Explore the forces shaping global payroll and how to work with them, in the latest issue of 04:05.
04:05 GLOBAL PAYROLL
ISSUE 23 I 2026
ONE SHIFT, THREE VERSIONS OF REALITY
Payroll Often Bears the Burden of Reconciling Problems Created Upstream
GLOBAL HIRING IS RESHAPING PAYROLL How Organisations are Managing Compliance, Cost, and Complexity in 2026
EARNED WAGE ACCESS IN THE USA The Traditional Payday Transfer is Being Upended by the Increasing Popularity of Earned Wage Access
REAL-TIME COMPLIANCE
Australia’s Shift to Payday Super is an Early Signal of Where Payroll Regulation is Heading Globally
04:05 FOREWORD
Raise a Glass to Payroll!
ahead as they work to narrow down an exceptional group of nominees , highlighting the strength and ambition across the profession worldwide. Payroll is, by nature, multi-faceted, with a wide range of challenges that demand technical expertise, precision tools and practical insight. Each month in 04:05 , our expert contributors share their perspectives to help make sense of it all. In this issue, Anton van Heerden explores How Global Hiring is Reshaping Payroll , Eric Liaw examines Australia’s shift to Payday Super , and Jacinta Goldstone-Henry illustrates the nuances payroll professionals encounter in One Shift, Three Versions of Reality . By creating opportunities, sharing knowledge, and championing payroll as a dynamic career, we can ensure that the profession continues to thrive. We look forward to celebrating with many of you in Barcelona on 4th June!
T he daily demands and breadth of life as a global payroll professional seem to escalate with each new innovation and complexity, meaning that attracting and inspiring the next generation of talent has never been more important. Fresh perspectives and a growing appreciation for payroll’s strategic impact are already helping redefine what the profession looks like and where it can go. The scale of the industry is reflected in the upcoming Global Payroll Awards 2026 in Barcelona. The awards celebrate excellence across our global community, and it is particularly encouraging to watch categories such as Payroll Student of the Year recognising those at the very start of their careers. Submissions have now closed, and our judges have a challenging task
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04:05 CONTENTS
08 GLOBAL GLOBAL HIRING IS RESHAPING PAYROLL
36 APAC REAL-TIME COMPLIANCE ARRIVES Australia’s shift to Payday Super is more than a change to contribution timing; it is an early signal of where payroll regulation is heading globally 44 AMERICAS EARNED WAGE ACCESS IN THE USA The traditional payday transfer is being upended by the increasing popularity of earned wage access (EWA), especially in the USA 50 AFRICA MANAGING MULTI-COUNTRY PAYROLL Come rain or shine, political upheavals and natural disasters, the show must go on
8 trends to watch, as companies expand across borders, payroll is moving to the centre of workforce strategy 20 APAC LAW IN REAL LIFE In The Devil Wears Prada, Andy realises she’s failing unspoken rules everyone else seems to know, exposed midstream without ever being taught at-work culture 26 GLOBAL BETWEEN THE LINES Fidelma McGuirk is the CEO and founder of Payslip, a technology company delivering payroll control, integration and automation AI
ONE SHIFT, THREE VERSIONS OF REALITY Payroll often bears the burden of reconciling problems created upstream
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58 GLOBAL HOME OR OFFICE? THE BIG QUESTION While some governments are turning remote work into a legal right, companies are calling employees back to the office.
REGULARS
07 GLOBAL NEWS Interactive global payroll news 76 GLOBAL DIARY OF AN HR MANAGER 78 GLOBAL GPA TRAINING Join our experts through the process of running payrolls in different countries 80 APAC ASIA BRIEFING Overview on Asia news 82 GLOBAL GPA WEBINARS The latest global and in-country payroll topics and trends 84 GLOBAL FIND A VENDOR
66 GLOBAL GLOBAL WORKFORCE COMPLEXITY IS EXPLODING AND PAYROLL IS AT ITS CENTER Global workforce complexity is no longer theoretical it is measurable, accelerating, and reshaping how organizations operate
A comprehensive list of suppliers to the global payroll industry
The GPA , 49 Greek St, Soho, London W1D 4EG. Tel: +44 (0)203 871 8870 Melanie Pizzey - CEO and 04:05 Executive Editor: melanie@gpa.net Rich Robins - 04:05 Designer: hello@megandmore.co.uk Hayleigh Blinkhorne - events/vendors/advertising: hayleigh@gpa.net General enquiries/mentor scheme/training : - info@gpa.net Michael Baer - US contributor: mike@gpa.net Nilufer Gul - GM APAC/Australia: nilufer@gpa.net Tel: +61 (0)413 749 714 CONTACTS
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Global Payroll News Stay updated with news on global payroll trends, automation, compliance, AI integration, financial wellness, accurate payments, addressing wage discrepancies and more.
