2025 Payroll Trends: Global Meets Local

I know what I want to talk about. I'm very excited, extremely excited. And honestly, if I'm being honest, Chaz, I'm really, really proud. You know, I've accomplished a lot in life, and I'm very, very grateful for everything that I've accomplished.

You know, one of the things that I've been discussing is my papa, shot prowess. Yeah, don't you don't say yeah. So this is the first time our audience is hearing about it. Julie, that's not true, right?

They Oh, he talks about this. Oh, yeah, a lot, but I don't want to steal your thunder here. I know, I know that the people are tuning in to hear about my my papa shot, um, let's just say success or failure. And I'm, I'm proud to say Chaz, that not only did I hit 100 not only did I hit 105 Oh, nope, 113, right here.

Now, here's what I've learned on the Papa shot website. There are, there's a list of, like, the top scores ever. Okay, now, am I going to hit that? I don't know.

There's a lot, lot of nuance that goes into how you get that top score, but there's also monthly scores. So I'm definitely going for monthly top scores. One thing, what I have so many questions. But continue.

Okay, no, but when I hit 100 I got to put my name in, and they send me a sticker, and I get to put the sticker on my papa Shot machine. I was actually listen in my Listen, there's not many things that excite me, actually. That's a lie. There's a lot that excites me a long time.

But this, this, this is, this is one of the things I can't you know how you just find these things that, like you sort of, you sort of enjoy, and you love, and I don't know, like, I'm just, I love it. I love it. It's fun. It takes me away from a screen.

It, yeah, it makes me it makes me excited to go back home, which, you know, I'm hardly home, but when I am home, I'm first thing I do, don't get excited to go back home. No, I did have to. I did have to switch where the location of it, because my neighbor could hear it. But other than that, well, listen, to be fair.

To be fair, he texted me. He's like, are you hammering? I'm like, no, no, no, I'm not hammering. I'm like, but I am throwing up bricks anyway.

I'm done. I'm done. I listen. I am so happy.

You you have the Papa shot. But can you just, can you make me a deal right now that we just don't have to talk about it until you hit your next momentous goal? Well, what should that be? Let's set it now.

What do you think is a realistic but challenge a smart a smarter 125, man, I need to fly up to Baltimore and see if I can do this thing. You know what? I mean? It just goes well.

The good news is you don't have to fly to Baltimore. You could go to anywhere and go use a Papa shot and try and hit that point, it's very difficult, because here's the thing, you get 30 seconds, and that you have to hit us, you have to hit 30 points in order to get 1010, more seconds, 15 seconds, and then you have to hit 60 to get another 10 seconds. And that's it. You don't get any more after that.

So yeah, so it's not, it's not, it's not super easy. But I will say also, for someone like you who's tall, it's easier because you're closer to the net and you can just sort of throw it in. I was never a good basketball player, still, hey, but maybe you don't need to be with, with no, you don't need to be. You don't need to be.

It's, it's a lot of, a lot of strategy. Anyway. Chaz, nobody cares, or maybe you do care. If you care, let us know if you if you feel like you can beat me, please let me know I will fly to where you are and prove you wrong anyway.

Stop it. You. So I have to comment on some things, your hoodie, that if you're watching on YouTube with shout out, thank you for watching on YouTube. My hoodie.

Oh, god, yeah, your hoodie. So we got a shout out. We got a shout out at the New York peloton studios, and we got that shout out because Julie, you and a bunch of other colleagues got a chance to go and ride in studio as like a group of people, which, first off, I'm so jealous everyone knows. Well, not everybody, but a lot of.

People know that, listen that I'm a huge peloton advocate, and I love you know that the environment and using their machines, however, I took that ride the next day that you all did so much so that I took a picture, because I just see your face. I'm like, Yes, I was so excited for all of you. So it was fun. It was fun.

The we had an opportunity to take prospects, prospective UKG customers, customers. And, you know, we had, we had a we had a good time. And it was, it was neat, because there's a lot of, there was a lot of shout outs for UKG, and I got to, I got to wear my UKG headband. I was, I was wondering whether or not they were going to allow that.

I made sure that it was okay. So I have a question about it was a morning ride, Julie, it was, it was an early morning ride that you all took. How did you, being the non morning person, deal with it? It wasn't.

