Global payroll professionals are often siloed in the payroll department with little interaction with the rest of the company. But what if businesses utilized a global payroll professional to maximize their capabilities? What kind of business decisions could their expertise lend to?
The role of a global payroll professional has evolved, yet many businesses still do not take full advantage of their knowledge. In short, if you don’t have a global payroll professional on your advisory team, you’re wasting resources.
Support Expansion Plans
When expanding globally, businesses need to remember local labor laws and compliance. In a world where remote work is the new norm, companies can hire employees in countries they’ve never operated in before. Having a global payroll professional on the decision-making team will increase efficiency and productivity amidst the expansion.
This professional can use updated payroll technology that harmonizes operations to help the company scale into new territories easily, comply with local regulations, and send pay stubs out to new hires on time, even in a rapid hiring spree. The payroll professional can also calculate the true cost of hiring new roles in different countries, and hidden costs that might not be obvious to a non-payroll professional, including pension, taxes, and bonuses.
Lend Knowledge on Data Security
Companies that operate on old, outdated legacy systems for payroll risk a potential data breach of highly sensitive payroll information. Remember the Equifax breach of 2017 that lost data on millions of people? Recently, a Google worker learned that the company was sharing payroll data with Equifax and expressed concerns (amongst other colleagues) about sharing important payroll data with a company that has experienced data security breaches in the past.
This is a testament that once a data breach occurs at a company, you lose trust in your employees. Having a global payroll expert weigh in on decisions regarding trustworthy payroll data can save your company from a data breach and distrust from your employees.
Create A Connected Ecosystem
A global payroll professional is a crucial link for the payroll, human resources, and finance departments to work together within a company. Having an updated payroll system, along with a payroll professional, grants employees the ability to align payroll and HR data processes for better efficiency. Siloing these departments create barriers within a company.
When working together, these departments can further assist each other and employees, making tasks more efficient and seamless. A global payroll professional should work closely with an HR director, the CFO, and the finance department as a whole. They can also work as a compliance manager and a bridge to the data security team.
If you’re looking to add a global payroll professional to your advisory team, I recommend looking into their background. How many countries have they managed in the past and what regions of the world? Have they worked in a payroll department where the organization rapidly scaled into new territories? Taking a deeper look into their compliance and regulation knowledge, along with how they handled the shift to remote work and hiring during the pandemic, can be great starting points to find a global payroll professional that is a unique fit for your company.