UK
Canada
Spain
Canada
Only 25% of workers believe their job is safe from AI Read more...
70% of SMBs’ HR time spent on administrative tasks Read more...
Call for Premier to support Manitoba’s taxpayer legislation Read more...
EU Gender Pay Transparency Directive Read more...
Australia
Saudi Arabia
Global
Indonesia
3 weeks’ wages for Liberty Bell Bay smelter workers Read more...
Government urged to abolish fees for expats Read more...
Vistra announces EOR partnership with Oyster Read more...
Domestic workers legally recognised
after 22-years Read more... Uganda
VIEW OTHER NEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD EMEA APAC AFRICA AMERICAS MIDDLE EAST GLOBAL
Ghana
Global
Agago District teachers suspend classes Read more...
Paylocity launches Elevate Solutions for HR and payroll Read more...
National Service Authority payroll cut Read more...
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A s we move further into 2026, global hiring is no longer a future trend. It is already reshaping how organisations build teams, manage payroll, and stay compliant across multiple jurisdictions. For HR and payroll leaders, this creates both opportunity and complexity. Hiring across borders opens access to deeper talent pools, but it also introduces new layers of compliance, tax, and operational risk. Skills are shifting at speed, regulations are tightening, and the idea of “local hiring only” Global Hiring Is Reshaping Payroll: 8 Trends to Watch As companies expand across borders, payroll is moving to the centre of workforce strategy. These eight global hiring trends reveal how organisations are managing compliance, cost, and complexity in 2026.
Author: Anton van Heerden Anton is the Managing Director and founder of DNA Outsourcing and DNA EOR, with nearly 30 years of experience in HR and payroll technology. He has led transformative workforce solutions across Africa and the Middle East, helping companies expand globally through compliant, people-led EOR and payroll services. Prior to founding DNA in 2018, Anton served as Executive Vice President and Managing Director for Sage Africa and Middle East, where he played a pivotal role in scaling operations and driving product innovation across the region. His career began as a founding member of VIP Payroll, contributing to one of South Africa’s most trusted payroll software brands. Today, Anton is recognised as a strategic leader in global employment, valued for his insights on compliance, cross-border hiring, and the role of technology in scaling teams. His mission remains clear: simplify international expansion while keeping people at the heart of the process.
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“
Skills are shifting at speed, regulations are tightening, and the idea of “local hiring only” is fading fast.
is fading fast. Talent no longer sits in one city, one country or even one time zone. The smartest companies are widening their nets because that’s where the competitive edge lives. I spend a lot of time talking to HR leaders and founders across South Africa, the UK, the US and Europe. Whether it’s a fast-scaling
startup or a multinational with a continent-wide footprint, the themes are starting to sound very similar: “Where do we find the right people,” “How do we hire them quickly?”, and “How do we stay compliant while doing it?”. Meanwhile, international companies are eyeing South African talent
harder than ever, and they’re doing it because the talent holds up. The cost advantage is real - because remote work has erased the distance between Johannesburg and New York. Here are eight key shifts shaping global hiring right now, and what they mean for HR and payroll teams in the months ahead.
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1. Cross-border hiring has gone mainstream Hiring globally isn’t only for the big guys anymore. According to a multi-country survey, 86% of companies say they’re planning to expand their international hiring footprint within two years. Half expect international talent to make up at least 50% of their workforce by 2027. Talent shortages and cost pressures are driving this wave, and if you’re not building global What to do: Stop treating international hiring as an exception and build proper workflows, from sourcing to onboarding to compliance, that can scale. pipelines, you’re playing catch-up.
