A Tour of the Inaugural Payroll Profession Confidence Index (2024)

[00:00:08] Welcome everyone to a very special episode of HR and Payroll 2.0. I'm Pete Tilliakis,

[00:00:13] and as always I'm joined by the legendary Julie Fernandez. Welcome Julie.

[00:00:16] Thanks Pete. We're always trying new stuff so let's just give it a go.

[00:00:21] Yeah, so this is a special, I don't know that we've done.

[00:00:23] We've only done one video episode and that was with Jason Lee in the team at Salt Labs.

[00:00:28] That was awesome. We did that at HR Tech, but this one we're going to do very special.

[00:00:31] I thought we would give a tour of the Payroll Professional Confidence Index that is newly out.

[00:00:36] Yeah, just give everybody a look at what it says.

[00:00:40] That's right. Instead of having a whole team of production specialists like we had with Jason,

[00:00:45] we're going to do our usual do it yourself. Let's see what happens.

[00:00:48] Yep.

[00:00:49] But it just felt like if you can't see the report as you go along if that's an option for you to take a look,

[00:00:55] doing it all via audio is, could be a little tougher.

[00:00:59] So let's bring it to light.

[00:01:00] So look, I'm really, really excited. If you've listened to the previous episode or all of my

[00:01:04] ranting across the internet for months about the Payroll Professional Confidence Index,

[00:01:08] I would tell you if you'd like to go back and listen to that episode, you can hear sort of the origin of this.

[00:01:13] But fundamentally, the Payroll Professional Confidence Index is a sentiment based analysis dedicated to the Payroll

[00:01:19] Professional. It's all about understanding how the profession is feeling about the future,

[00:01:24] about technology, the way they're being treated by their organizations, how they're being invested in or not.

[00:01:30] What their biggest needs are, how the impact can be for the organization when Payroll is invested in

[00:01:37] at Champion and cared for. And so super excited and really appreciate everybody taking their time to give us this input.

[00:01:43] Yeah, thanks. So it's a really great response Pete.

[00:01:45] Yeah, yeah we did. We had over 700. I'm just popping up the table contents here.

[00:01:51] We had over 700 folks take it. Now, I'll be honest,

[00:01:55] we had almost 4,000 touch it and come through to it but not finish it or not start it.

[00:01:59] So we got to work on that. We've got to get everybody. I want every practitioner around the world.

[00:02:03] There's a hell of a lot more than 700 of you. There's more than 4,000 of you.

[00:02:07] So I want to get every Payroll Professional on the planet putting their input into this and I'm working on something

[00:02:12] that is going to try to bring this to life permanently.

[00:02:14] So hopefully we'll get there and we'll have that.

[00:02:16] But yeah 28 countries as well were represented five continents.

[00:02:20] So really exciting. We had a great turnout from Australia, from Africa.

[00:02:24] Nice turnout from Asia even so very happy with what we had here.

[00:02:28] Yeah, thanks for everybody who not only completed it but helped spread the word and get the word out.

[00:02:34] Excited to kind of see it and then see how it's going to live on right?

[00:02:39] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so look what I thought I'd do is just do a little tour today and just talk a little bit about what we saw.

[00:02:44] Maybe you could, I know you've got some questions Julie made.

[00:02:47] You could go through that a little bit and then wrap it up and get ready to go off on this holiday weekend.

[00:02:51] All right, let's call it a tour. Let's go and let's be explorers today.

[00:02:55] All right, so look we've got basically primarily these five sections, right?

[00:02:59] And really it's it's three sections. It's the sentiment based analysis.

[00:03:03] It's the operational health of the payrolls out there.

[00:03:06] And then of course what impact they're bringing and how you can drop that impact out.

[00:03:10] So you'll find each of these are available here.

[00:03:13] And then of course we've got an appendix that breaks down various different views of the smaller companies, right?

[00:03:21] Those below 1000 employees and then those above 1000 based on a compared to the norm or the averages.

[00:03:27] And then of course we did that for single country footprints and multi country or multi region and global footprint.

[00:03:33] So we really try to give you some slices and dices here.

[00:03:36] Before we dig into it, let me just want to give you a little bit of background.

[00:03:39] So things that we did with this was this was very carefully crafted.

[00:03:43] We worked with a number of professional researchers to get their opinions.

[00:03:46] We asked payroll practitioners and payroll leaders and professionals.

