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a basement; some conditions were dodgy at times but never an actual basement IT Crowd style. But I did software test using floppy disks! At that time, IT generally fixed printers, kept the servers running, and was largely consulted only when something broke. They were a cost centre. A necessary overhead. A function that the business tolerated rather than valued. Then something shifted. The internet happened. Cloud computing happened. Cybersecurity threats became existential. Digital transformation became the difference between businesses that survived and businesses that didn’t. And suddenly IT wasn’t just keeping the lights on anymore. It was the lights. The C-suite didn’t invite IT to the board table out of goodwill or as a gesture of professional respect. They invited them because the business genuinely could not function, grow or protect
itself without them being in the room. So, here’s the first
Which raises the second question: Does your leadership actually understand the risk that lives inside your payroll function? Not in a vague “Yes, of course payroll is important” way, but genuinely and specifically? Do they know what happens to your organisation if your payroll team has three people leave in the same month? Do they know what your regulatory exposure looks like? Do they know how many manual interventions your team makes every single pay cycle just to get the numbers right? If the answer is no, that’s not entirely their failure. It’s also a communication problem that sits with the function. The Uncomfortable Bit Here’s where my IT comparison gets a little less comfortable for payroll, and I reckon it’s worth being honest
question I’ve wondered about: Is payroll on the same trajectory? And if so, where are we on that journey? The Risk Argument The case that payroll people most often make for greater recognition is built on risk, and it’s a legitimate one. Get payroll wrong, and you aren’t just having a bad quarter. You have legal exposure. You have regulatory findings. You have employees who can’t pay their rent and who will absolutely remember that when they decide whether to stay or leave. You have a workforce that no longer trusts the business to meet its most basic obligation to them. That risk is real, and in many organisations, it is still not fully understood by the people not sitting in payroll in the structure.
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GLOBAL PAYROLL MAGAZINE ISSUE 26
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