and remediation issue, it is big news, not only because the employee is impacted, but the reputation of the organization’s brand is damaged, and the credibility of payroll to deliver accurate pay is questioned. By failing to act on accumulating risk, payroll becomes a focus of company board members and not in a good way. They now want to ensure people’s pay is correct. The questions they’re asking include: “How can we have confidence that our people are being paid correctly? Okay, show me the evidence to give me the confidence that people are being paid correctly.” It’s a different mindset now. In addition, I see organizations that are not really training payroll people for the future. “We just want payroll people to pay people.” I think there’s a weakness there. People in payroll need to be trained to understand all the various elements that come together to produce a payroll outcome. For example, payroll is involved in the hire-to-retire life cycle of a worker. The payroll person doesn’t need to own HR but needs to understand it. To only look at what’s in front of you now and nothing else, that’s what they call a silo.
GPA: What factors do you think have been instrumental in enhancing payroll’s role in organizations? Eric Liaw: I think there are a number of factors. One big factor is that the workforce has become more complex. We have full-time workers, we have part-time workers, we have casual employees. We have fixed-term arrangements. We have job sharing and working from home. I see payroll’s role becoming more like an air traffic controller’s role. Air traffic controllers don’t fly the planes, but they need to know which aircraft is landing, which one is taking off, which one is on a holding pattern, and which one is approaching -- they have that visibility across the whole environment. For example, payroll is involved in the hire-to- retire life cycle of a worker. The payroll person doesn’t need to own HR but needs to understand it. To only look at what’s in front of you now and nothing else, that’s what they call a silo.
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ISSUE 27 GLOBAL PAYROLL MAGAZINE
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