[00:03:49] We also asked some payroll executive types that are very high level to give their input.

[00:03:54] We asked for some of the payroll associations to help us.

[00:03:57] The payroll org was generous enough to give us their opinions as well.

[00:04:02] And and we had a lot of input on this.

[00:04:04] It took well over a year. I know you looked at it, Julie.

[00:04:07] And so what we did was we really built this on kind of an NPS sort of style.

[00:04:11] So the majority of the questions are single answer questions rating from 1 to 5 or picking from 1 to 5.

[00:04:17] And in some cases there are places where we allowed people to pick top 3 or most impactful in a group.

[00:04:24] So there's multiple choice, but primarily you're going to see largely largely that and I'll explain how we reported this out.

[00:04:32] So again, you've got your sentiment, your operations, your impact and of course the appendix is going to have all your.

[00:04:37] Or your extra details as well as your demographics, which I'm actually going to skip to first if that's okay.

[00:04:42] Julie I want to go to the end.

[00:04:43] That's great.

[00:04:44] Yeah, I want to talk about the the demographics and then I thought we could come back to the sentiment because the exact summary really kind of summarizes the whole thing if someone only has a few minutes to read three slides that would be it.

[00:04:54] But each one will break down and it rolls up to that so so let's do that let's let's just going to jump us let me switch over here.

[00:05:01] Here, don't you come over here to the demographics because this is one of the things that really stood out for me.

[00:05:07] Here.

[00:05:08] This is this is really concerning what what do you see here that makes gives you concern on this screen well we belong heard talk about the payroll.

[00:05:17] Payroll and how folks are retiring in aging out of it right and concerned for the fact that there aren't enough new.

[00:05:24] New entrance into this field and and a worry about how exactly we're going to staff pay roll and get payroll done.

[00:05:30] Yeah, look, I mean we've got I mean close to what 80 I mean you know 70 some percent there that is or well over 70% I should say that is fundamentally above 10 years right I mean 50% above 20 so we're we're going to lose a lot of people here in the coming years and I think we've got a really prioritize getting.

[00:05:51] Folks earlier in their career to come into the people professions so this is something that really really stood out to me.

[00:05:57] I just want to show you real quick here to the respondents again we have 28 countries represented that is I think that's impressive I don't know what survey has reached that before in this space.

[00:06:08] Maybe there has but but but I was very happy with that I would have liked to see Europe show up a little bit better we could have used a little bit more help in that area.

[00:06:15] But otherwise we did really good and thank you to Australia they really turned out they really really turned out in this so great job.

[00:06:21] Okay, so also we you know like I said we go on into areas of where we'll look at things like the size of the companies had a nice little swath there.

[00:06:30] Good good bit of about half were single country so we had about the other half obviously being multi-country multi region and global of course so good mix here.

[00:06:41] That's important folks always want to know and I think it's a slicing and dicing right where you you're able to if you want to get a little bit of like me kind of insights they're all there and all available but these are the things that folks most want to cut.

[00:06:54] Absolutely absolutely yeah so let's jump back on come back to our sentiment analysis now I want to go back to our sections here and I want to kind of talk you through the pieces of this right so we've got the outlook of professionals you got the respect and perception and then of course we've got how well executives are engaging them so let's jump into this first one.

[00:07:10] So you know not so bad right I'd say there's a cautious optimism if I were to grade this.

[00:07:15] I think professional payroll professionals are largely excited and cautious but also cautious the optimistic about the future there's a lot of concerns for what AI is going to do.

[00:07:24] But one of the things that really stood out to me here was just the unwillingness by organizations to modernize or change.

[00:07:31] I think that's probably one of the biggest barriers to payroll right now in addition to their shrinking talent pool right we're just seeing it's what I think is driving a lot of the managed services right now in addition to some of the innovation.

[00:07:42] Transformation as well so positive pretty much here and of course empowered by technology I think most professionals feel that way as you can see but there is that there is that sort of hesitation about what may be coming.

[00:07:54] And I do think you know in that top concerns where AI and automation digitization show up with the aging workforce that we talked about I mean it stands to reason that folks that are in the field and you know might not be in it for that much longer are thinking you know either this is going to take my job away or you know it's not such a big deal because.

[00:08:15] I'm not sure if it's all getting automated anyways either one of those ends of the spectrum is really all that that that keen right.

