What will your payroll bureau sell when processing is no longer what you sell?

Author 

Tracy Jerram CMgr

Does that question send shivers down your spine?

Recently, I’ve had some interesting conversations with accountants who tell me that payroll is considered lower value than accountancy work because it is “a process”. Their opinion is payroll has a start-middle-end and I’m guessing that makes it lower value in their eyes.

Now, that view didn’t really surprise me. What did surprise me though, was the assumption that payroll is somehow completely different from accountancy.

Because accountancy is a process too using data, legislation and rules, is it not? HR too, follows rules and processes, doesn’t it?

And if AI and automation, (those two wonderful words), are going to increasingly remove the processing layer from all three of these disciplines, what happens to them?

What will remain when the button pressing, data loading, straightforward legislation questions, document production and routine reports are increasingly generated from a black box of tricks?

So the question I’m asking is:

When the processing layer across these disciplines becomes increasingly automated, what is left that makes each discipline professionally valuable?

I think the answer is that they will need to become more clearly differentiated.

Accountancy can move further towards financial strategy, business advice, assurance and decision support.

HR can move further towards organisational capability, workforce strategy, culture, employee relations and organisational change.

And payroll?

Payroll must become the professional discipline sitting at the intersection of pay, employment legislation, compliance, data, technology, risk and human impact.

No longer processing pay… But understanding pay. Governing pay. Assuring pay. Advising on pay. Using payroll intelligence. Managing the consequences of decisions about pay.

And this is why I think payroll bureaux need to start thinking much more boldly about what they aspire to become – where are they heading?

The question isn’t whether payroll, accountancy or HR processing will change.

It will.

The question is what each profession will have left to sell when it does.

And if you run a payroll bureau, it’s time to start considering and working towards that now.