How has that changed the landscape? Post-Covid, Governments have realised how resilient and capable most pay teams are. So, they’ve started to look to them to ‘outsource’ compliance. Take payrolling benefits. The P11D used to be an annual exercise. In theory, payrolling benefits helps everyone involved and eliminates a spike of demand on pay teams. But there’s been less consultation than on similar changes in the past, and some of the requirements look quite onerous. So, the complexity has moved, rather than gone away. The whole compliance and reporting burden on pay teams around the world has gone up significantly, because Governments are leaning on the pay function more as a collection or delivery mechanism. Q: What’s the alternative to waiting until things break? How should pay teams get ahead of this? The way to de-risk it is to get ahead of the change, not wait until it breaks. Because once you’ve decided you need a change,
and because the conversation is often about simplicity and not risk, it gets fudged. The mistake is fixing the problem in front of you instead of having a dialogue with the business about where it’s heading.
you’ve still got to ask for budget, and that can take time. During that time, you’re living with the pain. If, instead, you understand what the business is trying to achieve, you can build a framework which anticipates what’s coming. You go to the business and say, ‘the way we do payroll at the moment isn’t going to work for where we’re going’. And then you plan it together. That’s a fundamentally different conversation from ringing the alarm bell when it’s already too late. Q: In practical terms, what does a de-risking strategy look like day-to- day? First, recognise and own the complexity. Don’t pretend it can be simple. Second, automate what you can, and take the manual risk out of the equation. Third, have a clear payroll strategy that’s linked to the business plan, rather than something you fell into and are trying to figure out as you go. Fourth, manage your stakeholder relationships so that payroll has a seat at the table when decisions are being made. And fifth, get ahead of change. Understand how the systems landscape is evolving and ensure you have good options. A small business system will start to struggle as you grow, while big-name enterprise software takes too long to implement and is too expensive until you’re an enterprise business. Few companies grow fast enough to skip being a mid-size company, so plan for that journey and choose technology and partners that can de-risk it. And those that don't pretend it's simple. Q: If there’s one thing pay professionals should take away from this conversation, what would it be? Things are only going to get more complex from here. That’s not a threat. It’s a positive sign for a growing business. But you need to work with the business and have that conversation now, not later. Build the skills and the understanding to manage payroll as you grow. The people who do this well aren’t the ones who react to the next crisis. They’re the ones who planned for it before it arrived.
"You go to every website, hear every
Q: Does the type of business change the approach payroll teams should be taking? Absolutely. If you’re venture capital or private equity-backed and growing very fast, you’re going to need a completely different strategy to a single location, family business, even if the headcount is the same today. The long-term trajectory matters enormously. Are you heading for acquisitions? Multinational expansion? Organic growth? That should shape the systems you put in, the processes you build and how far ahead you plan. It’s not a one-size-fits-all conversation. Q: What are the trigger events which typically force pay teams to confront this head-on? Sometimes it’s because the process breaks and payroll becomes an acute problem, but pay teams generally cope well with what they can see coming. So, organic growth, international expansion and new compliance workloads force adaptation over time. But then there are mergers and acquisitions (M and As), which is the big one. Payroll is often forgotten in early M and A deals, and that’s a painful lesson for the payroll and merger teams to learn. If somebody dumps an M and A on you at short notice, there’s the fire drill, and there’s an obligation for payroll to make sure it never happens again. That second part is where the real value is. product pitch, visit every exhibition stand and it’s some version of ‘make payroll simple.’ And I think that’s actually disrespectful to the pay professional"
Graham Wylie Marketing Director, Sage
Q: Pay professionals have a reputation for always getting it
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