[00:08:21] Yeah yeah and look again I'll say I think AI is friend not fo.

[00:08:25] I think it's a tool I think it's going to be an enabler and I think it's going to create some really interesting careers for people that they can lean in and become champions of it.

[00:08:33] Absolutely.

[00:08:34] Yeah.

[00:08:35] Okay let's go.

[00:08:36] Let's go.

[00:08:37] Here's where I I really got to get upset.

[00:08:39] This is concerning right we've got about half of the professionals feeling.

[00:08:43] Highly or very highly respected that means less than half or about half or I'd say less obviously.

[00:08:50] Or not and that's a problem we shouldn't have we shouldn't have that should be a small number if anything really needs to be zero to be honest.

[00:08:57] And then of course just the the level of perception for payroll right we gave some definitions to this and tried to see how people.

[00:09:04] So operations were being perceived so you can see less than 50 or excuse me less than 40 percent are seen as a center of expertise or an outlet of proactive engagement.

[00:09:14] Which is concerning we got a lot of work to do here and you can see some of the quotes here from around the quality of data that we collected and some of the things where people are saying look we're HR just doesn't know what the heck we do.

[00:09:25] I mean the one immediately to the right is the one that struck me the most when I had chance to see this and that is you know I hear a lot of times that it's the idea that everything comes together at payroll and it's always just in time you know there's not a lot of extra time accommodations when you're trying to get payroll out on a schedule and it becomes payrolls fault.

[00:09:46] Yeah, you know a lot of a lot of the failures that are happening at that juncture of all of those key processes don't the root cause is not payroll and so that just makes the job.

[00:09:57] All that more complex and yet that's where the symptoms appear and where things get loud.

[00:10:02] Look I'll go as far as to say it's a systemic ignorance if you want to be honest and I don't mean that in a disrespectful way.

[00:10:08] I mean that to say that people just don't know.

[00:10:11] I mean how many times do you leave? I know you've been there. I've worked in a Fortune 100 company as a as a payroll leader.

[00:10:18] I have advised many of the biggest companies on the planet around payroll in my consulting days and I can tell you how many times I sat in conference rooms with major major decisions or major actions that are happening around the business that we're causing impact to humans which they almost always do.

[00:10:36] And anytime anything even sounded remotely close to payroll most of HR was shoving the fingers in their ears running for the hills.

[00:10:44] You know you thought we'd had dropped up a bomb in the middle of a room or something right it's like I mean and what drives me crazy about that and I posted this the other day is that.

[00:10:53] I know as a leader my team and I we knew more about HR and the business than HR thought they did.

[00:10:59] And a lot of times we were coaching them on what they should have been doing because they had no clue because they're so siloed and so focused in their world.

[00:11:08] And what they do is so important that they don't take time to understand any of the integration or synergies with the other other teams but we don't have that choice in payroll.

[00:11:16] We have to understand the process everyone's process every business process can be because it all rolls down to us and so.

[00:11:23] Take a minute and go have a conversation with one of your payroll people listen to them they actually might know a hell of a lot more than you're giving them credit for and the less than stuff has just got to stop.

[00:11:34] You're absolutely tying both your feet together it's like a one leg at sack race you know those.

[00:11:40] You know the sack races at the at the fair whatever you do or you get with a buddy you try it's that's what you're doing like.

[00:11:46] Take your leg out of the sack and sprint and that's helping getting payroll involved right and so.

[00:11:51] Yeah have some respect and start understanding what they do because there's there's definitely a problem with that.

[00:11:56] Yeah you know and that gets more and more prolific I think the larger the organization gets where you have you know discrete roles and hand-offs right and things you know one has to do a part and the other has to do another part.

[00:12:10] Payroll has a very tangible you know count quantitative role and that's how they understand the data and HR has you know a different role.

[00:12:20] That's more people centric and people focused and so it's different lenses as you move down market those are in the same person yeah you know all yeah more often than not and so.

[00:12:31] Yeah so it shows up in different ways and different client organizations and to different degrees but you're certainly showed that there are folks that are feeling that acutely and it undoubtedly affects the way that they.

[00:12:45] The values that they feel they bring to the organization that's the.

[00:12:48] Oh yeah well bouncing back to our exact summary here I put this in there this year I want to show you this right payroll is a nice book right I gave a video on this it's a hell of a lot more than what you're seeing.

[00:12:58] Of the water line that's what you see above the water line employee experience and mostly only if someone complains.

