TECHNOLOGY
Payroll’s tech revolution: achievements and lessons learned
Saskia Hawkins, Partner and Payroll Operate Leader for UK and Ireland, Ernst & Young LLP (UK), looks back on the technological changes brought to the pay industry over the last 12 months and considers what could be next* O ver the past few years, the payroll function has undergone a quiet revolution. Once viewed as a been made by pay professionals over the last year?
routine steps, accelerating cycle times without sacrificing control.
What’s changed in the last 12 months? Technology is always changing, and it’ll increasingly be embedded within our professional and personal lives. So, it’s no surprise that AI can be considered a ‘paradigm shift’ for professions like payroll. I believe there’s been a significant growth in AI adoption in the last 12 months, with pay professionals embracing change and leading from the front. There were three key principles behind this: ‘productionisation’, maturity and scalability. From pilots to production AI has moved on from the pilot phase and is now embedded into day-to-day process. In some leading organisations, generative AI is now embedded in specific payroll tasks: pre-payroll data checks, variance triage and guided responses to employee questions. The very best teams use AI- supported workflows for input validation (e.g., missing items, wrong formats, out of range values) and for the creation of ‘digital workers’ which complete
Matured error discovery At the same time, pattern-based anomaly detection has matured. Rather than relying on rigid, hardcoded rules, machine learning models review entire data sets to spot unusual payments, with human override where needed. This has been particularly valuable in cross-border scenarios where obligations span multiple jurisdictions. Scale Finally, adoption rates increased, and companies have been able to scale. As AI- based technologies have become trusted, the more people use the tools, the better they become. Adoption rates are always slow initially – how many people had the first iPhone? – but when secure access and guardrails are in place, solid use cases are demonstrated and appropriate training is provided, adoption can be broad and sustained. So, from anomaly detection that flags issues before cut off, to assistants that answer complex ‘what’s on my payslip?’
back-office necessity, in some companies, payroll has emerged as a strategic enabler, driven by rapid advances in technology and artificial intelligence (AI). For organisations navigating complex global operations, the transformation isn’t just about automation; it’s about unlocking new value, improving compliance and enhancing employee experience. There are some payroll teams still battling manual handoffs, brittle integrations and shifting compliance demands, but the mood in the world of pay is growing more confident by the day. Why? Because technology – especially AI – has moved from proof of concept to a day-to-day partner for many teams. In the September issue of Professional (https://ow.ly/RguK50XlCqm), I wrote about the need for pay teams to continuously improve their skills to match pace with technological change. This time, I’ll consider the benefits of technologies currently available and how they’ve been leveraged by payroll teams, as well as what may come. What progress has
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward | December 2025 - January 2026 | Issue 116 48
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