Up Next @ Work, Episode 36 with Pete A. Tiliakos of Payroll Influences

[00:00:09] Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Up Next at Work. I am your host for today, Kate Akili. And joining me is Pete Tiliakos from Payroll Influences. Pete, tell the folks about yourself. Yeah, yeah. So good to be here. I'm a big fan of the show. You've been on our show and we did a little bit of swap cast. So yeah, I'm very familiar and really excited to be here. But yeah, look, I'm probably a longtime player in the game. I was looking at it today before the show. I've been in HR now for 34 years. I know I don't probably look

[00:00:39] that old. I am that old, I guess. But yeah, I actually- Good genes. Yeah, yeah. Greek, right? My grandmother and my grandfather. Yeah, no. But yeah, no, I've actually been, I was explaining this to someone once. I was like, I've actually worked in HR since I was 18. I don't know if you know this, but I was in the military. I was in the Marines. And I went in the first, I went in during the first Gulf War. I thought, I thought I was going to go to Iraq, right? Like desert storm, you know, all that, right? Well, it ended before

[00:01:09] I ever got, you know, through all my training. But the crazy thing was, is I got, I got stationed on Paris Island. I went through bootcamp and combat training, all that sort of thing. And I ended up going to admin school and I got sent back to Paris Island and I got put in this shared service center. It was day one when it opened. I actually have a plaque and it opened the day, it was the first, right? First day. And so I thought that was a white collar prison at the time. I thought like all my friends are doing all this Marine stuff and I'm sitting

[00:01:37] here in their office. Like, what do we talk, you know, what are we doing here? This isn't what I signed up for. I thought it was gonna be traveling. And, you know, and here I was, what it turned out I was doing was we had consolidated all the HR processes on the base for Paris Island, where all the bootcamp type training goes. And I was auditing HR data is what I was doing. I was auditing people's pay and entitlements and training. And if you know the Marines, the way it's, it's,

[00:02:04] it's incredibly small. It's incredibly, incredibly it's up or out, right? If you don't, if you're not promotable, there's really no use for you anymore, right? If you can't lead, there's no use for you. So, um, and the standard is the standard and you can, you can either meet that standard or you don't. Um, and the reality of it is, is that was like such a hyper performant or a hyper formative time for me, because looking back, I didn't understand at the time. I thought I was just maintaining

[00:02:30] paperwork, right? Like I said, white collar prison, but what it turned out was I was, I was managing HR data and that data meant everything to these Marines who were trying to get promoted, right? One data point could have been the difference between me or you, uh, getting that next, next promotion. And so it was very, very impactful for me, um, as to what the severity of all that was, but I didn't really get the context. Right. And so I get out and, um, I go back to, uh, where I was from and I happened to go

[00:02:54] to work for one of the largest, the largest PEO at the time, one of the pioneers of PEO, uh, which actually became the roots of Trinet, uh, today. Right. And I actually managed HR at scale, um, for businesses of all kinds, right? I had a team of practitioners and we were leading, uh, um, you know, payroll benefits, compliance, helping with, you know, HR BP type work. Um, and then from there, my career just went from one thing to the next, right? I ended up at a very young age, uh, working for Disney and leading payroll transformation for them, helping build their shared service center.

[00:03:24] Um, and then later on, on into bigger, you know, bigger transformation with IBM and helping some very big companies do work there. Uh, and then Deloitte eventually in their human capital management practice, and then eventually became an analyst. So I say all that to say that like, I've, um, like I've walked a mile in the, in, in the leader, the frontline payroll leader and HR leader shoes, right. I've, I've, I've helped some of the biggest companies, you know, transform HR over the years, right. Help them select cloud platforms moving from on-prem to, to cloud. Um,

[00:03:54] you know, I've, I've, I've been, I've been there and I, and I guess what I'm saying is, is that as an analyst now, right. Who's researching and, um, and really advising many of the firms in the marketplace, to me, I think what really sets my work apart is just having walked a mile, right. And trying to speak and be a voice for that, for that, for the profession, right. Because we do need, um, we need to protect HR and payroll. It's incredibly, incredibly important. And we see a lot of real negative stuff right now, uh, with, you know, the, the, the, the sort of what I would say the, the,

