The HR & Payroll Relationship - Video

In this insightful video, we explore the evolving relationship between HR and Payroll in the age of integrated cloud-based systems. As global platforms like Workday and Dayforce reshape how we manage the employee lifecycle, it's crucial to understand the shifting dynamics between these functions.

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Key Notes:

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Isn’t it time to re-evaluate the relationship between HR and payroll? The relationship is evolving and extremely prescient. It's very pertinent.


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Let's dive in. So, recently, a senior H.R. Director, thought provoking post on LinkedIn about this very issue. Clearly it's on the mind of various people in the industry, senior stakeholders who have oversight of payroll. No, the dawning of the age of new integrated HRIS payroll platforms across Australia New Zealand is not new. It's not a new phenomenon. But with the increased presence of global platforms such as Workday, Dayforce, to name a few, it has intimately connected the various technical verticals that fall across the employee lifecycle.

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As I always say, there's no such thing as payroll, Paradise. But Nirvana in this case, would be that payroll can achieve parity with the critical functions of HR, and not merely be viewed as a transactional push button exercise
or siphoned off to finances as it's technical and numerical, and not people driven or just when it gets all to hard.

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And that's not to say that there's not a vast array of senior HR leaders who intrinsically value payroll. But surely the boomerang reporting line that payroll faces between HR and finance is obsolete? It's no longer the internal department hot potato. It can't be with the challenges in terms of governance and compliance. The payroll industry is facing

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its imperative to move away from this adversarial “Us” & “Them” culture. What I admired most about this senior H.R. director was that she was prepared to walk a mile in a payroll person's shoes. Which doesn't happen often enough.

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I also have another senior H.R. Director who has learned to run a payroll recently and not on auto pay, because that doesn't give you the deep insight
into the life of a payroll professional.

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As of July 2024, the companies who’ve avoided compliance issues. Remediation projects, enforceable undertakings is the diminishing list
of Fair Work’s most wanted. And that was a little facetious. It's not a call out. Australian payroll rules are not complex, they’re over complicated.
Imagine being in a payroll function that has over 100 enterprises agreements with multiple variations. the vast majority of companies
want to do the right thing but have assumed that what they're doing is right. Despite changes to regulatory and legislative frameworks
that are constant and can feel overwhelming.

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the end of life or one of Australia's most widely used payroll systems Preceda in early 2026 coincides with Pay Day Super or shortly after. It's like the two harbingers of the apocalypse. But we can’t bury our heads in the sand.

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It is concerning the payroll are disenfranchised when decisions about HR
and payroll systems are made. An example of this is a recent client, global organization that were looking at two different products. And I was able to connect them with the systems community of that product, another couple of heads of payroll I worked with and had challenges with that system.
And it's not to say, but one system is better than the other. Is it aligned and does it fit with the needs of your business? And these conversations were able to open up, the ability of the head of payroll to ask cogent and probing questions about the system to pass through and expose potential risks and gaps and misalignment in terms of their business. And they were able to make the right decision.

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Now, the delivery of a best-in-class payroll function is driven by the employee experience. The purpose of automation as a head of payroll transformation, I greatly respect tells me, and I always listen. It's to de-risk the payroll process. Cause payroll has risk at every level, and it's also critically important to interrogate the source of truth through manual calculations. Any decision about systems that are often oversold as the silver bullet, as a cure all for issues of accuracy and efficiency, offering, you know, insightful, edifying analytics needs to be scrutinized. No one mentioned the long service leave.

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It's essential in conclusion that we focus on cohesion to focus on what connects us rather than what divides us. To focus on the humanity
of paying people correctly.