[00:13:04] Pitchx that come out and maybe the reports that you get or don't get for your organization but here's what's really going on and this is being polite this is this is I mean we probably need three or four pages for this.

[00:13:16] And you know focus down there on the call on the bottom right it's pretty much in addition to the mammoth task that they have it's probably also any and everything that anybody doesn't want to do that sounds like payroll because HR has got their fingers shoving their ears.

[00:13:28] So yeah wake up there's a lot more going on below the iceberg and you don't want to be the Titanic and sink because of payroll.

[00:13:36] All right let's come back hey they need to hear it we need to hear it.

[00:13:40] Okay I get a half to 10 per year 10 per me fingers and you're as visual because you know it's really not that bad all over right there places or that's.

[00:13:51] Oh no yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah but Julie it's given me the in my exaggerating your career my exaggerating you've sat in front of so many different executives and so many rooms for for transformation how many times have you seen it.

[00:14:03] You know it depends I'll tell you totally depends on the culture of the or yeah that's also think about sometimes HR owns payroll you know and they're all team and so they don't and so those different new armors make all the difference right in.

[00:14:15] Oh yeah.

[00:14:16] In that visual that you're painting but just the less than stuff right like that there's a systemic less than problem I mean I would argue that with anybody I I feel it.

[00:14:25] I'm payroll famous and I feel it so I and I felt it my entire career I've seen it I watch people struggle through it and it's it's just unacceptable anymore it's really is unacceptable.

[00:14:35] Yeah I think a lot of that stems from what the job came from right it came from a bookkeeper job and how the job has evolved over decades and how it's so far from being you know a bookkeeper and a and a calendar.

[00:14:50] Yeah.

[00:14:52] That it's just a very different skill it's a different job and it's much more elevated right there's a lot more required and not all.

[00:15:01] Comstructures not all organizations have kind of evolved not all job descriptions have evolved.

[00:15:06] Oh yeah I know what are either a lot of organizations who's HR hasn't even evolved even catch up to payroll right so yeah but look go go and listen to the to the episode we did here and right I mean in Australia you can go to prison for payroll.

[00:15:18] If you do it wrong it's actually driving a lot of people to sort of question whether they want to stay in payroll right if you've got an employer who won't invest and now I'm responsible for what happens legally.

[00:15:27] I don't know if I want that responsibility right so yeah it's very concerning.

[00:15:32] But yeah so this is one we did an episode on again as shame was pull up here but we did talk about the invested leader versus it in leader that's investing.

[00:15:41] And as you can see that's not exactly where we need to be right we need to get that much much higher I'd love to see two thirds or more.

[00:15:47] At least at this point and so.

[00:15:49] This means what we really asked here was is how well adequately are your organizations in your executives investing in you that would be monetary dollars to do what you need to do or the resources to do what you need to do versus how well are they invested how much do they walk the talk.

[00:16:05] In bringing you to the table in championing you as a cultural norm as a priority in their in their HR strategy and that this is again an area where I think we've got to see some change and the impacts to this we're going to talk about later.

[00:16:17] Our material when you when you see what comes out of it.

[00:16:20] Yeah I'm sure as we think about on you know just making this available in some form in on and ongoing basis yeah I think we should have a goal here you know 60% by you know whatever and so more to come on that right.

[00:16:34] Yeah challenge that we should rise to we do we do and this is going this is the first iteration we're going to keep this going we learn some things from this I have to admit.

[00:16:42] There's things I would have done differently a little bit but I'm very pleased with how this came out and the reception has been amazing.

[00:16:48] I've had and thank you to everyone who's who's seen this and and and complimentary.

[00:16:52] I really appreciate it it wasn't about that it's about the profession and if that's if that's all we get out of this I'll be happy so.

[00:16:59] Yeah.

[00:17:00] All right let's talk operations.

[00:17:02] Let's do it here we go operations so here we're going to talk operational health we're going to talk about the digital technology impact.

[00:17:11] And we're also going to talk about what payroll investments are actually key and some surprising answers here which I think really came out to me.

[00:17:18] So let's talk about first maturity right we've only got about 12% of.

[00:17:23] population that responded to us saying they are operating in a fully mature state and we provided definitions of what that was mostly around tech.

[00:17:30] We couldn't get so deep with this to get too to into your all of your operational.

