Payroll is about people, which is why seamless admin and automation matters.
What is the first thing a payroll professional does when they start their workday? They might get something to drink, chat to colleagues, and cast an eye over their calendar. But then it’s time to check their emails: a mix of requests from other departments, compliance updates, and most important, queries from employees.
Surveys estimate that between a quarter and half of employees check their payslips frequently, and the ratio is higher for employees who do shift work, accrue overtime, or have irregular payments. According to a survey by Deel, half of employees check their payslips weekly, and a third express confusion about deductions.
This confusion, as well as spotting genuine errors, demand considerable amounts of payroll staff’s time. However, “demand” is an unfortunate phrase. It suggests that helping employees is a burden for payroll, when it is actually a big part of a payroll professional’s job satisfaction.
“There are two things that will make you successful at payroll: an eye for accuracy and empathy for people,” says Sandra Crous, Managing Director of Deel Local Payroll. “When someone comes to you with a payroll issue, that’s not an annoyance. That’s a big part of the job, and the best payroll people want to help. You show patience and interest because the employee either has found a genuine error, or they need guidance which you are the best qualified to provide.”
Automation anxiety
Payroll teams want more time and bandwidth to deal with high-value engagements, such as helping people resolve specific payroll issues. At the same time, many resist automation, fearing that it will make them obsolete and replaceable.
Yet, this is the exact opposite of what modern payroll technologies deliver. The most effective examples of payroll automation remove major payroll time sinks, including:
● Compliance and legislation: Leading payroll platforms actively push new legislative updates, including updates to calculations. While payroll staff are informed of the new updates, they don’t have to implement them.
● Employee self-service: Payroll teams get considerable amounts of time back if their payroll software has self-service (ESS) portals where employees access payslips, leave requests, and other tasks.
● Multistep workflows: Payroll staff create workflows that automatically handle multistep approval, information gathering, and calculation processes, feeding automated reporting and audit trails.
● eOnboarding: New employees use online forms and document submission to proactively start onboarding processes. Staff in different departments use configurable workflows that capture and validate key details upfront.
Changing automation from ‘replace’ to ‘support’
Such services don’t threaten payroll employees. They free up the time and mental bandwidth to focus on high-value tasks, such as help employees with specific issues and ensure accurate payroll.
Still, the stigma around payroll automation has validity. Many payroll teams still work with older software, or legacy software shoehorned into a modern cloud setup (a sleight of hand called cloudwashing). Those systems lack the underlying structures to simplify automation design. Instead, they lead to delayed and convoluted deployment projects that increase budgets, erode patience, and put pressure on the business to show a return for that effort.
That pressure often shifts automation outcomes from supporting humans to replacing them. It’s why modern cloud-native payroll platforms are considerably different to past payroll software.
“Good automation relies on a foundation that understands the many processes that payroll and HR rely on, and has technical features which create the flexibility and security to create good automation. The goal is to make everyone’s lives easier, for payroll people, employees, and other departments. That’s something you only get if you build it from the ground up, which is what we did with PaySpace,” says Crous, referring to Deel Local Payroll’s powerful payroll platform.
With such a platform, payroll teams can focus on what matters most. As a study published by the International Journal of Business Quantitative Economics and Applied Management Research found, “Automation does not lead to job loss but rather a redistribution of tasks. Routine administrative functions are automated, while professionals take on more valuable and strategic responsibilities, such as leadership development, employee engagement, and organisational development.”
The emails don’t stop, but automation can take care of most of those queries, leaving room for the important stuff: keeping the human touch in everything they do, and ensuring accurate, timely payments.
About Deel Local Payroll
Deel Local Payroll, powered by PaySpace, revolutionises payroll management. It offers online, multi-country payroll and HR management for businesses from start-ups through to enterprise in over 40 African countries, the United Kingdom, the Middle East, and Brazil.
Cloud-native, Deel Local Payroll, is scalable, configurable, highly secure, and easy-to-use—delivering anytime, anywhere access. It features payroll automation, self-service features, automatic legislation and feature updates, customised reporting, and more.
Since 2024, Deel Local Payroll has been part of Deel, operating as an independent subsidiary, serving its customers through the PaySpace platform.
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