It was noon. It was a noon ride. Yeah. Okay, yeah.

All right, no, it was a noon ride. And some of our colleagues had, they were flying from all over and there was weather, and there were some people that, like, literally got there Right, right at time. You had, there's a lot of rules when you get there and when you have to check in and everything. Couple of, couple of couple of fun facts, the studio is much smaller than it looks.

Um, really, yeah, it's pretty small. The other thing, they don't let you get anywhere near the main stage. Like, if you I believe that, yeah, if you touch the main stage, yeah. And that was, it was really chill, really, really chill.

So it was sort of nobody wanted to take that bike, the one that where you could see me. So of course, they're like, Julie, usually to go take it. I'm like, okay, so I had the I had the logo, and I didn't think they were going to let me wear the logo, but they did, and it was very kind. And Camilla gave UKG a shout out, and I, I now talked.

When I'm talking to customers and prospective customers, I tell them, Listen, if you can get to a peloton studio. It's a great team building activity. A lot of energy we it was a 2010s Hip Hop ride that we did, but it's a really good team building activity. And it's not just riding.

There's other things that you can do there, yoga, strength training, etc. But anyway, enough about that. And yeah, I had to buy the sweatshirt, because there, there's only, there's certain things that you can only get at the store, which was, which was very small, not many, many things in that store. But a trek to good trek to the to the London studios, and bought a sweatshirt.

So, yeah, you know. So, literally, peloton London, yeah, so, and you have a New York one. So, oh, that's cool, Julie, what do we do? I mean, here's the thing.

We just finished up and wrapped up our mega trend series and episode 100 typically, the mega trend series falls to our HR practitioners, our HR leaders, people that are heavily involved in the employee experience. But Julie, can't forget about our payroll folks, right? Yeah, we talked about Papa shot, we talked about peloton. Now we have to talk about payroll.

So we're only talking about we're only talking about things that start with P there you go. So just open this up, Julie, what we were talking about this, and as we were planning, one of the things that I want to hear from you, to see if our perspectives are different, is, what do you think is the current state? Ear to ground of what's happening in payroll right now? Well, first of all, I don't want to assume that I know.

I can tell you what I hear, but I don't want to assume that. I don't want to assume that I know because I'm not in payroll. And truthfully, you know, often times I do get to meet payroll folks in my travels. I know you do too, but I think sometimes payroll is still an afterthought in strategic conversations, right?

And that shouldn't be that way. You know, when we talk about the employee experience and the people that affect the employee experience, first of all, yes, it's all of us. However, payroll plays a really big key in that, because you know that, you know, we've done research that shows what two wrong paychecks and someone's going to leave an organization the chance, yeah, yeah. So it's really, it's really a profession that we, we the lay people who aren't in payroll.

We see it as transactional. It, but it's not transactional. There's so many strategic things that are involved in it. And.

I think the other thing that is something that we have to recognize is just the the the abundance of multi country payroll, yeah, companies, yeah, there's so many. There's so many. It's not, it's not as easy as pressing a button. We that's, we all know that right, right, yeah, but, but when we, when we think of the things that are involved in payroll and what's involved in making sure that everybody gets that right paycheck, payroll is undergoing transformations, just like every other part of of organizations, yeah?

So, yeah. So similar to me, and I typically work with some of our largest customers and prospects in this space. However, it's often, it's often a misconception that you are only doing multi country payroll because you're an enterprise size customer, when, in fact, that's a that's a massive misnomer. There are small organizations out there that may have one employee in Ireland and one employee in India and another one, you know, somewhere in the UK, right?

So, so as your company thinks about expanding and going to those places, it doesn't have to be what we have to do payroll and acquire a company or merge with a company. In that area, there are a lot of small organizations that have 125, employees in different countries, and multi country payroll is coming up a lot. But I wanted to, I wanted to get your perspective on that, because if you're hearing something different than than what I am, our people need to know about it, right?

No, I'm not hearing something different. And you know, one of our mega trends, obviously the global talent deficit, and there, along with that comes the lack of people that have the qualified skills to fill the roles that we need fill. And a lot of organizations are having to look to other countries to find people with the skills that they need in order to fill their roles. So I feel like, I feel like this is something that's only going to continue to grow as you know as the rise of the Internet.