[00:04:23] the devaluing of it, um, at a time when I think it's probably more valuable than ever. And so, yeah, that's a little bit about me in a very, very short nutshell, I guess, a long career in HR. So, you know, Pete, you are one of the only analysts that really focuses on payroll, um, which makes you again, sort of the expert by default. If you hadn't had all of that experience, um, I like how you, you said company is bigger than Disney, um, which was sort of funny, but you

[00:04:51] know, one of the reasons I want to talk to you today is because you are launching your payroll profession confidence index survey. Um, what is it? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So the PPCI, right. The payroll profession confidence index, um, is a very unique research set that was born out of my work as an industry analyst, right? I was the head of research, HR, uh, and tech, uh, research over, or sorry, tech and services research over at Nelson hall and built their HCM program.

[00:05:18] I developed and built out their global payroll program and as well as launched their, their EOR program, uh, which was the first ever. I don't know if people know that it was the first ever research and market sizing for that, for that space. And so one of the things I figured out, like as a former practitioner myself, um, and as a professional researcher is there was a problem with the research in the market for payroll. There is, and I'm guilty of helping with some

[00:05:43] of it, right? I'm absolutely guilty of it because a lot of it is led by vendors and consultancies, right? Like you've got a lot of great research on say operational metrics. Deloitte did some great stuff on that. I know the APQC does some great stuff on benchmarking. You know, how many people should you have in your HR team or your payroll team or your, you know, whatever, but what we never really did well was we never really went past the surface level sort of, um, details. So in other words,

[00:06:11] so much of the research in the market tells two stories, story one, largely driven by vendors, as you can imagine. And I would argue HR has the same problem, but maybe to a lesser degree is we tell this story about payroll that says, well, all you really need is technology, right? What do you have? What can we sell you? And then the outcome and the answer becomes technology, right? And that, that's fine. That's right. That's not wrong, but that's only really part of the story,

[00:06:38] right? I mean, Chick-fil-A needs technology. I mean, everybody, right? Needs technology. Your, your airlines have amazing technology now. Um, any, any business does that's a baseline digital requirement, right? What else? Well, there's not a lot of what else in any of that research. And the other part of it that really, really bothered me was, and don't get me wrong in all of HR and payroll buying decisions or any SAS or any transformative buying decision, you've got to have ROI. I get it.

[00:07:04] But the problem for payroll is we've, we've, we've largely told an ROI story that is rooted purely in what I would call payroll hospice, right? How, how, how dead can this thing be? How, how, how much could we put this thing on life support to where it's stable, but we don't have to actually put anything into it and we don't actually expect to get anything out. And if it isn't broken, let's just leave it and hope that we can, we can get by, which is pure insanity, right? The idea that

[00:07:33] the only way that you're going to get value from payroll is if you get, if you strip it to nuts and bolts is an absolute horrible, horrible advice, right? Now, is that, is that often what people see when it comes to ROI? Hey, I can reduce heads. Sadly, yes. And HR and payroll, I think we do both of those things too much. But the reality of it is, is that we're really throwing the baby out with the bathwater and we needed some research to tell the real story. So that's where the PPCI came in.

[00:08:00] The idea that we needed to be able to go and say, Hey, how do we go past this? How do we look at the relationships? How do we look at the sentiment, right? Of how the organization sees and even views payroll, how they, how they're respected, how they're positioned, how, how are they integrated and not just technically, but like integrated into the strategy of the business. Um, and we really wanted to dig into all those things and also measure the material, real ROI of payroll, which is not a cost

[00:08:27] takeout exercise. It's really about helping the organization achieve its strategic goals, right? De-risking the path, giving them insights to make good decisions and fortifying, you know, the road ahead so that there is this scalable, flexible, uh, you know, uh, adaptable solution to help or model to help the organization actually achieve those things. And sadly, what we're finding is, is that most organizations are not prepared from that perspective. They are undervaluing payroll

[00:08:53] and they're completely missing a ton of, ton of ROI and putting their businesses in a lot of risk. And that's what we're really trying to get at and change that, change that messaging to the C-suite and say, Hey, you're really, you're really missing the point here. So this is your third year. This is our third year. Yeah. Um, we started it, um, in so 23, I guess it would have been 24. Uh, and the goal there was to set a baseline, right? Get, get, get something out there to begin kind of figuring out what we need to drill on and what we need to maybe sharpen. And that's where we've

