New research: Payroll’s top trends and challenges in 2024

It’s that time of year again – National Payroll week is coming up on September 16-20!  

As part of our own celebrations this year, we’d like to share some new research to highlight the top trends and challenges payroll teams have experienced in 2024, and what they mean for the profession heading into 2025. Enter our latest Payroll Complexity Survey, conducted in partnership with PayrollOrg. 

Read the full report 

Here are just a few insights on the current forces transforming the payroll profession.  

Payroll professionals are caught in a complexity crisis 

Simply put, payroll professionals have a huge number of things to think about on a daily basis, and the list isn’t getting any smaller. With multiple jurisdictions to process, constantly evolving payroll regulations, siloed systems, and legacy technologies, the payroll function is having a tough time keeping up with the ever-increasing pace of business.   

What are the specific challenges? 

Our Payroll Complexity Survey revealed that compliance challenges (45%), managing the complexities of multi-jurisdictional payroll (33%), and inefficient processes (25%) are today’s top payroll pain points. This hasn’t changed since 2022, but the intensity of the issues has gotten worse.   

On top of that, a lot of payroll professionals want to contribute more strategically to their organization but are limited by their data. Many feel that their payroll data isn’t actionable, with 74% saying they have issues with it. These issues stem mostly from not having the right tools to properly analyze data (26%), the data not providing a complete picture (23%) and data getting siloed in non-integrated systems (20%).   

Is payroll getting harder or easier? 

Harder. A full 58% of payroll professionals surveyed said their job had gotten more difficult over the past few years, and 41% said it’s hard to fill vacant payroll positions in their organization. At the same time, they’re facing pressure from execs to control costs, manage risk, and ensure efficiency in the face of persistent economic uncertainty. But they need better tools to do this. 

What can be done? 

Two of the most promising developments for supporting payroll professionals are AI and automation tools. But there are still challenges with implementing these. A full 86% of payroll professionals say they have barriers to adopting automation in their payroll efforts, with the top reasons being concern that their business scenarios are too complex (39%), a lack of trust in automated systems (30%) and a lack of information about automated systems (28%). On the AI side, 44% are unsure about using AI-powered compliance tools. If your payroll team doesn’t have the information it needs to present a strong business case to executives, new investment in these areas won’t happen.  

Revitalizing payroll 

Moving forward, payroll professionals around the world have an opportunity to escape the burden of unnecessary manual work and to spend more time on high-value analysis work. This is their path to enhancing their role as key strategic partners in their organizations while cutting the errors associated with tedious manual work. This opportunity lies in rethinking the payroll function and working with a solution provider that can cut through compliance challenges and reduce organizational risk while increasing productivity through automation. This can give your payroll team greater flexibility in how they process pay, allowing them more time to provide data-driven insights across the enterprise, informing compensation strategy, optimizing labour spend, and identifying patterns such as absenteeism. 

When we better understand the challenges faced by payroll professionals around the world, we’re in a better position to make their work life better and enhance their role as key strategic partners. This National Payroll Week, let’s connect with these teams to ask about their work, what excites them, and how we can help them provide the unique value they aspire to.