Solving The Global Payroll Puzzle: Compliance, Accuracy, And Efficiency

Exclusive interview with Angela Paulmony, Global HR Head, Techwave

In an exclusive interview, Angela discusses Techwave’s global payroll transformation journey, emphasizing the importance of local partnerships, centralized HRIS, and compliance-driven innovation. She highlights the critical need for phased implementation, robust disaster recovery, and employee trust in navigating international payroll challenges.

Excerpts from the interview:

Angela: In the landscape of global human resource information systems (HRIS) and payroll as a bundled service or platform, there is a scarcity of providers that meet the growing demands. It is highly common practice to notice the usage of multiple platforms and local in-service providers, leading to parallel maintenance of HR operations due to the elevated complexity of governance and risk levels. Given the fragmented approach, managing payroll in different regions presents the primary challenge of disjointed reporting systems and analytics to derive operational efficiency. The current global payroll reporting process relies on manual data extraction from various international partners in 11 countries. We face difficulties due to the absence of a centralized system and maintaining numerous manual reports that both consume time and occasionally generate data discrepancies.

The search for suitable HR service partners who function as extensions of our company for human resource management has proven resistant. The need for a robust payroll system that enables smooth operations across the entire range of nations where we conduct our business operations, in addition to the technology and compliance expertise to maintain payroll readiness either from their on-site locations or hybrid environments, provides less than a handful of options that meet the needs of fast-growing SMBs. In addition, it is without an iota of doubt that capabilities must include robust disaster recovery and business continuity systems, as payroll interruptions must be zero.

Angela: “Think global and act local” has been the success of our operations in maintaining payroll accuracy. Employee trust is paramount to our framework, and building a strong partner ecosystem to pursue accurate payroll management across different regions leads to operational excellence. With years of expertise in identifying and vetting local ISPs (in-service partners) who fully understand the local statutory requirements and payroll compliance rules, we stay current with labor law modifications across every territory we operate. Local expertise is essential since their system enables us to remain updated with regulatory changes and modify processes, guaranteeing timely, accurate payments for every staff member, no matter their location. The implementation of strong regional partner relationships enables us to protect payroll operations’ integrity through proactive measures.

Angela: The HRIS at our organization serves both strategic and operational purposes, as it is a single source of truth record to track employee profile-level changes on every attribute. A robust self-service-enabled HRIS plays a key role in the employee experience, with ease of access to the data at their convenience instead of relying on service tickets or human intervention. With the API integrations, a seamless employee experience integrating HRIS with Techwave rewards, recognition program platforms, and learning systems makes it an enriching experience for employees. Time and absence are key elements for global payroll operations, along with employee-level attributes that are easily and effectively managed with a solid HRIS. We are on an exciting journey of the implementation of a worldwide single cloud-based platform with capabilities of agentic AI that will remarkably enhance operations and create a unique Techwave employee experience throughout the lifecycle at the workplace.

The opportunity to integrate fragmented HR technology systems spread across different countries into the centralized platform also opens the doors to partners with global payroll capabilities, making it a truly single-threaded employee elevation experience. The merged system between HRIS and payroll processes automatically replaces human data input while reducing mistakes and optimizing operational sequences. In addition, manual and Excel reporting will be transformed into real-time analytics through standard/custom reporting options and dashboards. We can now access both HR consultancy services and compliance technological tools to ensure legal compliance across all markets in which the operations exist. A single global payroll system combined with a standardization process brings better internal efficiency and solid compliance standards that facilitate regional team collaboration across all areas.

Angela: Employee data privacy and compliance matters are non-negotiable and of paramount importance as a people-based organization. Our organization works with approved worldwide partners that meet necessary regulatory requirements, including GDPR-compliant European partners and region-specific, regulatory-compliant partners in other territories.

We use strong internal security measures while partnering with organizations that show themselves to be the correct partners. Both sensitive data handling employees and HR teams participate in regular data protection training, while our organization maintains complete Data Processing Agreements with each partner to meet the highest standards. The organization focuses on both issue response and active development of data responsibility culture throughout all departments.

Angela: Our global payroll transformation at Techwave demonstrates how a single global solution exists at an unreachable distance. We learned through collaboration and global practice that phased implementations are fundamental for risk management and complexity reduction when everyone from the local stakeholders has approved them. The relationship between payroll operations and employee satisfaction runs very tight. The precision and promptness of payroll processing establish faith among employees and strengthen their dedication to the company. Our teamwork with local stakeholders included adaptation within our initial development plans, which proved fundamental to our achievement.