AI in Payroll: Dreams, Expectations, and Realities

[00:00:00] It's a thorough, simple, easy to understand explanations and power doesn't use and navigating employee self-service, you know, and the different options they have there. Welcome back folks. This is episode 141. It's about your, it's about payroll. And we're gonna have some fun today and talk about AI and what we expect in payroll. Well, or we want in payroll, funny, interesting words that Walt chose.

[00:00:28] Um, but before that, what's up, Walt? How you doing, sir? Man, I'm, I'm okay. I'm okay. No complaints over here. Just, you know, just really kind of remain humble, grateful and motivated and focused. No doubt. And shoot, Brian. How are you doing today? I'm good, man. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm finally feeling like I'm coming out of this, my restful slumber. I was pitched up, huh? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Shoot.

[00:00:57] Two, two months and change pit stop. Yeah. You know, it is what it is. Yeah, man. And I'm feeling good and getting excited and you know, a bunch of things on the horizon for us. Some fun things. Oh, we, we, we, oh no, this will post after Friday, but look out on LinkedIn. Cause we're going to start a series of web free webinars on like free webinars. We're going to do what our, our teaching partners, right?

[00:01:27] Our presenting partners, career learning. That's going to be on Friday's lunchtime type deal. And our also are, we're going to go and start going live on Fridays. Yeah. For us to buy your paycheck and just, you know, trying to feel some help people out with paycheck questions and concerns. We will have some like topics to talk about for that. So I'm getting, you know, if we don't, as we build up the live deal, you know, Kat would

[00:01:55] be giving away gift card to Amazon. Yeah. You know what I mean? Come and check us out, help us out and build this. You know, just want to help people really like, like we, our whole goal for building this company was to empower people, whether it be the payroll professionals or, you know, employees, you know what I mean? Yep. So I'm excited, man. I'm excited. Me too. Yeah, man. So let's get into it, man. We were fast.

[00:02:25] Let's get into it. Before events. Yeah. Before the main topic, we're going to start us off and cover some current events. Yeah. So my eyes are a little bit more heartfelt. You know, I usually come with some articles and stuff like that. I just want to talk about what's going on. And some of you that may listen to the show may have been impacted or someone, you, in your circle or someone, you know, may have been impacted by what's going on in LA.

[00:02:52] You know, just want to send our thoughts and prayers out to those people on the, over there. And it's easy for us to keep going, you know, with the day-to-day things and, you know, keep going with our normal processes because we're not impacted. Right. Yeah. Yep. Out of sight, out of mind. Yep. Out of sight, out of mind. And we just, you know, we look at pictures and stuff like that and then we just move on because life has to be lived. Right. But you know, we, it doesn't mean we can't help. Okay.

[00:03:18] In our own ways, you know, even though they're on the other side of the country, there's ways that you and I can help. And those people that are listening can help too, whether you donate some money, donate some time, energy, whatever you do. You know, even if it's a prayer. Yeah. No doubt. Something, you know, and we can't forget something you said earlier in during the introduction is that it's about people. And that's what IAP stands for. It's about people. One of its meanings. Yeah.

[00:03:48] And that's, that's what I want us to remember and hold on to before we get into the show. But that's what I have. No doubt. No doubt. Yeah. That's, that's, that's awesome. So I found a really great article. About payroll. There is a research firm out there that put out a bunch of really good guides designating the top software providers and just trends and things like that.

[00:04:17] And I, I found a quote, of course, the link will be in the show notes, but I found this awesome quote from the article. And it says the future of payroll is not just about processing payments. It's about creating a more agile, compliant and worker centered function that supports the long-term success of the organization. Now is the time for organizations to take the next step and make payroll a driving force for positive change. And this is, uh, been quoted by Mr.

[00:04:47] Mark Smith, who is a partner at software research, a partner of software research at ISG and the company that, that put out the basically research papers and guides, you know, they, they, there is a demand for dynamic real-time solutions that can handle the tax implications of employees working across state and national borders.