[00:09:22] kind of gradually, uh, taken it forward year over year. And this is our third year. Uh, I'm really excited, you know, we've, uh, reached 31 countries last year and we're hoping to go further this year. So yeah. Awesome. Are there any trends that you're sort of tracking that you think are going to play into this year's findings or that you're hoping to capture? Yeah, absolutely. So look, the goal of this is, so keep in mind, the goal here is think of the PPCI as, um, a megaphone, right? I've got an

[00:09:51] immense ability to influence the vendor community. I have a tremendous following of, of, of, you know, by side leaders and practitioners. The goal here was let's amplify your voice to the C suites and show them what, what they're missing out on. Because I think a lot of the misunderstanding with payroll, um, is largely rooted in just ignorance of just not knowing, right? I think there's a lot of people in HR that just don't understand what payroll actually does and how risky and serious it is. And so what we're really trying to push on is we've done a lot of work

[00:10:20] measuring those relationships, right? We've, we've, we've proven that organizations that have a very, uh, let's say a very clear line of sight for payroll into the strategy and have them, you know, what we'll call at the table, whatever you want to define that as right. Streaming information back and forth and having payroll be, uh, you know, lending strategic advisory to those decisions. Those organizations have a multiplier of three to four X, five X in the outcomes of strategic

[00:10:48] value that they place on payroll. And they see from payroll as a result of simply having a different relationship, right? And, and, and it not being this arm's length thing in the organization. So again, what we've really tried to push hard on is measuring those relationships, but then figuring out the factors that make those relationships successful so that payroll can understand how do we evolve from the processor stigma over to this sort of big four advisor, uh,

[00:11:14] sort of role in the business. And so we're pushing harder on those. We're pushing harder also now on AI, um, because we've kind of stayed away from technology, more, more looking at digital enablers. We're now pushing a little bit further, obviously on AI, the AI literacy and maturity with that at the, at the organizational scale, but also down in the payroll department, um, and really just pushing harder on, um, you know, things like maturity as well, but we're trying to correlate that back to these

[00:11:40] relationships, to the sentiment, the way that payroll is treated and positioned in the organization, uh, is a big key part of that. And that's what we're really, really, really trying to dig in on. Is this, is the, are you looking specifically at the enterprise mid market? Are you looking at all of the above any particular industries? So this is completely open, right? We have that. Let me actually back up before I go there. So one of the things that we did very, very clearly, I wanted to do with this research, um, in the very beginning was we wanted this to be

[00:12:08] completely untethered from any sort of conflict, right? So there is no monetization to this. I don't make any money off of it. No one profits from this data. That's very different than the rest of the market. Most of them, it's a lead gen sort of an opportunity. So there is no data collected in terms of, um, we don't try to triangulate and figure out who you are. We are validating some things with IPs just to make sure there's no duplication of effort, but fundamentally, this is a very anonymized survey, right? That was one of the key feedbacks

[00:12:34] of this being a, you know, being very by payroll for payroll. I worked with a number of very prominent leaders and associations on what we needed to do to make this as accommodating as possible to all stakeholders. This isn't just to people on the front lines of payroll. This is to any finance director, HR leader, anyone owning the remit over payroll. Um, and it's for any business, right? And, and any, uh, you know, organization. And again, what we're really trying to do is,

[00:13:00] and we are getting more and more data points where we can start to look at things. So we do take some demographics. We ask you size of business. Uh, we ask you how many, you know, what sort of scope and footprint you're working with. Uh, we're not going into sector right now because we have been concerned about that anonymity piece because we could potentially connect the dots on some things. Um, but we try to keep it anonymous enough that that's not in there. So the demographics are somewhat lean in terms of, we understand whether or not they're a single or a multi-country organization.