[00:17:35] But we really just looked at the infrastructure how harmonized how to have centralized things were and so we gave that in the appendix so you'll see the trends the levels in the backs you can kind of get yourself if you'd like.

[00:17:47] Centralization is decent right we got about 60% saying the centralized now keep in mind half of these were single country so I'd have to probably dig later with you to see the centralization with you.

[00:17:57] Yeah there's a little less for sure I think it's in the 50s.

[00:18:01] You're realizing when you look domestic only so yeah that's an interesting place in Dyson makes a difference.

[00:18:05] Yes and that's going to you're going to see that here at the bottom and keep in mind what we did here was again MPS style we looked at all of the folks that answered again on a one to five we said you know four and five being the higher end.

[00:18:16] One and two being the lower end three kind of being neutral we we we we we we we we we're we're looking at this and saying.

[00:18:22] You know fully centralized right we're looking at those that gave fours and fives for those answers so what I do in the back is I normalize that those against.

[00:18:30] The types of customers well or they're responded to as well but really what we're looking at is who is operating at the high end versus those that are not so that's how we've kind of carved this up just to clarify.

[00:18:41] And then one thing I think is really concerning here is the viability right we've only got about half of the organization saying that they have confidence a high level of confidence.

[00:18:49] That their operations in payroll are able to support the strategic direction of their business in the next three years that's a problem that's a problem and we got to fix that because that's a competitive competitive gap right there for you.

[00:19:02] Yeah alright let's go.

[00:19:04] Not supporting payroll not an option for our nation.

[00:19:08] No, no.

[00:19:09] Yeah let's give.

[00:19:10] Yeah and it's more than the paycheck right I mean you can really get in some trouble if you don't do these things right with taxes and other things.

[00:19:16] So we did only ask one technology question this in this research and the reason for that was is because we didn't want to make it so much about technology there's plenty of research on that.

[00:19:26] We wanted it to be about the practitioner and the leaders that are out there running and managing our payrolls.

[00:19:31] And so you can see kind of not a huge surprise here obviously I didn't jump up to the top but I think you can see that that cloud technology has been the most enabling solution and these were ones where we asked multiple choice so you're not going to see a total to 100 here I should probably note that in our report revision.

[00:19:50] But yeah so obviously mobile and ESS making huge impact analytics and interestingly there were some differences in how these came out for smaller versus larger companies at all point out as we get to the end but.

[00:20:02] But yeah just just a quick look at what what they thought about tech.

[00:20:06] Now here's what I thought was interesting when we asked about the most impactful investments that you could have.

[00:20:13] You know we we asked what what what is it right I mean and again here's where you could do top three so this is not going to equal to a 100 but look at what's first there Julie right.

[00:20:23] I know education three actually yeah.

[00:20:26] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I looked at this just putting those first three together and saying it's about the talent and the skills and the respect.

[00:20:33] And that is just screaming out of these results right and cloud technology popped up obviously all the way to right now your transformation was key for the multi country works I know that there.

[00:20:43] And I'll I'll show you that I'll show you that later here on our breakdown so so this was surprising to me I actually thought.

[00:20:50] I actually sort of thought transformation would have been higher but this is good this is cool this is cool to know this is good to know that our folks are asking for help.

[00:21:00] And they're asking for in an area that I think you should be investing in and all of your parts of your company anyway right so yeah.

[00:21:09] All right let's talk impact this is where some eye opening stuff came around we asked about things like ROI and value realization and we defined that for the survey takers.

[00:21:18] We asked about partnerships how well these they they partner with the other parts of the organization and then how you could best champion payroll to get the most value out of them strategically.

[00:21:29] And so here's what we learned right we learned that only about a third of the operations are delivering that high level of strategy impacting value to their businesses.

[00:21:40] And about three three force right are are not confident that the organizations are doing enough to actually draw it all out draw that strategic impact out.

[00:21:49] And then of course 66% are not in in confidence highly confident that their corporate cultures and their executives are aligned to even elevate payroll to begin with so.

[00:22:01] The eyes off that they take in their eye off the ball so to speak or never put it on the ball I guess you could say and missing out on a lot of value and opportunity here really.

[00:22:08] Yeah and I think the other the other thing could be.

[00:22:11] In some situations it could just be that that that message and that importance yeah making its way down to the folks that are actually doing you know the work.

[00:22:21] Yeah, senior leaders you know we often in conversations with them they will point at least say like payroll can't.