2. Compliance is
internationally, make sure you’ve got the right legal setup for each country. 3. Skills are changing faster than job titles The World Economic Forum predicts that nearly 40% of core job skills will shift by 2030. Think data, AI, cybersecurity, but also problem- solving, creativity, and adaptability. It’s not just about what people can do today but also about what they’re learning next. What to do: Move away from hiring by job title. Identify critical skills for the next 12 to 24 months, then build teams around those, wherever they are in the world. 4.AI is now an HR problem too We’re past the “will we use AI?” stage. The real question is how we redesign jobs around it. McKinsey’s global research shows that while adoption is ramping up, most companies haven’t
tightening up and mistakes get expensive The era of “freelance” loopholes is closing fast, and countries are clamping down on misclassification. Take the UK’s IR35 reforms as an example. They’ve already shifted thousands of contractors onto payroll. In South Africa, the Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA), combined with the Labour Relations Act, uses a “presumption of employment” approach. If a worker behaves like an employee, they probably are one under the law, no matter what the contract says.
What to do: Do proper assessments based on working relationships, not just contract labels. If you’re hiring
Talent shortages and cost pressures are driving this wave, and if you’re not building global pipelines, you’re playing catch-up.
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to outperform in customer service,
A growing number of professionals are juggling multiple gigs across time zones and tax brackets. It gives you access to top-tier, niche talent, but it also raises new questions around compliance, engagement, and IP.
finance, and IT delivery. For an obvious reason, South African CX talent is exceptional. They establish a personal connection with their clients, and cultural compatibility and accent neutrality facilitate easier communication with clients from Europe and the United Kingdom. Additionally, the CX industry has a high work ethic. Customer satisfaction rates in South Africa far exceed those in India and the Philippines, thus many international BPO buyers have subtly moved their volumes there. Communication reaches a whole new level when the other person is approachable, What to do: Build hiring channels in South Africa. It’s cost-efficient, has top- tier people, and offers real-time overlap with Europe. sympathetic, and solution-oriented.
sorted out retraining, task reallocation or governance. What to do: Set up a cross-functional group that includes HR, IT and ops. Map which tasks can be automated, and design new roles that make room for higher- value work. 5. Portfolio careers are normal now A growing number of professionals are juggling multiple gigs across time zones and tax brackets. It gives you access to top-tier, niche talent, but it also raises new questions around compliance, engagement, and IP.
for freelancers and contractors
around onboarding, communication, and culture touchpoints. Don’t let them float around in the shadows of your business. 6. South Africa is becoming a serious contender in global hiring South Africa should be on the radar of every global company that wants to expand their global footprint. We rank 11th globally for English proficiency ( EF EPI 2024 ) and align well with European time zones. The Global Business Services (GBS) sector added over 14,000 export jobs in 2024, and we continue
What to do: Create a proper framework
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7. Remote culture isn’t something that “just happens” Gallup says only 23% of the global workforce feels engaged, and distributed teams make this even harder. But remote culture doesn’t need an office to be strong. The companies that excel have shared rituals, intentional communication, and leadership that treats culture as part of daily operations. Face-to-face isn’t the default anymore. Some of the best company cultures I’ve seen exist entirely online.
8. Fast expansion looks good in a
who can pick up the phone when the ‘paw- paw hits the fan’. Checklist for 2026 hiring plans: Do we know where the skills we need actually are? Have we reviewed contractor vs employee rules in each country? Are our managers ready to lead remote, diverse teams? Do we have a plan for AI adoption and people impact? What do our first 90 days look like for a new global hire? Are we measuring global hiring success beyond headcount? The pressure’s real, but there is also an upside. Companies that treat international hiring as a proper system, not a side project, will outpace their competitors. The playbook is skills-first, compliance- backed, culture-aware, and future-ready. This is the benchmark for now and beyond - the companies that get ahead of it now will set the pace for everyone else.
board meeting but sustainability wins Setting up an entity in a new country can take months, and jumping in too fast without infrastructure leads to messy payroll, poor compliance and no local insight. The more global you become, the more important your partnerships become. Technology matters. People matter more. When things go wrong, you need a human being who knows the local rules and can act immediately. What to do: Compare entity setup versus Employer of Record models. Look at tax, filings, local representation, employee benefits, HR support and the ease of exit and choose partners
What to do: Build culture into every touchpoint of the employee journey,
especially onboarding, 1-1s and performance reviews. Consistency beats proximity.