[00:05:12] And the rise of real time payroll is requiring enterprises to make rapid adjustments. We talk about that all the time, that real time payroll piece. That's really changing the way we process and, you know, great again, great topic to be mindful of and to cover, put it on our list. And maybe it'll be the next episode. The, and just to cap this off the ISG payroll pay payroll management buyer's guide produced

[00:05:41] by ISG software research, formerly known as ventana research, identify two trends that are sending, setting new expectations for payroll systems, the rise of real time payroll, which allows workers to access their earned wages rather than waiting for pay, the pay period to end. And not only the paper that the pay date because pay days after the pay period.

[00:06:07] So, you know, waiting for your money and the increasing use of AI and machine learning to detect anomalies in payroll data, ensure compliance with local laws and forecast payroll expenses based on historical data. So amazing re I mean, go to the, go get this lay. If you are someone that is like loves to learn and research thing. This is great.

[00:06:33] Like I already, I already got pulled into the site and like going to get the guides and I already eat my email myself. One of the guides and there's several on the website. The link in the show notes has to the article has a link. The article has the links of the guides and the website. So go check it out. And I'll leave it at this. Cause again, so much good information. Two things. They, they designated the top three software providers as leaders in each category for

[00:07:03] the 2024 study and the leading providers are ranked in order payroll management, ADP Oracle, UKG global payroll, ADP Oracle, UKG international payroll, ADP Oracle, UKG multi-country payroll. I feel like global international multi-country, all the same thing, but ADP Oracle, UKG and

[00:07:31] U S payroll, ADP Oracle and UKG. So, you know, I, I'm, I'm hope I didn't dig in it or, you know, you know, are they ranked that way because those three are the biggest supporters who knows? I'm hoping it's an independent study, but you know, go ahead. Like, go ahead and dig in. Right. It's unbiased. Hopefully it's unbiased exactly, but yeah, really good info. And again, it just kind of great segue into today's conversation about AI, you know, and,

[00:08:01] and, and yeah, check it out is really, Oh, one of the things I opened the guide real quick. Cause again, I just easily go down these rabbit holes and one of the, I wonder if I still have it up. Hey everybody. It's Libby again with fearlessness. So what's fearlessness? It's that underlying grit that empowers us to forge ahead. Even when hope seems distant, it's the courage to walk through those fires of hell, knowing that we're going to come out better and stronger on the other side. Stay tuned and learn how to get fearlessness.

[00:08:31] Do I? Maybe. Nope. It started talking about how payroll systems could be used as a communication device to employees. Yeah. And we, and organizations always struggle on how to figure out how to communicate effectively with their employees because you really can't force communication. You have to get their opt in. You know what I mean?

[00:08:56] I mean, there's some ways I guess you can kind of force it, but to really engage and to get back and forth in that engagement, you really, you, you gotta get meaning you gotta opt in. Like if you want to use an app, you know what? If you want to like set up an app to, for the whole company to use, they gotta opt into that. You know what I mean? Or think about it like this in terms of tech messages that you get, right? You know, I, you go to a website or service, whatever it may be.

[00:09:24] And you put your, you know, all that stuff in, you put your contact info in, they send you a text to your number and you say, stop. Yes. We, that will be one of the options that a company can do. Like, Hey, so employee doesn't want to get pinged all day, every day from their employer on a job and they can just kick, kick, stop. But that, that will, that information will be sent back to the job saying, Hey, this, this employee elected to not receive, no longer receive text notification. But that's, that's my point. It's hard.

[00:09:53] It's hard. You can't force it. You know what I mean? Well, you really need, but if you, if they clock in through the, the, your payroll app and they have to log onto the page to clock in. They clock in through ESS. Right. Now you have kind of a forced engagement, right? Cause they have to go to that landing page to clock in and you know, How many times I hear what you're saying.