[00:13:28] We know what size they are. We understand, um, uh, a little bit about that, but we're not going quite yet into some of that. We will be adding that, but the goal here is, is again, to create, um, baseline norms to say like, look, on average, the operations around the world are experiencing this. They're at this maturity. It's a very NPS scale. And so we're carving that off and looking at the very mature against the very immature and the very immature or, or maybe minority against, uh,

[00:13:54] the majority. And so in all of those cases, we are providing cuts of that data in this research, by the way, all of my content just like this is completely open source and we give it away. So that's why the monetization part of this, it works for me because we don't need, we don't need, we want this to be about the profession, right? We want this to be for the profession. And so we've kept that out of it, um, purposely, and we are very much working towards, uh, an approach that

[00:14:20] says eventually we want to keep this open forever so that people could fundamentally come and take it at any point, right? We run kind of a push every year or, you know, organically, very organically, but we would love to have it where people could come in and take this and maybe benchmark themselves. And that's where we will begin to kind of open up to maybe more demographics to help with that. Um, but today that report goes out, um, uh, with cuts of it for sort of above a thousand and below a thousand customers, you know, uh, employees paid and then single and multi-country.

[00:14:48] Um, but we are hoping to push a little bit further into that. We just want to protect that sort of anonymity part of it. Um, but again, it's very much, um, it's very much about, um, really, really measuring where we're headed in terms of the profession collectively. And that includes consultants, vendors, whatever. Um, everyone is welcome, right? We want the full voice of the profession to come into this. I ask because, you know, my husband is one of those people who

[00:15:13] still gets a paper paycheck. So that's okay. That's okay. Totally. It's just, you know, very interesting. Cause again, at maturity, um, a lot of organizations operate, you're telling me, I think it's hilarious. Um, so what do HR and payroll professionals, you know, what do you think that they should be thinking? We're heading into budgeting season here, um, as you're sort of running this. So time, time-wise is very interesting. What do you think that they should

[00:15:41] be thinking about? Um, as you're sort of, you're collecting this information, you're steeped in all of this at the same time. I think what I really, what I really hope in all of this and what I really want year after year is that we raise that, that I want to see those relationships increase. I want to see the executive relationships be the strongest, right? Right now it's probably HR or finance and legal, right? That payroll is dealing with the most and, and having the most interaction. I want to see that

[00:16:07] change because what we, we clearly see that there is a difference in the organizations that prioritize payroll strategically. What I don't think that a lot of organizations understand, and I've used the analogy of like a race car, right? Like for years we've seen, and it's been a lot in the last 10, right? You've seen a lot of investment on HR technology of all kinds, right? But then payroll has been left to kind of, again, hospice, right? Good enough, good enough, just limp it along. Yet

[00:16:31] oddly, it's the one process in any organization, doesn't matter how big you are, um, short of maybe a publicly traded company with accounting where your C-suite could go to jail if the, if payroll doesn't do their job. That's, that's a fact. You will, they will lock the doors. They will send notices first and the IRS will lock the doors and they will haul you out in cuffs if you don't pay the taxes, right? It's, it's, it just is what it is. It happens all the time. There's a restaurant

[00:16:57] in Sarasota, Florida, where my family's from. Uh, exactly that happened. The ownership, she stopped paying her payroll tax. She stopped paying her personal tax and they bolted the door shut and all the employees were without a job and without their pay for, uh, now it's all been worked out, I think in bankruptcy court. But the point is, is like, it's not a game. And yet we have, it's kind of in some organizations, the last thing that they're investing in yet. It ought to be the first thing. So I use this analogy of a race car, right? You can, you can have,

[00:17:24] I listened to the McLaren, um, CEO talk one time about how like shaving off a 10th of a millimeter of metal was the difference in, in, in their engineering. And, and I look at it like a corporation like that, right? Like you could go and get the best talent, the driver and the pit crew, and you could have the best technology, the car, right? You could put, you could do absolutely everything, right. But if you put that on ill fitting tires and you drive that around the track, you're probably not going to win because the tires are not at performance level, like the rest of the

[00:17:53] organization. Why is payroll that when it's the one thing that will absolutely make you lose, if not cause some serious, serious problems for your strategy. If you're, if you're getting fined and you've got bad PR, uh, and in some countries or even, even definitely countries, but if you're trying to enter those places and you have a misstep with compliance, it could be detrimental to you continuing to exist there. Right? So, um, there's just a lot of, there's a lot of strategic

[00:18:20] ramifications to this and input that payroll could be giving, but they're completely overlooked and ignored. Um, and that's what I hope we change, right? You're, you're sitting on the payroll organization is sitting on large, but what would largely be the most accurate data set in the organization, right? Think about your husband or anyone. We all call payroll first if we have a change, right? Or definitely HR hopefully. Um, but my husband's calling, right? There's one hour