Technology matters. People matter more. When things go wrong, you need a human being who knows the local rules and can act immediately.
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The evolving role of payroll in Australia’s compliance landscape
In this white paper, developed by the GPA in partnership with Yellow Canary, we examine how payroll compliance in Australia has shifted from an operational concern to a core governance issue in the wake of wage theft reforms. Drawing on insights from Yellow Canary’s 2026 State of Payroll Compliance Report, we look at why organisations are increasingly expected to provide defensible evidence that employees are being paid correctly. We outline practical approaches to strengthening payroll governance, including proactive audits, clearer ownership of upstream decisions, and the role of human oversight in validating systems and assumptions to support consistent, evidence-based compliance.
Sponsored by
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04:05 GLOBAL
One Shift, Three Versions of Reality Payroll often bears the burden of reconciling problems created upstream. In healthcare environments reliant on agency labour, a single shift can generate multiple, conflicting records of what occurred. This article explores why that happens, how it impacts payroll teams, and what finally restores control.
Author: Jacinta Goldstone- Henry Jacinta Goldstone‑ Henry is Director and Co‑Founder of KJM Consulting, where she works with organisations on workforce management, payroll, and enterprise systems across complex operating environments. Drawing on over 10 years’ experience, Jacinta specialises in stabilising
P ayroll
critical processes, resolving systemic misalignment, and
is repeatedly asked to reconcile discrepancies it didn’t create, especially when agency labour is involved. In theory, paying agency hours should be straightforward. In practice, it often feels
professionals are no strangers to complexity.
translating strategy into workable, technology- enabled change.
Multiple systems, competing deadlines and imperfect data are part of the role. But there is a particular kind of fatigue that sets in when payroll
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like reconstructing an incident after the fact. The issue isn’t capability or effort; it’s that the inputs arrive from systems that were never designed to align. Over time, payroll becomes the function responsible for stitching together a credible
version of events from data that doesn’t quite agree. This challenge shows up most clearly in healthcare settings, where agency staff are essential and operational realities don’t always
match system logic. One worked shift can legitimately produce three different answers to the same question: what actually happened? And when that happens, the consequences land firmly with payroll.
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One Shift, Three Systems In theory, payroll should receive a single, clean data set. In practice, agency shifts pass through at least three systems before they reach payroll: the roster showing what was planned, the Time and Attendance (T&A) system recording what was worked (either electronically or via manual timesheets), and the agency timesheet or invoice documenting what the agency believes occurred. As soon as start and end times differ, breaks are taken differently, or overtime is treated inconsistently, the data diverges. From that moment, payroll is no longer processing timesheets. It is reconciling competing versions of reality.
What This Looks Like For Payroll In one healthcare environment I worked with, agency‑related discrepancies occurred on almost every invoice received. Payroll officers spent hours reconciling invoices, investigating overpayments and underpayments, and moving between systems to determine which data source was most accurate. Sometimes, the internal T&A data best reflected reality. Other times, the agency data was closer. With no consistent source of truth, every discrepancy became a fresh investigation. As one payroll team member put it, “It’s a hunt every time we reconcile agency
invoices.” That constant ambiguity created frustration, exhaustion, and a sense of blame for issues payroll had not caused. Where the Data Diverges Most Across that environment, two issues caused the majority of payroll pain. The first was start and finish times. Small differences introduced through rounding rules or varying capture methods compounded quickly across hundreds of shifts. The second was breaks. In clinical settings, breaks are not always taken as planned. Internal systems may capture actual behaviour, while agency processes often assume breaks unless notified otherwise. Neither approach is inherently wrong, but payroll must reconcile the outcome. Why Does This Land So Hard On Payroll? In many healthcare
As soon as start and end times differ, breaks are taken differently, or overtime is treated inconsistently, the data diverges.