[00:10:20] I think, I think they should, companies should, in terms of communication, should communicate in multiple ways. Oh yeah, for sure. You know, put it on the app. You have to. Yeah. Via text, email, whatever it may be. But see, that's the thing. They can opt out of the other things. So yes, you could try multiple channels, but what's a really good way to, to, to kind of corner them is do it through their pay system.

[00:10:50] You know what I mean? Cause at some point they're going to engage, whether it be requesting PTO, going to see their pay stubs. Here's W2 time. I'm already getting a hold. So is it a log log in or pop up either? Yeah. Whatever it is. You, you got a captivated audience through the payroll system, right? They, they have to, at some point interact with that payroll system. And depending on how you set things up, it may be more often than not. So I think it's a good idea.

[00:11:19] So any who let's pay some bills before we get into talking about some AI stuff. Well, have fun with that. Shout out to time track go. If you're tired of messy time sheets or complicated time clock software, time clock software, time track go was an intuitive solution that makes managing employee hours simple and efficient, but don't take our word for it. Customers have given time track go a 4.7 out of five stars on Capterra, and they have been

[00:11:47] awarded badges for best ease of use and best customer support again in 2024. Here's what customers are saying. Great value, best clock in app on the market. Great time clock for the modern office, intuitive and efficient, simple to use and priced right. Most importantly, customer support is awesome. All the more important customer support is kind of what can keep somebody with you.

[00:12:17] Even if systems go down, you have good customer support. That changes the way. Everything. So shout out to time track go. To learn more about a safely better solution for time tracking, real time reporting, ETO automation, payroll integrations and more. Go visit www.timetrackgo.com.

[00:12:44] That's T I M E T R A K. Go account. And start your 14 day free trial today. Let's go. Let's go. All right, man. Let's get into it. So what do you want or expect from, I guess it's more sort of want for you as I'm looking for. It's right.

[00:13:11] Yeah, that's exactly because I pointed it out. Well, and you know, Walt's preparation, he says, what do we expect or how do we expect or want? And I was like, wait a minute, vastly different. You get, you know, you get me caught up easily on words. So I know I did. I don't, I don't, I don't expect both anything. Oh, okay. Yeah. So it's easy from one is easy. I don't expect, I don't know what to expect. I have no idea. What I want is the following.

[00:13:38] I want full voice commands with this system. I want to, I want it to learn respectively the business that you're in, right? Whatever company you work for. I wanted to learn that business so that it can begin to be proactive and make suggestions on data variances. So for instance, the reports to search, I'm just, and I'm just, again, these are just a few things I'm naming. I'm sure there's more like who reports to who, right?

[00:14:07] That becomes a big issue when you're approving time cards and approving PTO and approving anything. If you have ESS and Matt, if you have employee self-service and manager self-service, the reports too is critical. So it's like, tell me if there any voids, tell me if everything looks right. Like if, you know, if everybody in a particular location reports to Bob, but there's one person that reports to Chris, wait a minute. That might be wrong. Right? Right?

[00:14:36] So tell me little things like that. Of course you can do it in Excel and you could, right? But no, I just, I want to speak it. Hey, find me this report and not even speak it. After a while, I want it to learn so that it's telling me every time I log in, Hey Brian, I found a bunch of stuff you would be interested in. Yes. You ready to review? Yes, I am. Let's go. Employee classifications. Right?

[00:14:58] Are there any things as we talk about employee classifications all the time, exempt, non exempt salary hourly, 1099 contractors, gig workers, what temporary seasonal, all these things. Right? So fine. So what's up? So, go ahead. I think you're about to explain. I was going to ask you a question about thinking about. No, go ahead. About that. Go ahead. So you're saying you wanted for these things that you're naming right now, you wanted to make suggestions based on these things.

[00:15:28] I wanted to go find, yes, find the discrepancies. Okay. Find possible discrepancies. Right? Okay. You got a thousand employees. They all have an employee classification. Okay. I wanted to start learning what looks might, what might be off. You know, one of the things that I've, one of the things that I use in my audit for employee classification is, and one of them I think is unique to ADP. Yep. Where you, ADP shows you a per pay period amount. Yep.