[00:18:44] missing. He's calling and he should, he should, he absolutely should. And that's where I think we need to respect that payroll has some tremendous data. They have tremendous insights. They're absolutely big for consultants. You're just not, you're just not advising with them. You're reaching it out for their advisory and they need to be integrated into, uh, and modernized right along with everything else and being given the opportunity to perform for the business like those tires on a McLaren. So, um, you know, that's what I really want to see is that everybody, Hey, we want everybody

[00:19:13] to have an amazing pay experience. That's not just payroll. There's a lot that goes into that. Um, but we also need to make sure that we're using payroll as the strategic partner that it is and not this sort of arm's length processor, because if that's what you're doing still, you're, you're, you're totally missing the point. Um, you know, and you're missing out on a lot of really grit, rich insights and hopefully, and maybe, maybe even making some missteps that you could be, uh, could be solving. So, um, yeah, a lot of opportunity here for, for everyone.

[00:19:42] Well, I think to your earlier point, um, there is still a big stigma around payroll. Um, I think there's a lot of, for sort of the average human who does not work in HR or payroll. I think there's, they wouldn't be able to tell you what payroll does besides paycheck. And that's a problem. Yeah, that's it. You know, if you have people, yeah, no, agreed, agreed. Can I tell you this? I've done a couple of shows on this. Uh, there's an organization in Australia. They've changed their name from the Australian workforce compliance

[00:20:10] council to the, I think it's the international payroll management Institute possibly. Um, and I'll just tell you that they are actively working with the federal government. Um, they have credential or sorry, they have pulled payroll into its own. Um, like, like here in America, we have, uh, industry codes. I think it's goes around workers comp. They have a similar sort of construct. They have now deemed payroll its own standalone, uh, industry and its own profession

[00:20:37] away from a sort of subset of bookkeeping. Um, and one of the things that, that came, comes, came into play there is they have a large sort of employee relations kind of slant to HR. It's almost like, um, almost like union in, in, in, in an American organization, but a little bit different. It's almost a little political. And one of the things that has been determined in, in all of this work with the government is that, that having it, there was a fight to have it housed

[00:21:03] under HR, uh, and it was deemed unskilled to handle it. Right. So they have broken it out into its own, into its own track. And they are working closely with, uh, the university system. The UK has already done this to credential payroll leaders through the university system. They're doing the same thing in Australia or hope to. And the goal is to actually credential them on par with lawyers and CPAs, given the severity and the complexity and the, and the skillset that's needed to properly do

[00:21:30] their job. So if you stop and think about that, I mean, you think about the way, if I could read some of the qualitative results of the payroll profession confidence index and the, and the things that you hear in there about the way people are treated, it's a far cry from that level of prioritization. And I think that's the danger that companies are operating in because there's just this, there's just this complete lack of understanding, um, of what they're doing. Um, and, and the severity of, of their, of their, of their outcomes of what their work is, but also the

[00:21:59] skillsets that they could be bringing to the table that are just completely overlooked. That's a skillsets. It's really sensitive information. I think there's also, um, there's been a shift culturally in recent years where it used to be really taboo to talk about what you were paid. Um, yeah, now in an organization and now it's, you know, there's a number of, um, just from a media perspective, there's publications like refinery 29 and the purse and places like that where people

[00:22:26] submit money diaries where they talk about that. They don't name their employers, but they talk about what their salary is and what they're paid and things like that. So, you know, that wall is being taken down from a public perspective. So payroll professionals, um, we need to change how they're treated and you know, how they're seen at the same time, because, um, one thing is happening, you know, publicly, but the other is not changing at the same time.