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organisations, payroll is either directly responsible for validating agency invoices or is heavily relied on to reconcile agency hours before payment. When T&A data and agency submissions do not align, the issue becomes a payroll problem by default. This results in increased manual work, longer processing times, higher error risk, employee and agency disputes, and heightened compliance concerns, particularly expected to prove what happened, often without having controlled the processes involved or having real‑time visibility into shifts that occurred across a 24/7 healthcare environment. A Real Example: Choosing One Version Of the Truth At one healthcare organisation, agency nurses were essential to around breaks and overtime. Payroll is
Payroll is expected to prove what happened, often without having controlled the processes involved or having real‑time visibility into shifts that occurred across a 24/7 healthcare environment.
maintaining safe staffing levels. Operationally, the model worked. Administratively, payroll received three conflicting versions of the same shift. Stability only emerged once the organisation made a deliberate operational decision: the validated T&A record would become the single source of truth. Rather than this sitting abstractly with “managers,” responsibility sat with the Registered Nurse (RN) in charge on each ward, who was already accountable for confirming staff attendance and allocating work at the start of each shift. Those RNs were given access
to the T&A system and asked to validate agency shifts as part of their normal handover routine, confirming start and finish times, breaks taken, and any overtime worked. Once validated, the T&A record reflected what actually happened on the floor and was used for payroll processing and invoice reconciliation. This change removed ambiguity, but it could not stand alone. Why Standardisation and Education Mattered
The single source of truth approach only
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worked because it was paired with education and standardisation. In charge RN’s were required to validate shifts consistently in the T&A system. Without that behavioural change, the model collapsed. At the same time, agency submissions were standardised, meaning the same cycle and format for ease of processing. This was critical in an environment dealing with up to 30 agencies across multiple departments. Without consistency, even a clear internal source
Without consistency, even a clear internal source of truth would still leave payroll deciphering invoices line by line.
What Payroll Leaders Should Take Away The key lesson for payroll leaders is simple: make it easy. Establish a clear process for recording what actually happened, ensure a single person/ role owns the validation of shifts in T&A in a timely manner, and standardise agency inputs wherever possible. Agency labour is not the problem, and payroll teams are not the problem. Expecting misaligned systems and processes to reconcile themselves is. When organisations design T&A and payroll processes to absorb agency complexity rather than fight it, payroll can move out of firefighting mode and back into control.
of truth would still leave payroll deciphering invoices line by line. Once both elements were in place, payroll immediately saw the benefit. Reconciliation time dropped by hours each week, and disputes became far less common.
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Pour homme. Pour femme. Pour Pay Day.
Discover the allure of global payroll and mobility at www.activpayroll.com/love
04:05 APAC
Welcome to Law in Real Life , where the rules are written in ink, but real life writes its own script. Forget the training manual. Forget the perfect manager or fair pay for fair work. In the real world, rosters sometimes go rogue, rights get overlooked, and payslips just don’t add up. Until real voices finally say, “Enough!” Law in Real Life
Author: Nilufer (Nilly) Gul Nilly Gul is the GM, APAC at the GPA. She’s passionate about payroll and all the people who make it work. With experience in global payroll sales, recruitment, compliance, process improvement, and relationship management, Nilly understands the industry from every angle. She’s all about creating spaces— events, programs, and conversations—where payroll professionals can connect, share, and grow. Her mission? To make payroll a career people choose, not just fall into.
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These are fictional stories based on true workplace drama, straight out of the tangled world of Australian payroll and employment law. You won’t find HR-approved happy endings here. Just people navigating red tape, broken systems, and those awkward T here’s a moment in The Devil Wears Prada where Andy realises something important: that no one has told her the rules, yet she is already failing them, and everyone else seems to know exactly what they are. Julia had just graduated with a degree in HR and Industrial Relations, which, at the time, hadn’t quite found its place in her real
conversations no one wants to have, but everyone needs to hear. Find out what happens when policy meets personality… and things start getting real.
empowerment. About what happens when silence costs too much and someone finally asks a question that changes everything. Because this isn’t a spreadsheet. It’s not a case study. It’s real life at work. And what counts doesn’t get counted unless we speak up.
It’s not just about compliance. It’s about
They Called It Performance
world. And, like Andy, she was searching for the role that would help her make sense of it all. So, she did what most people do. She got a job, took the first opportunity that came through, and got started. Her first role made sense because it felt right, and not because it looked or felt easy. She worked with young apprentice
chefs, placing them into kitchens and moving them across venues so they could learn properly. The job was not just about placements. She checked in on them, made sure they were being paid properly, and paid attention when something did not feel right. She got to know them and their situations, so she was not just filling roles; she was looking after people.