[00:22:29] Yeah wrong like we cannot have a big bomb in the payroll space and so they recognize that at least by narrowly right like it's it's a critical function.

[00:22:38] Yeah and yet figuring out how that how that becomes maybe a more robust leadership guiding light right and how it gets communicated.

[00:22:48] And then we can go into the ranks and to the payroll ranks there's a disconnect there as well for sure first.

[00:22:53] Oh yeah yeah you know I would be I would love to know I wish we had enough space and time and effort to to to understand to if these organizations across all of these answers are what state of transformation they're in from a finance or HR perspective.

[00:23:09] I might be somewhat telling as to how payroll has sort of evolved or not maturity wise but also I'd be curious to know the same to have executives take the same survey.

[00:23:22] And I'd love to know there I'd love to be able to contrast and compare what the executive said to the people who took it but that's almost nearly impossible so yeah what we can we can toy around with figuring out what to do it with select client you know.

[00:23:34] client situations where you know the framework's already here results for comparison purposes are already here like let's let's let's dig in this a couple of case studies right and yeah.

[00:23:44] I am trying to figure out some benchmarking capabilities with this research so yeah well we'll we'll we'll a more on that to come we'll find that out so.

[00:23:53] Okay let's go with the next piece here this is the really key slide to me this is the most important slide in this entire presentation or report.

[00:24:02] Look at what happens when your strength of partnerships are better right look at the executive leaders on a one to five we've got executive leadership the lowest in terms of strength of partnership with payroll.

[00:24:13] So that sounds like it might make sense right I mean HR and finance being at the top.

[00:24:17] I'd like to see IT a little stronger to tell you the truth and I'm surprised legal wasn't stronger as well and I think you could probably I actually want to go back and do some slicing and dicing on small big.

[00:24:27] You know multi country but a small country or excuse me single country in order to understand this but clearly what we can see here is is that when payroll operations have closer and stronger executive relationships.

[00:24:40] They're 42% more likely to have a to have that alignment that is prioritizing them.

[00:24:45] It's 50% more likely to be viewed as a CEO we or us you know instead of versus the simple processor sort of connotation and they're 26% more confident in their ability to enable strategic direction while delivering 3x.

[00:24:58] And so the value in strategic impact and our way back to their businesses so it's there right it's it's championing payroll has material business outcomes and and payroll outcomes and those are incredibly important so.

[00:25:10] I'm hoping that we'll see this as an opportunity to get that three much higher up in the in the fours and five for for executive engagement.

[00:25:18] Yeah and I'll be excited also to see you know how can we use some of these findings to figure out.

[00:25:25] A quantitative impact to business for example because that's always one of the sticking points and trying to you know trying to get approval or trying to get buy in for some sort of a bigger transformation and so.

[00:25:38] It feels like we have the you know you found the beginnings of of something that might be quite useful.

[00:25:45] I hope so and I and I want to dig down into some of these two we're going to we're going to shape this for next year and the next year right we're going to continue to figure out what we need to to dig into it.

[00:25:53] Maybe there's some poll surveys you and I could work on on some of this when we can crack this up I think this would be a good one for us with your transformation slant we got to work together on this one.

[00:26:02] Yeah get this number up.

[00:26:04] Okay let's do one more here and talk about what what what what are.

[00:26:10] The best ways that leaders can invest if you will in prioritizing people on how they can they can champion people best for success and look far and away it's bringing them proactively to the table we call it a seat at the table.

[00:26:22] It's really just engaging them and getting them involved in strategic initiatives much much faster investing and engaging them to prioritize it within your culture.

[00:26:30] And making sure that they have adequate investment to actually do what they they need to do so.

[00:26:35] Yeah, not a lot of I mean not surprising here I don't know what I was expecting on this one.

[00:26:40] But I think the things that I expected the bubble up bubble up well and I was happy to see the budget didn't just hit the top because I think there's so much more to it than just money.

[00:26:49] That was one of my first observations too as well as you know in the bottom right you have investments in the payroll operating model modernization and the top left like so those middle couple are the few are the areas where we actually see the most client work happening.

[00:27:05] Right, so actually you know hands on there's some very tangible things that you can do between the operating model and integration strategies and kind of figuring out how all the techniques with stick other.

[00:27:18] That that that really can start to bring some of this to life and that's where I see a lot of clients focusing isn't in that spot.