[00:16:00] Differently for salary than it does for hourly. Hourly, it shows you in their hourly rate for salary that shows you annual divided by 26 or 24 or whatever your division is. Right? Yeah. Now I use that data point to validate the employee classification because it's three data points. I look at when I'm doing employees classification audits. Yeah.

[00:16:27] That per period amount, hourly salary flag, exempt status, exempt, non-exempt. And then actually, if you have it, if you have other things and other, like it could be a pay class because of your time and attendance system, you have enough. That could be another data point that has to be right and has to match everything. Your benefit eligibility class could be another one. There's so many different ways, man. So many different ways. Well, just employee classifications I'm talking about.

[00:16:56] That's what I'm talking about. What data points help you understand which is right. And then, again, I use that per pay period one to validate the other ones because if you're salaried, how can I say? If all the other ones say salary, but your per pay period amount is hourly, you're going to, that it's wrong. Like somebody, and you're going to, the employee's probably going to pick that up really quick. Like, hey, wait a minute.

[00:17:26] I'm not getting paid right. Right? And vice versa, maybe not. If you're salaried or if you're hourly and you're set up a salaried employee may not complain because they might be on some auto pay and they just getting paid and they're not saying anything. So, again, but see, point is I want AI to figure all that shit out and tell me. Right? Yeah. Direct deposit information. You're right over there. You juggling direct deposit information. Right? Show me whatever I need to say.

[00:17:56] Oh, a good one is show me who's been on direct deposit for more than two pay periods because you know what? I need them to get off of live checks and onto direct deposit. Like if you want to push a direct deposit campaign. Right? Who hasn't been on direct deposit. Who, right? Show me who, who, who has gone more than two paychecks since hired. Like, you know, without direct being on direct deposit. Right? Or whatever, whatever. Show me the, whatever, whatever the data point is.

[00:18:25] Clean up unused codes. Right? If you, if you have a earning code library and a deduction code library and you only use a few of them. Hey, tell me which ones I haven't used this year. I haven't used in the last 12 months. Again, these are all things you can run manually, but I want to just speak it. I want to teach the system and start it, it for it to feed me this information and tell me when it's happening. Right?

[00:18:50] Because then it avoids having to run these periodic audits on a scheduled basis. The AI is doing it all the time in real time. And every time you log in, it's telling you, it's giving you an update or however you want it. Right? You could say, Hey, text me, set it up. They'll be like, Hey, you know what? I want you to text me when this happens or with this, you know what? Leave it to logging in, leave this to that, you know, whatever. Missing data points, which, which could be critical.

[00:19:19] You know, you, you need people can log in or can do something because the automatic pay, like I said, salary, you know, flag for systems usually has an, yeah, the salary, but you usually have to set up kind of click that auto pay as well for it to work. If that data point is missing, that salary person is not going to get paid. Yep.

[00:19:40] So proration, as we talk about salary, automate the pro rate, like really nail that onboarding offboarding pro rated salary person to like based on their start date and where we are in the pay period. You cut their check properly. I ain't got to manually figure it out. Some systems have a tool, but I mean, I've literally talked to some vendors and they're like, Oh, I don't really like how it works and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like that's crazy.

[00:20:08] So anyway, that's what I want the AI to do for me. What else? Audit reports for separate audit reports from separate sources against the system data. Right. I want to feed in a report from operations. I just got a report from operations saying where all the store numbers and employees are. All right, cool. Run that against the system and show me, you know, are there any store numbers on this file that aren't in the system and vice versa? Yeah, because then something's off. Right.

[00:20:37] Reports to that, that, that operations report had store managers and regionals validate against that, against the system for me. Like, I don't want to do the work. You do it. Here's the data. You do it. AI build, build reports on historical data. Look back. And this got me thinking about Celery.com, like the vegetable, Celery.com, as they offer a service, right, that looks back at your payrolls.