[00:22:55] No, I absolutely agree. And one of the things I will tell you, I have seen, we've talked about this on our show, Julie and I have that we are seeing some organizations. We've seen it in small. We've also seen it in large is they're kind of, kind of starting to look at payroll and say, like, I think in the past we've said, Oh, chicken or the egg, is it HR? Is it finance? I mean, you can, you can decide there's no wrong answer. I don't think, I think from a controllership perspective, it largely belongs with finance in an enterprise, but I, but at the same time, I think there needs to be a hybrid

[00:23:21] care and feeding of people that HR is uniquely, uniquely fit to do. But one of the things I love that I'm seeing more of is I've seen some organizations starting to pull payroll over into the total reward side of HR. So not just HR generically, but HR where you've got comp, Ben and payroll kind of nestled together. And I really love that because to me that's B and that speaks to some of the frameworks that we have in this in this research, right? It's not just research saying,

[00:23:47] Hey, what are people feeling? There's also some very, very interesting frameworks, industry first frameworks I put out on what strategic output looks like for payroll, as well as how to measure it differently to get to that better, you know, real ROI. But the go back to that pay experience, that being one of the key tenants of strategic output for payroll, facilitating that. And there's many, many components that go in there. What better place to really be harmonizing and working very closely together than comp, Ben and payroll, right? For a pay experience kind of a play. I think that's

[00:24:16] really forward looking. And I'm seeing some organizations really lean into that. And I think I love that because now we're talking about like for like coming together end to end. And you really got that sort of, again, pay experience, right? Modern pay experience being employed there. Or holistic. Yeah. It is. Yeah. And it's so much more than payroll, right? It's the transparency, the equity, you know, the modality. You know, you talk about your husband wanting a direct deposit. That's okay. I mean, some people want crypto. Some people want stable coin, whatever. It's fine. I think you have

[00:24:45] to give people that option and that modality to be able to personalize their experience and be comfortable that they can trust what they're being paid and why. Yeah. And that key word, right? Trust. That's a key product output for payroll. Yeah, absolutely. Well, in my husband's case, you know, he works for an employer that is then within a union. So then that's even more, there's layers. Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah. I've been there. Yeah. Yeah. That just further complicates

[00:25:12] matters. So for folks who are listening, who are curious about the payroll profession, confidence index and the survey and what it entails, um, tactically speaking, what does it look like to participate if they want to spend some time? You know, how much time would it take? Um, what's different about it for this year? Um, why should they spend their time doing this? Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. No. Come over to payroll influences.com. You'll find it on my, um,

[00:25:42] surveys page. It's, uh, I think it's actually forward slash PPCI 2026 maybe, but just go to payroll influences, all the research and content there is completely open source. I don't ask anyone who they are. They can just take it. Um, that's kind of the spirit of the way I do things. I want to really help lift the, the, the, the industry that it lifted me. And I said it the other day differently. I think I said, I want to elevate the, uh, the industry that elevated me. And that's really what it's about, right? That's why we give away our podcast. We give away the research.

[00:26:08] Um, so look, it takes you maybe 10 minutes, 12 minutes. Um, it's really, again, going to be asking you a lot about, um, you know, a light amount about what your, what your demographic is, but then it's really about your experience, right? What is your sentiment towards technology? How do you feel, you know, how, how is your organization leaning into you? Uh, what are the investments they're making? Do you feel they're invested? Do you feel they're engaged? Um, and, and really just very flowy, right? So I've got it. I've actually utilized a tool to create an experience. So I've actually

[00:26:36] sort of sacrificed some, some data crunching capabilities to make it easier for people, but it's completely open. You can, in fact, you could even come in and come back later and finish it if you wanted, but it's, it'll take you 10 minutes. And really what we're asking for is, you know, just tell us your experience, right? Pick it up like a microphone and yell into that thing. Tell me what you want the world to know about payroll and your experience in that, uh, and your operations and the progress that you're making. And we'll go and collectively amplify that, uh, to everyone. Like I said, it takes 10 minutes and please like, look, take it, but put it in the

[00:27:06] hands of someone, someone else that could, that could contribute to it. That's the best way we're going to organically grow it. There's no monetization to this. So we are, uh, really just bootstrapping it and trying to give back with this. Um, and so we need, we need more help. And I would say, listen, if you're listening to this and payroll is not in your remitter, I mean, I mean, listen, it's hard to say that you don't care about payroll. Everybody's touched by it, right? We're all, if we're all have a job, we're probably touched by it. Um, put it in the hands of your payroll leaders, right? Put it in the hands of the stakeholders in your organization that do,

[00:27:33] uh, preside over payroll, whether that's your finance director, your HR, whatever. Um, any and everyone is welcomed. Anyone with a stakeholdership to payroll is welcome to tell us about their experience. And we would love to love to amplify that. So, and thank you. We appreciate you. Yeah. When does the survey close? So it's open right now. It's been open since beginning of July. We'll run it through the end of September. So we're hoping that, uh, we've actually moved it now into fall because we wanted to

