UKG recently sponsored a survey with Payroll Org through their subscribers. to learn more about the real-world problems and challenges they experience in their daily lives, along with how a consolidated solution like UKG One View could help.
The survey results indicated what those of us in the multi-country payroll industry have believed for quite some time, that payroll is a major challenge for global businesses. Respondents frequently noted challenges with legal issues and with paying employees. The main source of these problems are tied to their fragmented and outdated payroll systems, many of which cobbled together three or more different payroll systems to work.
Those of our respondents who indicated they had moved to a consolidated system noted immense advantages. They had far fewer compliance issues and saved tens of hours each month on payroll.
Overall, the survey results reflect what we have been saying about global payroll for years. In order to make it easier to stay compliant with laws, pay employees correctly and glean valuable insights from payroll data, global businesses benefit from a modern, consolidated system that has a single source of truth for all payroll information.
UKG One View is one such system. It helps global businesses save time and reduce payroll errors through a single real-time dashboard of payroll information.
Major Challenges of Modern Global Business
Several results from our survey indicated that many of the most common and pressing challenges of global companies today stem from outdated or inadequately handled payroll.
When asked "What barriers or obstacles does your organization face when working across multiple countries?", four of the five most common answers were closely related to payroll:
- Legal and regulatory compliance challenges
- Differences in payroll practices and regulations across regions
- Currency exchange and fluctuating economies
- Paying employees in other countries
With regards to compliance challenges in particular, respondents to another question ranked the impact of differences in requirements among countries on their payroll operations. The two most common problems were the following:
- Increased administrative burden, with 29% of respondents ranking this first.
- Higher risk of non-compliance penalties, with 28% of respondents ranking this first.
Following these were other common issues, such as delays and errors in payroll processing.
Handling payroll is always a challenge. Handling payroll across multiple different countries, each with their own separate tax codes and legal requirements is even more challenging. Failure to do so properly can lead to major problems, such as steep fines, incorrect or late paychecks and low employee sentiment.
The Source of Payroll Issues: Fragmented and Outdated Systems
Companies that have just started expanding internationally often don't have a single, unified payroll system. At this stage, they might not need one. But as they continue to expand into more and more places, their disunified payroll system becomes a messy patchwork of frameworks, each with their own separate data and protocols.
Our survey indicated that this is an unfortunate reality for many businesses. Just 40% of our respondents had a single payroll system.
The most common situation cited was having two or three payroll providers, with 35% of respondents indicating that this was the case. But an astounding 10% of respondents said they had eight or more providers—almost certainly a complicated and error-prone system.
We inquired further about the costs of having multiple payroll vendors. Respondents were acutely aware and listed several known issues. The most commonly cited biggest problems were, in order of prevalence:
- Increased cost (24%)
- Increased administrative overhead (22%)
- Higher risk of errors and discrepancies (22%)
- Challenges in vendor management and performance evaluation (20%)
- Difficulty in coordinating vendor activities (10%)
It's not hard to see why fragmented and outdated payroll systems can lead to these problems. Someone has to piece together the data, which increases cost and administrative overhead. This is a complicated and difficult activity, which may make it more prone to errors of all kinds.
Companies that have payroll info scattered across multiple different servers, laptops and even paper documents, will have to manually aggregate their information every time they want to analyze it. This introduces many opportunities for error and takes up immense amounts of time that could be better used for other purposes.
The Role of Technology in Connecting Disparate Systems
There are different ways of solving the problems of disconnected payroll systems. It is not always necessary to rip up existing systems and replace them with a single new one. Instead, it is possible to keep existing providers while adding a connected layer in the form of a managed payroll solution.
We asked our subscribers to state the most important role that technology can play in bridging the gaps between disparate payroll systems and processes in their organizations. The most common answers were:
- Integration of Payroll Systems (34% of respondents)
- Automation of Repetitive Tasks (23% of respondents)
- Centralization of Payroll Data (19% of respondents)
- Real-time Reporting and Analytics (11% of respondents)
- Consistent Employee Experience and Access to Self Service (10%)
These are all challenges that One View solves, without requiring a total overhaul of existing payroll systems.
Benefits of a Single View of Payroll Data
Not surprisingly, getting all of your payroll data into one place often solves the problems above while providing multiple benefits. It is possible to keep multiple disparate payroll systems while making it easier to access a unified view of data for all of them.
Most of our respondents indicated that they are experiencing significant business benefits from leveraging payroll technology in their payroll process. The highest-ranked responses included:
- Improving payroll accuracy
- Assisting with compliance
- Improving the employee experience
- Staying updated on country-specific employment and tax legislation
In terms of concrete outcomes, our survey results found that payroll automation saves teams measurable amounts of time:
- 28% of respondents indicated that it saves 1-10 hours per month
- 18% of respondents indicated that it saves 11-20 hours per month
- 10% of respondents indicated that it saves 21-30 hours per month
Having a single source of truth for payroll data ultimately removes a lot of the possibility of error while making it easier to aggregate and understand data. It is possible to do this without the cost of switching systems by using a managed payroll platform like One View.
Flexible Global Payroll with UKG One View
UKG One View is a global payroll provider that helps payroll professionals reduce costs and errors, make informed decisions, integrate seamlessly with HCM systems and ensure compliance. The platform tracks all payroll information in real-time on a single dashboard, maximizing the ability to notice trends and problems as they happen.
The features we offer provide effective solutions to the problems most commonly cited by our respondents. Instead of facing legal and regulatory challenges due to fragmented data, One View presents all information in real-time to ensure compliance. Instead of having to navigate the headache of different currencies and payroll practices in different countries, One View handles payroll with a built-in framework of requirements for over 160 countries across the globe.
Interested in learning more? Check out our thought leadership.