[00:21:03] And then it suggests some places where you may be missing or overlooking as far as data, trans anonymities, all those, all those type of things. Tell me what parts of the software underutilized. Tell me what I'm not using. Tell me where there may be some room that I could, the opposite, where I need to upgrade. Hey, you guys see you using this a lot and blah, blah, blah. You might benefit from this upgrade that we have.

[00:21:31] I don't know about you, but I don't know very many people that are hopeful about the world of work. And I'd like to change that. My name is Marcus Mossberger and I started the Hope at Work podcast where you'll find two things. Number one, really interesting guests. And number two, innovative ideas about the future of work. Check it out. Create input exception batches based on voice or emails, right?

[00:21:59] Maybe I can talk it like, hey, system, please pay Bill Smith employee number, blah, blah, blah. A bonus of blah, blah, blah on the next payroll. Thanks. Or I could text it to my AI and it and it's building the batch as I give it key information. Right, because to build a batch or you look at an EPIP file or an upload file from any software payroll vendor. All they need is the ID number, the code, the amount. The rate is a few data points that you need. You don't need a whole story. You know, boom.

[00:22:29] I want to speak it to it or type it, text it, email it and booms. Something that could integrate with my email and like pull data out of it and be like, hey, it looks like you have an email from a manager out this. It looks like they may need you to do X, Y, boom, boom, boom. Would you like me to set this up? Yes. Yep. Okay. Feed in outside reports to create viable uploads based on it. It's kind of the same thing I was saying. Monitor for tax and compliance issues. What? Overtime. Overtime daily.

[00:22:59] Overtime when they're a certain age and a certain hours in a day and seven days in the eight days and all these states that have all these overtime variances. Like, I constantly looking for it. And, you know, even if it's not well, whatever, I'm getting crazy. And then the last one I got is distribute reports for me securely. Like I try to kind of look at the, you know, I was thinking about the lifecycle of the payroll process. And, you know, at the end of it, I need to get reports out. You know, taxes, of course, needs to be filed.

[00:23:29] Most good vendors kind of have that. Well, good. But anyway, like, you know, I can distribute my reports and like, okay, hey, all right. AI. Payroll is done. Send all the reports out to all the stakeholders that need them, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever. And so it's in a secure manner, you know? Yeah. And those are all good, great baits. You know, I think a lot of people will identify with those. I definitely feel like you touched on some of the things I have as well here.

[00:23:58] And, you know, like AI for routine automation, those routine things, those low hanging fruit things that, you know, that take time for us. They'll take seconds for AI to do. For real. Like you were saying, auditing payroll and ensuring compliance with those wages and taxes. You know, that are free up HR and payroll pros to focus on more strategic things. So those different initiatives, like enhancing overall productivity for the teams and stuff. Right. Streamline workflows.

[00:24:28] You kind of mentioned that too. You know, you like the, I want the, I want AI to optimize my workflow, simplify and optimize it. Right. So like maybe adding some automation to those bonus approval chains, those exception pays, you know, send timely reminders for year end processes to employees and my, and, and, and the inter departmental staff and cohort. Right. You know, and hopefully to reduce those bottlenecks and improve efficiency.

[00:24:58] Right. I wanted to look at costs. Effective solutions for us. Right. So maybe. By optimizing the district distribution of how look at how paychecks and pay statements are distributed. Right. Analyze shipping patterns. And suggest more economical methods. You know, that may impact the bottom line in a positive way.

[00:25:23] You know, you kind of mentioned this too, data driven insights, you know, about how AI can incorporate analytics into payroll processes. Right. And analyzing those data trends, you know, and it can, and I want my AI to offer actionable insights and I wanted to predict future payroll needs. Yeah. And helping those. That would be nice. You know what I'm saying? Okay. This time last year, you had a spike in blah, blah, blah.

