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audit trails often determine whether an issue can be resolved quickly or escalates into a multi-year program. Finally, proactive, risk-led reviews identify issues early, limit liability windows and demonstrate good- faith compliance. When issues are identified, early, transparent and employee-centred remediation consistently reduces regulatory and reputational risk. A Strategic Shift Payroll underpayments are costly, but their true impact extends far beyond dollars. They damage employee trust, expose governance gaps and create sustained organisational risk. As workforces, systems and regulatory expectations continue to evolve, payroll accuracy has become a strategic issue requiring executive and board-level attention. Preventing underpayments is not the responsibility of payroll or HR alone. It requires shared ownership across People, Finance, Legal, IT and the business. Ultimately, payroll accuracy is about more than compliance. It is about fairness, trust and dignity at work, and keeping one of the most fundamental promises organisations make to their people.
Payroll underpayments are rarely caused by a single mistake. They arise from accumulated complexity and recurring weaknesses in payroll governance.
What Effective Payroll Governance Looks Like Organisations that avoid large- scale remediation share a common approach: they invest upstream. Treating payroll as a regulated environment is central. This means clear ownership and accountability, documented decision-making, risk registers, escalation pathways and board and executive oversight. Payroll should be governed with the same discipline applied to financial reporting or data privacy. Compliance also depends on auditable pay rules. Clause-by- clause interpretation, documented assumptions and traceability from legal obligation to system configuration and payslip outcome are essential. If a pay rule cannot be explained and evidenced, it represents risk. Strong data integrity underpins everything. Retained historical data, consistent identifiers and robust
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GLOBAL PAYROLL MAGAZINE ISSUE 20
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