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a conclusion. She was not performing, and that was the language used. On paper, situations like this are exactly what the Fair Work Act 2009 is there to deal with. There had been no clear explanation of what performance meant in that environment. No defined expectations, no structured warnings, no real opportunity to adjust. Just a quiet decision that she was not aligned with how things were done. Her employment ended not long after. She did not argue. She did not fully understand what she was supposed to argue against. What she did feel, more than anything else, was relief. Something had not felt right for a while, and now it was over. She found another role soon after. This time, it was a more traditional recruitment environment, without the same complexity. On paper, it was straightforward.
No one told her she was doing it wrong until it became a problem. The feedback did not come as guidance or a clear conversation about expectations. It came as a conclusion.
And she liked that. It mattered to her that someone was better off because she had been involved. After a couple of years, she moved on. It looked like a better opportunity, a bigger purpose, something that aligned even more with what she believed she was good at. The role was meant to be about helping people get back into work. She approached it the same way she always had. She placed people, checked in, made sure they were settling, and stayed close enough to know when something was not right. What no one told her, at least not at the start, was that this was not how success was measured, and just like Andy, she was
failing because this job was not about helping someone stay in a job. It was about placing them into a role, keeping them there just long enough to trigger the placement fee, and then moving them on so the same person could generate multiple placement fees. That’s what success looked like there, and Julia did not work like that. If someone was doing well, she left them where they were. If something felt right, she did not interfere. If someone had finally found stability, she saw that as the outcome. No one told her she was doing it wrong until it became a problem. The feedback did not come as guidance or a clear conversation about expectations. It came as
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But on her first day, something felt off. It was not something she could point to, and there was nothing concrete to question. It was just a feeling. By the third day, she understood. A phone call came through for her manager from her previous one. She recognised the voice immediately. She did not need to hear the full conversation to know that it mattered. She packed her bag before she was called in. When she walked into the office, her manager looked at her in a way she would never forget. Not angry, not frustrated, just certain. Julia asked one question. There is no point in me saying anything, is there? The answer was no. There was no discussion, no process, no opportunity to respond. The decision had already been made. She walked out.
There was no explanation she could challenge and no version of events she could correct. It was simply over.
There was no explanation she could challenge and no version of events she could correct. It was simply over. Two roles, two endings, and a pattern she could not yet explain. She stepped away from work for a while after that. She travelled, took time to think, and tried to understand what had happened and what she wanted from her career. She didn’t go back into HR in the traditional sense, she stayed in recruitment. Despite all that had happened, one thing still felt true to her. and that was helping someone into a job still felt like helping. What did change though was how she paid attention because she started to trust her gut feeling before anything
had gone wrong, before the conversation, before the label, before the outcome. The moment where something does not sit right, even if you cannot explain why. And this time, she listened to it. Andy did not stay either. She walked away from something that looked like success on the outside because it no longer aligned with who she wanted to be. Julia’s path was different, less polished and far less visible, but the decision at its core was not so different. Neither of them stayed for the money or the status. They chose what felt right over what was expected. And in the end, that was the only part they were clear on from the beginning.
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F idelma McGuirk is the CEO and founder of Payslip, a technology company delivering payroll control, integration and automation AI. She has more than 20 years’ experience in scaling international business and leading multinational teams across global HR & IT functions. Identifying the need for a technology solution to help multinational employers standardize and centrally manage their global payroll operations, McGuirk founded Payslip in Westport, Ireland in 2016. Payslip now has offices in Dublin, Bulgaria and Spain, serving a global customer base. Between the Lines Fidelma McGuirk
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I thought that payroll situations should be pretty predictable because payroll is a recurring process that happens every pay period, usually every month in most countries in the world. I’d originally come from an HR background before going into business operations, and got into software development. One rule that my lead developer and architect said that stuck with me was: “Fidelma, if it recurs it can be programmed.” That simple statement liberates lots of thinking about what you can do with software. When situations arose for payroll, I would ask why there was no software to automate this workflow or data in some way that is useful to prevent the situation? GPA: And this led to you founding your company, Payslip? Fidelma McGuirk: In 2015, I was thinking about what to do next because I’d left all those external companies. I moved my family to live in the middle of nowhere in the west of Ireland. But I kept coming back to the fact that there’s still no software available in the market to help standardize and automate global payroll management in
This interview has been edited for clarity. GPA: What got you into the payroll industry? Fidelma McGuirk: I came from a very strong operations background. For more than 20 years I set up operations for high- growth companies, including some software companies across the world. I also managed those operations across 21 countries, impacting tens of thousands of people. What arose from that experience was a recognition that to successfully manage companies, processes need to be standardized, and to do that, really good information is necessary. The data needs to be available in a way that is comparable so important strategic investment decisions can be made. I rose to be CEO of an international tax company. I always found amazing situations that arose which I thought were avoidable. When a compliance deadline in Peru arose that required us to print a paper, sign it with a blue pen, get it notarized and posted within, like, four days, I wondered: “Why did we not know about this longer in advance?”