Years and years ago, that has had started a push for work to become more and more global, you know, I mean, I did a webinar yesterday with a gentleman who ran the webinar, and he was in the UK, right? And, I mean, and then, I know that's not payroll related, but it's, it's to say that, you know, we we get to work across the globe, across time zones. That's what the internet has allowed us to do. That's what video conferencing has allowed us to do.

And with that comes employees who need to get paid, who live in countries that have completely different pay laws than other countries. Yeah. And I think as we think about trends going into 2025 and things that people should look out for, I do think global pay is going to continue to expand, right because of the argument that you just made. Expansion doesn't mean 1000s and 1000s of employees again, it could just mean one or two, and to know shock, one of the big things that is impacting payroll right now and going to continue is those two lovely letters, Julie, artificial intelligence.

Ai, right? Yeah. However, it's getting more specific for payroll, and what it's getting to be really impressive with is a significant amount of less keystrokes when it comes to data entry, data validation, you know how it pairs with with time and scheduling, that lovely compliance word that we all know and just absolutely adore. And our payroll folks love the compliance piece because they know that exposure and risk mitigation and management, a lot of it does fall a lot of times to payroll and keeping up with that.

And then the other piece is Employee Self Service, where employees are getting faster answers to questions, instead of having to track down payroll. What? What's another area that you're seeing, you know, kind of a trend to look out for in payroll in 2025 well, that Employee Self Service is the big one, I think, because, you know, and I've said this many times on the podcast, if in a world where we can buy a car from our cell phone, we don't want to have to struggle to find a copy of our pay stub when we need it.

So I think, I think that you know the AI piece, while the Employee Self Service is important, what everything that you mentioned, what they do is they really help companies to to find errors before they happen, right? AI can tell whether or not there's a number. That's off. I know Chaz like even when I'm going and I'm paying bills through my bill pay, right?

And if I have to put in the number, some of them are automated, yes, but if I have to put it in the number, say, to pay off a credit card or something like that, my bank will tell me if it's significantly more than what I usually spend. Yep, which, which I actually has caught me with a wrong, you know, putting in a wrong number here and there, right? So, so I think it's the same kind of thing, like, just like in our daily lives, we have these tools that are assisting us. Payroll has the same has the same capabilities.

Now it's, let's be clear, an AI tool is not going to replace somebody in payroll, but it, what it can do is streamline processes and free up time. I think that's important too. Yeah, the it's similar to AI, but a little bit different is, is for our folks that may not know about this, the robotic process automation, right? Chaz, where are you going with this.

Oh, gosh, what robotic nerd? Nerd out with me for a second, robotic process, automation. Uh, yeah. So, so the way that I look at this, let me, let me put it in very simple terms, and explain like I'm fine.

Explain like I'm fine. Our our friend Tiffany, who, who wrote this amazing blog to help communicate this, you know, she, I'm like, Tiffany, I'm, how do I simplify this, right? And the example used is you as a payroll administrator, Julie, okay, or me as a payroll administrator. Since you're the five year old, or I'm explaining something to the five year old, right?

If a payroll administrator has to update hundreds of records, right? Typically, you know, in the in the old ways of doing things, you would do the import file. You would import it. You would check the import.

Once the import was done, you know, then you would let the the system process it. And then you would have to, you know, download the spreadsheet, do the do the comparison, so on and so forth, right? Having processed, you know, hundreds of payrolls when I was in services, it's a lot, right? It's a lot what RPAS are doing.

It's really enhancing the efficiency and accuracy of this. And treat it as though it's it's taking that tedious task away, but it's a, you know, finger quote program that recognizes Okay, new wage, new regulation, new compliance element, you know, there's something that we can actually configure to update it automatically versus doing the process that I just described typically that would fall to payroll to update their system to, you know, do all of these weird, random, tedious tasks that, honestly, they shouldn't have to anymore.

But it's the idea of, hey, there's never a time where payroll doesn't have something to do that, tracking down that individual who called in five minutes ago or the last 35 times. You know, those are things that they can focus on, and making sure to your point, the employee experience gets better because we took them away from doing that long process I described. Get it? Nope.

