Payroll is one of the promises employees expect their employers to get right. Sandra Crous, managing director at Deel Local Payroll, powered by PaySpace, unpacks what happens when that promise goes wrong and why the real cost extends far beyond fixing an incorrect payslip.
She explores how CHROs can reduce the hidden burden of manual payroll, modernise outdated processes and turn accurate payroll data into a valuable source of workforce intelligence.
Q: What does Deel Local Payroll believe organisations most underestimate regarding the cost of getting payroll wrong?
Organisations often underestimate the impact on employee trust. Payroll is one of the most important promises an employer makes, and when it is wrong, the issue extends far beyond correcting a payslip. It creates tension for the employee affected, rework for HR and finance, off-cycle payments, compliance exposure and reputational damage. Employees will feel undervalued when mistakes creep in, even if it was not intentional. The visible cost is the correction; the hidden cost is the time, productivity and trust lost.
Q: From your perspective, how much HR capacity can be lost to fixing payroll problems that new technology platforms could prevent?
There is no single percentage that applies to every business, but in a fragmented or heavily manual environment, several days of HR and payroll capacity can disappear during every pay cycle. A single error may involve HR, payroll, finance, managers and employees before it is resolved. Much of this work can be prevented through automation, system integration, validation controls and exception reporting and using AI. Skilled payroll professionals should be managing risk and adding value, not repeatedly doing the same repetitive tasks and doing checking that does not bring a ROI.
Q: What should CHROs consider when calculating the true cost of their current payroll process?
They should look beyond the cost of the payroll system and payroll team. The true cost includes data capture or manipulation, manual reconciliations, employee queries, corrections, off-cycle payments, compliance penalties, audit preparation and the time managers, HR, finance and IT spend resolving issues. They should also consider less visible costs such as delayed decision-making, employee frustration and reduced confidence in the business. A useful measure is the total cost and effort required to produce an accurate payslip, not simply the licence fee.
Q: What are you seeing among businesses that have successfully reduced payroll errors, and what can other CHROs learn from them?
The businesses achieving the best results have simplified and standardised their processes, reduced manual intervention and integrated payroll with their HR, time and finance systems. They use automated validations and exception reporting to identify problems before payroll is finalised, and they establish clear ownership. Importantly, they combine new technology with sound processes and skilled people. Technology alone will not fix a broken process – you should not automate chaos. It is interesting how many businesses still hang on to legacy software.
Recently, I saw the impact of old technology when many payroll users could not process payroll because a legacy software provider had to load mid-year tax submission updates and all users had to stop processing. Cloud software is like a cell phone, once you use it living without it becomes unimaginable.
Q: Where do you see the biggest opportunity for businesses to get more value from payroll?
The biggest opportunity is to stop viewing payroll purely as a payment function and start using it as a source of workforce intelligence. Payroll 100 percent accurate information about your business, the actual employment costs, overtime, absenteeism, benefits and workforce trends. When that information is available in real time and connected to HR and finance data, it can support better workforce planning, budgeting and business decisions. Payroll should not simply tell you what was paid last month; making sure you retain critical talent, paying incentives that aligns with business imperatives and managing costs so that your cost does not spiral out of control, are the areas that could benefit from a fully automated payroll.