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the same way HR and finance people have for their functions. I couldn’t understand why payroll was always the cousin that didn’t get invited to the wedding. And I discovered there are two reasons for that. I saw that payroll people have such integrity; they never let payroll fail. That success creates the problem: If you request to the CFO a spend of $200,000 in equipment and technology that’s going to make our payroll fail-safe, they’ll just say, “But it never fails, so why do I need to do that?” And the second reason is, I’ve observed most payroll people don’t want to be salespeople. In setting up the company, the goal was to provide technology that would enable global payroll people to manage their operations in a standardized, global-first way. But the challenge comes in understanding that there’s lots of different specifics per country. Payroll is always locally defined. So, the first big problem to solve, which I had a lot of experience doing, was how do we standardize that management process? That’s what I call a horizontal, or process issue. The second question centers around
the data, and this is a vertical challenge in my mind. The data set differs for every single country. We first developed our place of control platform--which helps the customers standardize their workflow across all of the world-- and we have adopted a global-to- local methodology. This provides local flexibility as well as the global standardization needed to manage the differences in every country, if they need to, but also always feeds that globally. Then we did exactly the same with the data. All the data that is in our system we have is prevalidated, cleaned and standardized. GPA: How are you leveraging technology now to provide your services? I couldn’t understand why payroll was always the cousin that didn’t get invited to the wedding. And I discovered there are two reasons for that.
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Fidelma McGuirk: When all the AI hype started three years ago, we were perfectly positioned to include AI on top of what we had because we had all the building blocks in place. The single most important building block for AI is that you must have content for AI to read. With data being sent from customer sources combined with the data we already had, we developed automated validation tools and then automated reconciliation and variance tools. We focused on creating our global payroll data
model first. Then we built our integration configuration tools. We never wanted integration to be a blocker to adoption. So, by the time AI came on two or three years ago, we were already eight years in the market, organizing and solving all these problems in layered ways that are compatible with AI. As a result of that, we were able to develop really interesting AI tools like Payslip Alpha. For one of our customers, for example, when we were helping them classify their data, we reduced the work time by 75%. We have a payroll data element classification tool and a pay elements data mapping tool, all within our suite. One nice feature is that customers, for example, can ask questions in Japanese and the answer will be in Japanese. It has been very gratifying that the kind of core boring decisions we made at the start about the data model ended up being foundational for incorporating this next advancement. GPA: What do clients often miss, overlook or fail to consider that can cause more work for them or you as you bring them on board?
Payroll people should feel like they have a full license to change a lot of things. If we forget everything that’s in place at the moment, what should the best scenario look like? Give yourself a chance to really become a big system thinker and see things differently.