[00:25:52] Is that, can we anticipate that this year as well? We noticed that door this holiday. You had a, you still had a same amount of OT. Maybe you should look at this or whatever. You know, maybe what's going on, you know? And I wanted to help out in strategic decision-making. I want AI to enhance the employee experience, bro. You know, I want the employee experience to be improved. I want it to be like, you know what I want?

[00:26:19] I want it to be like the employee feels like they dealt with a human. A human that offered them, offered them top tier personalized support. You know what I'm saying? Like they got their answer. They did it quickly and offered thorough, simple, easy to understand explanations and power to use and navigate employee self-service.

[00:26:40] You know, and the different options they have there and make sure that employees have access to accurate information quickly. You know what I want? I feel like AI could do and give an answer way quicker. You want, it would be less of a, oh, let me get back to you or go. Let me check. Yeah. Yeah. And I'll follow up with you. Yep. You know what I'm saying? I think that will enhance the employees, which we're so big on, you know, you know, predictive maintenance, right?

[00:27:08] I want AI to predict potential issues. Like we were saying before, before they occur. Right. So I want forecasting compliance, you know, and I want forecasting and identifying discrepancies and payroll data. And which allow us, allows us to be more proactive because lots of times in payroll, there's a lot of react. It may not be our fault. Why? There's a reaction to something, but there's a lot of reaction.

[00:27:36] Cause somebody didn't get a punch and somebody did submit a PTO approval or something like that. Right. And that causes reaction. It's awfully simple as minimum wage updates just went through for one, one 25. A bunch of states. Yep. Why do I got to do that manually?

[00:27:57] AI should know the compliance coming up, double check against all the states and all, and, and, and, and can reconfirm and implement update, you know, update the rates for all impacted folks. Yeah. And, and, and cause I learned about, you know what? Well, I learned about compression this past year and compression for those of us like me, who didn't know what that meant is wage compression.

[00:28:25] I didn't know what that meant to this past year where it's like, okay, minimum wage is going up in the state. But if there's somebody senior, that's already at that rate, you got to bring them up because now, right. If they're always supposed to be a, over the other juniors. Yes. I've, I've heard of that, but I, I, the, the practice, but I'd never knew what the specific term was. That's it. No, no, no. That's it. Yeah. That's, that's wage compression. Yeah.

[00:28:55] And, um, like do it for me. Cause I don't know what the formula is. Like, I don't know what right is wrong. Like, Hey, if I'm making 20 bucks an hour and everybody else is making 15, but now minimum wage got raised to 20. So you want, you want, how much do I supposed to go up? I would want, I guess the same percentage that I was already over everybody. Yeah. You say you wanted to predict or just that you want to know. I wanted to do it with my approval.

[00:29:25] Like I wanted to say in December, Hey, in, in one month or actually like all year long, as soon as the legislation is changing state by state, it should be prompting me. So one, these states are going to have minimum wage increase. When do you want to, should I, whatever. On top of that, I would want AI to look at cost of living with, like you said, with your approval. Right. Right. And sector that in as well.

[00:29:54] So they had the option, like, Hey, with cost of living and, and the other factors that you mentioned, maybe the percentage of increase should be this without cost of living. Maybe it should be this. Yes. Great call out. Well, that requires leadership approval. Whereas minimum wage does not. You know what I mean? Minimum wage is a compliant thing that they have to abide by. The cost of living is like, but you're right. It should say, Hey, do we want to make cost of living adjustments? The, that should be some minute.

[00:30:24] It, it, it, it, but that's a great call out. You can teach it to do that. Like, Hey, Brooke, give me a cost of living report across the whole companies. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So guess what? This is how we're looking. Yeah. Well, I'm most of my last one here. I want the eye to kind of be not self governing, but self.

[00:30:54] I don't know if correcting is the word I'm looking for, but self checking. Right. To the point, like it's at almost ethical. Like, so it'd be like, Hey, are you sure that you're okay with me doing this? Because you, you allow me to do this creates a loophole here, or, or you might lose some oversight here. I like that doing this. So I, I would want to have, I want AI to have that kind of ethical part of it too, built into it.

