TECHNOLOGY
Digital transformatio crucial but keep your people at the centre
Eman Al-Hillawi, Chief Executive Officer of Business Change Consultancy, Entec Si, explains the benefits of digital transformation, while providing an important reminder to keep people at the heart of any decisions made in this space
P ayroll is all about people. It affects everyone across all levels of seniority and experience, and at all stages of the employee lifecycle, from new starters right through to movers and leavers. Payroll is a dynamic industry, impacted by many factors such as technological advancements, shifts in efficiencies and changing compliance, providing many opportunities to continually transform and improve services. It’s therefore crucial for the sector to embrace change, rather than shy away from it. Expectations regarding payroll are evolving, with more and more staff expecting to interact with online services through employee self-service systems. Self-service capabilities are also becoming increasingly relevant to managers, who
but also on the administrative side of businesses such as organisational reporting and compliance checks. Payroll challenges aren’t limited to just one area but rather apply to organisations across all sectors. This means payroll and HR professionals often encounter common discrepancies, either contractually or from a pay perspective, that they must deal with. It then also falls to them to address equal pay issues around gender discrimination, requiring a careful approach and a good people change management strategy, due to the sensitive nature of these cases. Other payroll challenges include the presence of different pay and grading within one umbrella organisation, which occurs where people who work in the same organisation, but in different services, are in contrasting pay grades. For those in the payroll department, keeping on top of the varying pay grades is essential to avoiding under or overpaying employees. In recent times, payroll has become far more automated which has helped to mitigate the risk of payment errors. However, human input is still required to ensure pay rises, promotions, leavers and joiners are all captured correctly.
The public sector faces unique challenges regarding the size and scale of organisations. In local councils especially, where there are multiple disciplines and types of services operating under one organisation, it can be harder to establish one system to manage all areas, while also ensuring appropriate terms and conditions are laid out and compliance is adhered to. Councils carry out a diverse spectrum of services, from road maintenance and bin collections to assisting the education sector, which all require very different skillsets. So, trying to align a payroll system that works for everyone is challenging. This is why it’s so important for the public sector to embrace digital change. The capabilities of technology are continually expanding, providing endless opportunities to improve and streamline business systems. Looking ahead, the future of digital payroll technology looks prosperous, with several exciting technological advancements set to change payroll operations for good, such as harnessing data to inform decision-making, as well as advances in artificial intelligence (AI) to drive transformation and automation. One of the biggest changes facing public
need to access confidential data and information about their staff using a
manager self-service system (MSS). This is necessary as certain responsibilities, such as awarding promotions or approving annual leave requests, shift from human resources (HR) and payroll professionals to managers. Changes to payroll systems are complicated and must be approached holistically, not only considering the impact on users,
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward | July-August 2025 | Issue 112 50
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