FUTURE OF PAYROLL REPORT
Workday foreword
Workday is pleased to partner with the Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals (CIPP) on this year’s Future of Payroll report. Payroll is the cornerstone of any successful business, yet the workplace is changing, with new working patterns and approaches to the way employees work all adding to the complexity of how businesses manage their people. This report explores the relationship between people and technology, with a focus on how organisations should bring finance and HR data together in one system if they are to meet the payroll challenges facing businesses of all sizes today. It may be of little surprise to many that the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was high on the list of key focus areas for survey respondents given the media attention the new legislation has attracted this year. GDPR came second in the list, topped only by the seemingly perennial challenges of improving efficiency and cost management. Ironically, the journey to GDPR compliance offers businesses many opportunities to streamline payroll processes, which, with the right focus and technology, can help reduce costs while meeting compliance.
CAROLYN HORNE REGIONAL VICE PRESIDENT, UK, IRELAND, AND SOUTH AFRICA, WORKDAY
While finance and HR respondents were generally in agreement on the key areas of focus, human resources leaders had an additional focus on the gender pay gap from a payroll perspective. As the UK government renews its focus on the gender pay gap, businesses will have to get to grips with this subject, yet close to half of all respondents said they were yet to test how their organisation fares. Despite the media furor, neither set of business stakeholders were particularly flustered about Brexit and the uncertainty it may bring, as it rated the lowest in terms of areas of focus. Across the board, respondents rated analytics and insight as less of a priority, which may reflect the consensus that payroll is an operational rather than a strategic business function. Only 34 percent of companies had payroll representation at board level, even if close to half believe it should have a seat at the C-suite table. If payroll is to elevate its position into the board room then technology innovation and the way the function handles data are going to be key. 50 percent of respondents have indicated that there is poor or no payroll integration with HR systems and 56 percent stated that there is poor or no integration with their finance system. And, despite the much heralded journey to cloud computing, 60 percent of respondents are still using on-premise payroll software. With these legacy systems, historically there has been a degree of separation between transactional finance/HR systems and payroll, with data copied across periodically from one to the other. Not only has this led to delays in using people data for decision making, but it also raises questions about the accuracy and integrity of the data, given it has to be reintegrated before it is analysed. This data ages quickly and lives in a silo, disconnected from the business processes or strategies it should be used to support. The emergence of the GDPR only intensifies the need for better management of payroll data and indeed how people analytics should be delivered. At Workday, we’re seeing organisations shift towards the general trend of keeping their people data securely within their HR system. Having faced the rigours of GDPR, it’s important that businesses can meet future changes in regulatory compliance and that is best achieved by keeping employee data in one system. Organisations should use their HR system as the central point for people analytics, meaning they should import non-HR data back into the system rather than export HR information to external data lakes or tools. This is evident with modern technology, including Workday, bringing together all people data into one place and securing it via a single security model. Bringing together reporting and analytics directly into the HR system means there is no need for separate reporting tools.
We hope you find the research useful as you continue your payroll journey and we look forward to hearing your thoughts.
4
CIPP AND WORKDAY
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker