“Payroll has been calculated successfully.”
Ghost employees are one of them. People who do not actually work but appear as employees in the system. Then, there are ‘entrepreneurial ventures’, such as people disguising themselves as their deceased mothers and continuing to collect their salaries for years; and then there are the more corporate versions, such as inflated subcontractor payrolls. These are stories the payroll world is not exactly unfamiliar with. But the case in Nigeria raises the bar a little higher. Because this time, what we have in front of us is not a ghost employee, but a ghost employer. And that takes us back to the question at the heart of this story: did no one throughout this entire process ask, “Does this employer actually exist?” I think there is a very important lesson here as we move towards the future of payroll. That’s why I believe the payroll system of the future should not only be a calculation system, but also a verification system.
It will also say:
“Payroll has been completed successfully. But are you sure these people, this employer and these payments actually exist?” That is exactly what the Nigerian example made me think about. For years, one of the greatest measures of success in payroll has been accurate calculation. Perhaps in the age of AI, the new measure of success will be: Calculating correctly is not enough. You also have to make sure you are calculating the right thing. From Ghost Employee to Ghost Employer I have spent so many years in the payroll industry that sometimes it reminds me of a joke by Cem Yılmaz: “I was just standing there, and they built the industry around me.” So, when it comes to payroll, personnel administration, transferring these into accounting, controlling them, or failing to control them, I have encountered almost every kind of case you could reasonably expect.
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ISSUE 28 GLOBAL PAYROLL MAGAZINE
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