Is that simple enough? No, no. But you know, I'm pretty dense when it comes to this stuff. So, you know, I was not good at math.

I math real good. I stayed just not English. I That's right, yeah, that's why we compliment each other. No, I math has never been my strong suit, but, and I know payroll, payroll obviously is a lot of math, but it's not just math, because if it was just math, it would be more tactical, and we know that it's also strategic.

So, but the robotic process automation, what I'm hearing from you is that really, if we're, if we're boiling it down. It's just that this is, this is a technology, not quite AI, but it's, it's a machine doing something humans would normally do. However, we wouldn't call it AI, we'd call it just task simplification, yeah, program task simplification, task management. Okay, alright, yeah, you know one of the things that I also see in payroll, in discussions that I have, and I know you see this too, is how important cybersecurity is in this day and age.

I've heard that, yeah, yeah, when we look at things like, I don't know, do you get, do you get phishing text messages and all that all the time, or you would be amazed at how many packages at the holiday season that I left unclaimed. I left unclaimed. I mean, there was, I bet I had 35 unclaimed packages for certain vendors that I needed to enter my social security number for. To get bank information, yeah, I'm sure, yeah, that's your question.

Yes, yeah. I think all of us do. And I think cell carriers especially are getting better at weeding some of those out, uh huh. But when it comes to payroll, you know, phishing emails, they've become a lot more sophisticated over the past, you know, few years, and they can really, yeah, they can really closely mimic official communications.

So payroll is sort of a low hanging fruit target of these folks, because they have all this sensitive information, and, of course, access to all this money. So, you know, there's, I think that in payroll, we're going to continue to see this growing push to make sure that cyber security is top of mind. And I think, from a strategy perspective, payroll can really take a lead on that and say, Okay, this is what we're seeing out there. This is what some of my in my payroll circles, you know, some of the challenges they're experiencing.

How can we mitigate these problems before they even start? It's interesting. You bring that up, pause for a second, because I'm going to click my thought on that. Do you ever go into your personal email spam folder and look at the attempts of phishing for your information.

No, how do you do that? Julie, you can look at the attempts of phishing. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, so, so go in, go into, go into your personal email and go to the spam folder and just read through some of the titles and some of the bodies of those emails.

Yeah, I'm totally aware of that. Anyways, it's hilarious if you need, if you need some comedic relief. Yeah, no, going back to your point when it comes to the the cybersecurity thing and having access to sensitive information, pay banking data, so on and so forth, this is a prime opportunity for HR to work cross functionally with, you know it and the training department. Because, just because you're in payroll, think about it.

It is everyone else may be receiving just a variated message. I love that you brought up, do it in your circles and your pay groups you know, or your your payroll group of peers. I think that's really great, you know, Julie, you should have mentioned that at the payroll, you know, at paycon, when you're speaking there, actually, that's a great point. But, yeah, work with it on this, because this is a training element, so if they're, you know, I've seen it personally in my job.

Okay? I've seen it personally, where I received a text message from someone claiming to be somebody else inside the organization, and I immediately was like, There's no way, right? Like, there's there's no way. And I immediately took it to it, and I said, Hey, this is weird.

You know, I already have this individuals number, but my guess is, you don't want this happening to the rest of our organization, and we and they did a phenomenal job of tracking it down and making sure that it doesn't happen again. So just picture someone in a position of leadership at your organization, and then they say, Hey, you know, I need all of this information, but you can only send it to me via text because I'm in a meeting. That's pretty creative, right? And you're like, Oh, well, what if it's someone that just received a paycheck, and it's Julie from payroll saying, hey, I need your new banking information and your, you know, whatever, so you can get paid this week, right?

So it's not just affecting the payroll department, but can affect, you know, your Employee Self Service and Experience, if that makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. And how about this for a real time thing, right? So as we're no as we're recording payroll, payroll org events sent me an email regarding a webinar on demand.

It's called from fear, from fear to future AI's role in the payroll profession. So there you go. This is, this is Top of Mind. This is where everybody is going.