[00:27:27] Yeah, it's very it's very tangible.

[00:27:29] Oh yeah, oh yeah, it's good stuff and looking I think what we're hearing is payroll say give us an opportunity give us a voice invest in us give us the ability to actually perform our jobs without one leg in the bag right.

[00:27:43] That is run with both legs and let us sprint and show your skill and show your athleticism.

[00:27:48] And that's all they want right they just want some engagement they want some respect and they want some inclusivity and I think everyone's asking for that I don't know why payroll isn't part of the priority in that but that's it right and I think that.

[00:28:00] I think you can actually if you don't just have to spend money you can actually just care just prioritize them you certainly do have to keep them modern you do certainly do have to invest in payroll just as you do.

[00:28:11] You know anywhere anything else in the business but I think it's a lot of it can be empathy and just understanding them and and being able to try to help move obstacles for them to be the best they can be.

[00:28:22] Yeah, so I'm playing cool okay so look I want to let me just give you a couple little show points here on the appendix so you can see and then we'll bounce back to that.

[00:28:29] And then we'll bounce back to that executive summary I want to show you what that looks like so basically like I said you're going to have your maturity scale in here your demographics and of course the breakdowns by type of business so.

[00:28:39] maturity scale is right here we shared this when we gave the survey so people had something to look at and bench themselves off of and again this is very tech focused it's not all that you would need to be a mature operating model you would definitely need to think about your processes you'd have to think about your.

[00:28:54] You know your staffing your governance model there's so many many things I know you to really help people with so this is really just a kind of a baseline to say how technically infrastructure sound are you.

[00:29:07] In validation right to speak on your behalf harmonized yeah how harmonized and central is.

[00:29:12] Yeah, and then of course we had the demographics which we've we've already kind of shown you but I'm going to show you this here for what we did for single country versus multi country you can see some of the differences here.

[00:29:22] What we did was we basically looked at like I said all the high end four and five the most confident folks versus those that are not and gave you the percentages of those numbers.

[00:29:32] And so you're seeing your single country left multi country right and you're overall kind of average down the middle and where you see gold.

[00:29:40] In a let number that means it's five points higher than the average where you see red five points lower than the average at least so.

[00:29:48] Yeah, so one being centralization.

[00:29:50] Yes.

[00:29:51] So in a single country model where its locations that are centralizing you'd expect that to be a lot higher and when it's a multi country model it's not a slam dunk that all of those are coming together under the same.

[00:30:02] Yeah, I thought it was interesting that's totally true totally true and I think it's interesting you see here that the perception is higher from multi country practitioners and leaders so that's interesting.

[00:30:12] I mean not a lot but but still a good pop there and then of course viability over on the multi country side we got a lot of opportunity there to get.

[00:30:20] To get folks mature and not not down to stack like the viable viable yeah exactly so.

[00:30:28] So good alright let's go in here to we also kind of broke down some of the top investments most impactful tack and then of course ways to champion again transformation change was maybe the only key thing different for the multi country guys.

[00:30:40] And then of course we did the same thing here for small firms large firms and again you can see.

[00:30:47] Really the glaring piece here is probably that viability I think you've got some some better viability on your smaller firms obviously because they're dealing with so much less complexity.

[00:30:56] And often less let's chaos so I think it's also pretty interesting to see the outlook you know larger firms is significantly higher and I believe that some of that has to do with resourcing and.

[00:31:09] You know probably some of the movement toward technology that has been helpful already and you know I think that's got to that's got to play into that.

[00:31:19] Oh yeah and what compliance criticality and other things are are much more intense in a bigger company and much more sometimes public and ramphic you know ramphied so.

[00:31:28] I would hope that are all of our companies are investing but maybe what we're seeing is a little bit more investment by the bigger bigger firms.

[00:31:36] Actually not if you look at the transformation down below less but right on average I guess so okay here's why we saw a few little differences your smaller firms actually quite keen on digital payments more.

[00:31:47] So then others for most impactful digital tech I think that's probably because on your smaller firms you probably might have some of the franchises some of the more frontline type.

[00:31:59] You know businesses that may be dependent on keeping people and you know learn wage access might be the way they do that so yeah and then of course integration with HR and broader axiom strategy.

[00:32:10] That is not surprising to me I've been hearing a lot of my smaller business firms I talk to my wife is a small business practitioner HR practitioner where the organizations are needing to go from.