[00:28:00] experiment getting away from maybe, uh, we were a little bit too close, I think to year end sometimes, you know, year end can kind of wrap up later into Feb, March for, for payroll and sometimes even for HR. So we pulled away from that, wanted to get more into summer to see if that would help folks, uh, get involved. And, uh, yeah, so far so good. We're, we're, we're doing quite well. Uh, as I mentioned, we've hit 31 countries last year and we'd love to go much further. We need every payroll leader to give their, give their voice in this. Okay. And then once the survey closes,

[00:28:27] you're going to do your analysis and you're going to put out a report that will be also available on your website. Yeah, absolutely. And you can even go back and see 2025 and 2020, uh, 24 data out there if you want to compare those. Uh, and yeah, you're absolutely right. We will publish that open source. Uh, we'll push it out. Likely it's probably going to come before the end of the year. We'll need about a month or so to work with it. Um, and sometimes we have a little overrun for folks that'll say, Hey, you guys need a little more time. Can we have another week? Uh, and we're happy to,

[00:28:54] you know, do that if that comes up, but, um, but yeah, so it should be out by the end of the year and I'll begin, you know, getting out there and presenting it. And you'll see me at different conferences. I have for the last couple of years been, been presenting a lot of it. So, and we even do, I'll tell you, we even do a, uh, kind of a unveil on the HR Imperial 2.0 podcast. So certainly come over and check that out. I've done a few over the last few years, just kind of giving you a behind the scenes of what it's, how it works and what it says. So

[00:29:17] yeah. Join us. Picturing you as Vanna White, um, turning letters, turning letters. Cool. All right. Well, I have one last question for you, Pete, and that is what are you most excited about for the remainder of 2026? You know what I'm excited about honestly, is I love that we're now like, I feel like with AI, especially over the last 24 ish months or so, maybe more, we've really just been kind of talking about what's possible. Now I think we're starting to see it, right? We're really starting

[00:29:45] to see some cool use cases come forward. Like, uh, we bitch about a lot, a lot about leave administration. Uh, if you've ever worked in HR, especially in an, in an enterprise, I always hated those. Cause I felt like we were sending like a mother going on maternity leave into a scavenger hunt, right? Because so much of that just isn't, it isn't neatly compartmentalized in HR, right? It's, it's, it's sometimes building facilities. It's a little bit of, of, of, you know, other things that, that you can't control. And so I love the way we're now not just sort of

[00:30:13] solving a use case, but we're stringing them together. Like that to me is the meat and potatoes for HR. When I think about like my day to day as a, as a practitioner in the past, um, it was that, right? It's like all the sticky notes and handoffs and procedures and who's doing what and chasing this. And, you know, now being able to know that that's kind of getting strung together in an automated way where it's more just kind of surfacing what I need to do about, you know, the next thing versus having to remember all that. And it's, and it's cleaning up the process for

[00:30:42] everyone involved. I, that's what I love. So I just love the fact that we're, we're starting to see the rubber hit the road, you know, and it's not just kind of, um, it's not talk anymore, right? We're really starting to see them come to life and that's, that's awesome. That's what we've been wanting for, for a long time now. So it's finally here. It's what we do with our time now on the other side that matters. Very cool. Okay. So, um, you mentioned payroll influence your website, where else can people find you? Well, you can always reach out to me on LinkedIn,

[00:31:09] right? Pete Tiliakis. Uh, you can check, catch me on Twitter. Same thing. Uh, blue sky, Facebook, you name it. Um, and yeah, payroll influences.com ton of free stuff there. You can always go there. And then of course, HR and payroll 2.0 where I joined the, uh, the, the legendary Julie Fernandez and we talk and really these subjects, right? So if, if ad free education is your thing and you want to know how to think about, we don't try to tell you what to think. We really want you to just, you know, how to, how do you think about these things that are coming down, what the opportunity is, the challenges, um, yeah, just trying to share, trying to share and shine a light on people.

[00:31:39] They're doing cool stuff. So yeah. Awesome. Well, I will include all those links in our show notes and Pete, thank you so much for joining me today. And we'll be back again with another episode of up next at work soon.