[00:31:22] Or you said maybe a learn that we teach it that then, Hey, I don't want you to operate in, in such a silo that I don't know what you're doing. Oh, hell no, no, no, no. This all has got to be transparent and you know, yeah, you, you got to give me a change report every day or you got, but it's like how you set it up. Right. It should be, I don't make any changes without my approval, my voice command, my, and then, and then it could be multiple, right?

[00:31:52] What is it? Multi multi-factor authentication. Yeah. Even if they have your voice, they, right. The way you get it, you get a text message to your voice. You need text. You, maybe you need three people to approve the action scan. You need, yeah, no doubt. It might be. Yeah. Yeah. You know, all these things. And then a, or I mean, I'm sure look, some companies may be mavericks in the whole thing and be like, yeah, just go ahead. I know what the logic is.

[00:32:21] I've already set it to do things and it's going to just do it based on my, what I say. Yeah. And, and give me an audit trail after the fact, you know what I mean? I mean, but all, yeah, all those things, um, ethical, the ethical thing is probably going to get an override because business ethics is an oxymoron. But yeah, folks, that's, and I'm sure, I'm sure there's so many things we missed, but

[00:32:46] hopefully it gets the juices going and people can chime in and let us know what else you think. I want payroll, you know, give me, um, affirmations every day. You're a great process. You look so low. Payroll affirmations to start the day, but yeah. What's so let's see. We got, we got a few questions, a few thoughts of things.

[00:33:12] And I asked how long do you think it's going to take before AI replaces the payroll department? I don't, I don't, I don't think it's going to fully replace the, the payroll department. I think it's going to transform it. I don't think it's fully going to replace it. Yes. Is it going to maybe shift the amount of people and how things are done? Sure.

[00:33:37] But I think that people and AI in regards of, in terms of payroll will always be connected. Um, in some way, I think there's always going to be somebody now that your expertise, you know, the, the, the payroll job, the payroll career may look completely different. You know, in a couple of years, right. In 20 years, it may look completely different. Well, that's my question. How long do you think it's going to take for all that? Well, I mean, that's not the credit thing.

[00:34:06] This is how long do you think it's going to take for AI to replace the payroll department? Well, that's, that's your, you're saying you're saying, but not how long, whatever your vision of it is. How long do you think that's going to take? Oh, okay. Okay. Um, I think that, I think that's going to be. Have you ever been to a webinar where the topic was great, but there wasn't enough time to ask questions or have a dialogue to learn more? Well, welcome to HR and payroll 2.0 the podcast where those post webinar questions become episodes.

[00:34:34] We feature HR practitioners, leaders, and founders of HR payroll and workplace innovation and transformation, sharing their insights and lessons learned from the trenches. We dig in to share the knowledge and tips that can help modern HR and payroll leaders navigate the challenges and opportunities ahead. So join us for highly authentic unscripted conversations and let's learn together. In years. In years. In years. In years. In years.

[00:35:01] I thought it was going to take longer, but the, the, the faster this moves, I'm going to, like I said it on the last show, five to 10 years. Yeah. And I do think it's going to replace the payroll department. I think it's going to really, yeah, I think it's all, it's going to leave one person standing. So I knew that there's going to be people with just the title of payroll manager and payroll pilot managed to process. Yep. Yep. Yep. Payroll. Payroll.

[00:35:28] You can still call them payroll manager direct, but it'll be a party of one. Yep. Maybe we'll see. I think that, I mean, that's maybe uncomfortable to, to digest for some, but that's that, that is going to, and I think the quicker people get around that, the better they will evolve in the next five to 10 years. I think, I think, I think you're going to see a lot more people.

[00:36:01] Maybe doing payroll gig work might become a thing. And, you know, doing one off things for them, like for companies themselves and stuff like that. And I'll process your company, process your bureau for your company. By myself, I have all the resources and this and that. I have a server and may see something like that. And who knows? It's going to change the game. That's all I know. Who knows? We're going to see. Mm-hmm. And I have a bonus question for you.