So, yeah, you know, I yeah, all of that. And of course, the employee experience, the self service, the mobile today, yeah, it's not a nice to have anymore. It's a have to have. And I, you know, employees expect organizations to allow them the autonomy to make changes, to do things that they need with their information, with their bank account information, with their address, you know, changing, changing whatever they need to change without having to jump through 25 different hoops to do it.

So you know, this isn't just, you know, younger generations. I think this is definitely. All employees, we have to stop stereotyping. I think that it's just the younger generations who want this kind of thing, because all of us have gotten accustomed to it, and I agree, gotten accustomed to this is what you know.

This is how easy it is. I'll give you an example. Chaz last night, I played pickleball. And I went to a certain indoor pickleball place where I am here in the country.

Is it a gym or an arena? Like, do they say the pickleball arena? No, it's a gym, the pickleball court. Oh, it's a club, yeah.

So I went to one rather than the other because they had an online booking option, I didn't want to have to go through jump through hoops to call and do all this that and the other. Yeah, it was just easier. So again, this is what we as humans have become accustomed to. Sure, give your employees what they want and and payroll on top, within reason, within reason.

Okay, oh my gosh, you just took it to an extreme. I'm saying give your employees what you want in the context of the conversation that we're having. Okay, yeah, sometimes payroll direct me, yeah. All right, yeah, wake up here.

Um. So anyway, payroll, you're important. We love you and and you are on your you are unappreciated, and you should be more appreciated, and we appreciate you. And I don't know how else to say it.

The other piece, and I'll wrap with this, is that compliance and remote work and security and tax reporting is becoming even more, I don't want to say relevant. It's becoming more top of mind and focus, because the tax structures are continuing to change, especially around remote work and legislation, it'll be really interesting to see the legal implications over the next six to nine months on what that's going to look like for remote workers, and, more importantly, for the for the business, and how that's going to impact the business, because it's very, very difficult, not only in the United States, But if you think about multi country, pay right.

Regulations change constantly, and those organizations and in that locality as well. So how do you manage this? Making sure that there's deep levels of encryption, making sure that you know you are keeping aware of if this doesn't change in your system of record and how you're paying people, just get ready for those fines, right? Fines and loss, because that is what's going to happen.

That's why we, obviously, we work for an HCM tech vendor that provides the solutions to these issues. We have, you know, amazing products that focus on this specific instance and what we're talking about, but as we look into 2025 at the end of the day, payroll is only as good as the employees who can trust that their paycheck is correct, right? Yeah, and I don't mean that disrespectfully, I believe in the function of payroll. However, we have to make sure that our employees experience payroll in a good sense, versus Oh no, they messed it up again.

And to be fair, let me be clear. HR, whoever's leading the culture charge needs to make it very pertinent and evident that payroll does have a name, and that a lot of times it is not their fault, so making sure that you thank a payroll professional for and what they do. So all right, I'm off my soapbox. Julie, I love payroll.

By the way. I love them, yeah, payroll. I have so much fun with payroll people. So yeah, I think that.

I think that all of this is important, and all of it comes down to, you know, making sure that you have the right processes in place, the right software in place, the right and making sure also that payroll is not so siloed that other folks wouldn't know how to run payroll. I see a lot of companies that have that issue, and then what happens is payroll doesn't feel like they can take any time off, because, God forbid they take time off. I when I the payroll folks I used to work with, used to have to schedule when they were taking their time off, in between, in between, price pay cycles, but also around times of year that aren't really busy, if you will, quote, unquote busy.

So, yeah, super important. These are the trends. Who knows what's coming down the pike. But just like every other part of the organization, payroll is often overlooked, but extraordinarily important.

I'll wrap with this. Um. Um, what are you going to talk about at payroll Congress in your session? Can you give a little teaser to the people I believe we're going to talk about decision making and payroll, but I'm going to, I'm going to bring it back to also the importance of payroll and the why behind all of this.

You mean, it's not just to get money in people's pockets. Julie, I can't, I know you can't give it away. I don't need you to give it away, but I'm really looking forward to hearing it, if that makes sense. So yeah, any closing thoughts?

Jules, thank you for all you do payroll. You're part of our trends. I think all of the mega trends that we have discussed can apply to you as well. So yeah, you're at least in our book, you're not an afterthought.

That's right. Love you payroll, thanks for listening. Cheers. Bye, bye.

You.