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Fidelma McGuirk: The most important thing payroll clients miss is that they do not feel like they have a blank page on which they can design. They too often are following what the vendor told them to do, even deferring to other receivers of data, like HR and finance, to determine what is needed. So, they kind of have guardrails about what they can design. Payroll people should feel like they have a full license to change a lot of things. If we forget everything that’s in place at the moment, what should the best scenario look like? Give yourself a chance to really become a big system thinker and see things differently. Then be able to explain why and how this will impact HR and finance, and what the benefits for both of them should be. Second, many underestimate or miscalculate the time and resources needed for the steps and actions that must be taken and followed for the existing payroll and any project being added to the mix. In an ideal world, if clients can plan for a resource for a dedicated period of time to help
them, a kind of independent project owner or independent senior analyst across the process, and bring that together, the payroll people don’t have to own every part of it. GPA: What do you see as the future state of payroll in general? Fidelma McGuirk: We’re living in such a time of accelerating change all around us, I think the payroll function itself is going to fundamentally change. With the response to the COVID epidemic, it was this big kick to get payroll into the cloud. When AI came along, the big kick that has happened is payroll people are under pressure now to do interesting things with AI--but their data is all over the place and it’s trapped in these spreadsheets. So now we are having to embark on a universal mass cleanup of global data, payroll data. And I see it in every conversation. That data cleanup is happening everywhere. Organizations are now trying to work out where does it all live, what format is it in, where should we put it,
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Then, after that, the questions will be what more can we do with this data-ready global payroll management system? What new tools do we need to use it? What can we do at scale across all of payroll? In the future, people that we bring into payroll from these latest generations will no longer be just digitally-native; they will be AI-native. GPA: What kind of guidance would you give somebody who is just getting started in the payroll industry? Fidelma McGuirk: I think respect is the most important thing. For skills, those who are digitally- native and those becoming AI-native need to understand about the payroll calculations so they can evaluate whether what they see on the screen is right. These new payroll professionals will need to sit back and learn major content, which might be a bit of a shell shock to them. But, if they can stick with it, it will give them huge confidence, because AI won’t do them out of a job.
I think the next five years is definitely all about cleaning up your data, organizing your data, owning your data in a way that you’re comfortable with, and being data- ready for global payroll management.
should we have our own data lake or repository, should we use a SaaS technology, should we put it over here? Vendor software to manage our service delivery is no longer a given. I think the next five years is definitely all about cleaning up your data, organizing your data, owning your data in a way that you’re comfortable with, and being data-ready for global payroll management. Companies are at different stages of maturity on this issue.
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Payroll has become a strategic differentiator for global organizations. With increasingly distributed workforces, growing competition for talent, and evolving compliance standards, how businesses manage payroll now influences their ability to scale and meet employee expectations. By 2026, payroll will no longer solely center on accurate and timely payments. It will be a source of trust, intelligence, and competitive advantage. The global payroll market is projected to reach $18.72 billion in 2026, with a
CAGR of 4.88%. Such growth reflects how payroll systems are adapting to business needs, driven by AI and automation. These technologies are taking payroll from an administrative task into a strategic function which delivers insight, agility, and resilience. Cloud platforms, real-time data access, and personalization tools are central to workforce satisfaction and modernization. AI is pivotal to this shift. It automates compliance checks, forecasts costs, reduces errors, and manages administrative workload, while payroll teams focus on oversight, insights, and culture.
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04:05 APAC
Australia’s shift to Payday Super is more than a change to contribution timing; it is an early signal of where payroll regulation is heading globally. Australia Payday Super: Real-Time Compliance Arrives
Author: Eric Liaw Eric is the Founder and Principal Consultant of Axis Payroll Compliance Consulting in Australia. He is a payroll compliance and governance specialist with more than 20 years’ experience across payroll operations, remediation, and advisory. Eric has worked with organisations across financial services, healthcare, logistics, construction, engineering, aviation, and professional services, leading payroll compliance reviews, large- scale remediation programs, and governance uplift initiatives. His work focuses on translating industrial and legislative obligations into auditable pay rules, system configurations, and control frameworks. He has a particular interest in payroll risk, data integrity, and how organisations design defensible payroll practices in an environment of increasing regulatory scrutiny.
A s compliance windows shrink and digital oversight expands, this reform offers a lens through which payroll professionals worldwide can assess their readiness for real-time accountability.
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right every pay cycle. “
Payday Super does not increase contribution rates. It increases the discipline required to get it
Among the regulatory shifts shaping payroll compliance in 2026, Australia’s transition to Payday Super is one of the most operationally significant. It is often described as a simple timing reform, moving from quarterly superannuation payments to funding contributions on each payday. In practice, it represents a structural shift toward real-time accountability, expanded
regulatory visibility, and materially higher execution risk. In payroll remediation programs I’ve led, superannuation errors rarely begin with intent. They begin with misclassified earnings, incorrect treatment of allowances or overtime, configuration errors, or worker classification issues. Under a quarterly regime, these weaknesses could remain undetected for months. Under
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