[00:36:32] Before we end the show. With all the anticipation surrounding AI and its impact, Brian, would it be wise for us to expect some letdowns and what it can do? Yes, but the letdowns are going to be because of human limitations. Okay. I think it's going to be human comfort level. Oh, it's going to be the letdown.

[00:37:00] So you're saying that the push, if there's any pushback or letdowns is going to be from not being willing to adjust or adapt. Allow. Allow. Yeah. Because the gatekeepers are going to, you know, the business, I think some companies are going to be more into AI than others. Right? So it's like people are going to be like, oh, I want to go work over there because they've fully embraced it as opposed to, it's going to be automation. Think about automation. Right?

[00:37:30] It's, you know, some companies have great automation. Some don't. You know, some folks don't have share drives and, you know, like little things that, you know, and I think it's going to be a lot of things. It's going to be the same thing. We're going to be limited because of the human piece of it. Yeah. So there's a stat out there that says about, and it might be people that are owning the business. Right?

[00:37:55] So this was a year, this is already about a year ago, but it said that over 51% of the businesses in the United States are owned by baby boomers. So as now as they were, yeah, I know that it's going to change. So as businesses get bought and more people come out and stuff like that, it's going to be more people that are leaning towards more towards technology and AI. Yeah.

[00:38:23] I'm not saying that baby boomers don't do that. Again, it's going to follow this formula of crossing the chasm with the innovators, first time movers, laggards. I missed probably a few in there, but it all follows that formula of how quickly people will adjust to the automation, the technology of things. Right? I'm going to fully embrace AI, whereas somebody else might be like, ah, I'm not comfortable with doing all that.

[00:38:53] And no, I still want to run my reports and do my V lookups and da, da, da, da, da. And yeah, you go for that. Do that. You do that. I'll be 20 miles ahead of you at that point and you stay there. So I'll be chilling, looking at my monitor because I'm going to tell AI to keep me updated, like reading the news. I'm going to be, okay. Yeah. No, it's doing some audits for me right now. Oh, wait, crap. Let me flag that one for later. Cause that, that old crap.

[00:39:23] He's got a level, level five red level. Well, you know what I'm saying? It's going to be a conversation that you're having with your system. Yeah. That's the, that's the place that it's got to get to. I want to have a conversation. I want that thing to text me like, yo, you need to read this report. You know what I mean? You need, you need to look at my, my results for this audit. Cause she is looking messed up. You know what I mean? OT OT is crazy. You need to tell the leaders quickly.

[00:39:52] Can I, can I send this report to the leaders? Cause she doesn't fall. You know what I mean? Like, you know, that's how I, that's how it's going to be, but not all are going to embrace it to that extent. Wow. Okay. Man. Good, good, good stuff, right? Yes, sir. All right. Like always. And, and hit us up on LinkedIn. Let's let us know what you all think. Right. We'll, we'll, what we'll do.

[00:40:22] And you know what? If you're, if, if you're game, let's play it. Let's start the games. The first person that reaches out to me or Walt on LinkedIn and gives us what they think AI will do. Something that we did not say in today's show. $25 Amazon gift card to you. Okay. Reach out to us.

[00:40:42] The first person that reached out to me or Walt on LinkedIn via DM, or I guess you could post it somewhere or even on the company, the, the, the, the company LinkedIn page, wherever we see it. And we acknowledge it. The first person. Yep. $25 Amazon gift card. All right. So, yeah, check us out. We love you. Peace. Peace.

[00:41:17] Before we sign off, here are a couple of quick things. Don't forget to follow It's About Payroll on LinkedIn, and it's about your paycheck on Facebook and TikTok. Thank you for being part of our payroll community, and thank you for being a part of this journey with us. Until the next time, keep learning, keep growing, and most importantly, keep going.