[00:32:21] Fundamentally being a process centric HR it's being more of a strategic center HR and getting away from just doing payroll time benefits and getting to more talent science and.

[00:32:31] You know making sure that they are using analytics and data to help them make better informed decisions and talent you know me more talent and cultural focus so.

[00:32:40] I think that's a growing growing issue with a lot of folks out there younger firms so okay and then of course I give a little thank you here but let's go back to the exact summary and we will pop up just want to show you what that looks like.

[00:32:55] First of all we gave you what I would call the report on a slide so this is really this report.

[00:33:01] In one page that you can kind of look at it's a nice infographic we're going to be sharing and we'll be making some more of these as well and you're welcome to share this well if anyone out there wants to pass it around.

[00:33:12] If you come here to the my iceberg this will we already saw this but this will give executives an idea of kind of what what payroll is doing.

[00:33:19] And then of course we just sort of summarized and brought up a number of the points across the key points across the report here for you to have a quick quick force slide read.

[00:33:29] You 15 10 minutes and you could digest all this quick so so you know what is the most interesting speaking point about the executives summary here.

[00:33:37] Yeah.

[00:33:38] Is the experience that we had when we were at the executive summit in a couple of weeks ago and here we had a forum with 60.

[00:33:48] Yeah I don't know exactly how many we had a good number of executives there 50 plus yeah and so we started the day you know really trying to interact with senior leaders around.

[00:33:58] Yeah and very quickly while we pulled a few excerpts from the report very quickly the conversation really got very robust around change.

[00:34:07] And change management and the idea of bring change to the organization you know in payroll and the payroll patching impacts to that.

[00:34:16] And and some of the the war stories or the you know perpetual mysteries of doing that.

[00:34:23] Yeah to me it was just very encouraging to see that senior leaders are engaged in you know easily and quickly and thinking about you know the challenges that it will involve to you know to boost the game right.

[00:34:37] And to engage in to really you know make a run at some tangible things in this space.

[00:34:43] Yeah.

[00:34:44] And I don't know you know there's nothing about the data that would have that would have expected us to go there but but leadership is engaged and they are interested in.

[00:34:54] Yeah.

[00:34:55] That I thought was you know that since this is all about sentiment to me that was the greatest you know enforcement of your work was to see that.

[00:35:02] Yeah yeah cool I appreciate I appreciate it.

[00:35:04] I mean that's all this is about is just awareness just bringing people a message to say to help change the narrative for payroll and I hope that's I hope that's what we've done.

[00:35:13] You know we had a good turnout but we got to do it that we're going to do better next time.

[00:35:16] I'm hoping to keep this thing alive I really am working to put this online forever so that people can come and use it and I hope maybe I can get to a point where I can help you benchmark with it.

[00:35:25] And if anyone wants to use it with their customers or they want to use it what with your welcome just download it I'll put the links in the in the description reach out if you have questions you want me to come talk to you about it.

[00:35:36] I'm happy to do that and yeah just want to get it out there and get more people to be aware of what's going on.

[00:35:41] So listen on behalf of everyone I know you've heard this as well through individual feedback but thank you this was a passion project of yours and and it's the first of its kind I know you know focusing on sentiment in it in a.

[00:35:54] Function area that is so important to all of us and really critical to come to you and and feels like it needs pat on the back and and also you know a little a little cheerleading you know a little cheerleading to let folks know that.

[00:36:09] We know the criticality right of payroll and the organization so yeah thank you for that now we actually see you know there's actually something tangible to look at.

[00:36:19] Yes.

[00:36:20] I love it.

[00:36:21] I love it.

[00:36:22] Yeah look thank you and let's thank payroll right I mean we couldn't have done this without payroll we couldn't have done it without the associations that helped everyone that got involved.

[00:36:29] Thank you so much it's I'm here to I'm a servant leader I'm just here to I'm here just be a voice that's all so.

[00:36:35] That's me saying we love you guys and I love you.

[00:36:38] I do love you.

[00:36:39] All right look hey thank you so much for doing this to you. Thank you for all your help as well.

[00:36:43] Thanks for everyone to listen go check out the report share it like it and let's do better on the next one let's get more let's get 1400 a thousand whatever it is whatever we got to do to beat the 700.

[00:36:53] Let's raise those numbers let's get more people involved and raise the raise awareness for payroll.