Speaker Annemarie Kalsbeek: Be smarter with payroll tech

UNLEASH editor Jon Kennard talks to UNLEASH America speaker Annemarie Kalsbeek about the direction of travel in the world of payroll, as well as the next steps in a hot talent market of number crunchers, ahead of her session on transforming HR at the show next month.

We join the conversation as Kalsbeek offers her hopes for what people will get out of her talk…

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Annemarie Kalsbeek: My goal is really to help people understand that in order to have a successful transformation…it’s not just about people defects, or that you need automation, there’s much more to it.

And at the beginning of everything is data; data on staff, data on complexity, data on defects, on automation, on waste, everything starts with data. And that’s where sometimes people struggle. They jump in and they think, ‘well, if I just automated, if I have system to system integration…’, that’s the silver bullet or the red button on your computer. It’s not.

You need to know your landscape, you need to understand your payroll, you need to understand your economic environment, to make your transformation successful.

So after I present, I hope that when people leave I gave them something to think about, I gave them a baseline.

Jon Kennard: Payroll seems like a very talked about area with a lot of changes going on. You were previously at Visa and now, S&P Global. Visa, particularly, seems to be in a better position than many companies to talk about innovation in this area.

So aside from ‘earned wage access‘, which is something that we’ve covered at UNLEASH, and seems to be gaining popularity; what are the new developments you see coming in 2023 and beyond?

AK: I think robotics, I think more and more people understand that. The bot, although I wish we had a better name for it than just ‘the bot’, can do so much more for us. If you need to download the same files every month, what is the value of a payroll specialist doing that? A bot can do that on your behalf; it can be that simple. And I see more and more companies are struggling to build robotics teams that support payroll, and I think that trend will continue in 2023.

It sounds obvious, but a lot of companies haven’t even started looking at that. And then using tech for validations, too. I also think vendors will continue to evaluate and see what they can do to help their clients, and be smarter on their payroll.

JK: It’s obviously been an incredibly disruptive time, the last two, three years, but this offers hopefully some scope and room for positive change. And we know that it’s accelerated a lot of companies’ technological changes. Do you think this has made change management – particularly in the arena of payroll – easier, because we’re more used to these kinds of changes that have been happening?

AK: I think it’s more difficult. In the last two years, I think we’ve proven that payroll teams across the globe are the foundation of the company, that when payrolls were not missed when people worked remote, we got things done. And we talked a little bit earlier about what was obvious is that our government is falling behind with sending in papers which is creating a problem because if you’re remote and your papers go to the office, that’s something in future needs to be addressed as well.

But I think people have different requirements when it comes to their job, including payroll people; [eg] they want to be remote but the company may not support it. The payroll market is hot; we had COVID-19, then we had the Great Resignation, and payroll people are in demand. And It’s difficult for change management because you want to do the right thing and you want to keep your talent, but we’re now going potentially into a recession and you don’t have an unlimited budget.

So you need find a way to keep people motivated and engaged in a different way. And I think you can do that by offering career opportunities within your payroll team, just not being the SME (subject matter expert) who processes payroll, but create specialized roles. But it’s tough because people’s mind shift has changed.

JK: It certainly has. So, aside from your session, and everything else going on in the expo, what else are you looking forward to at UNLEASH America? There’s so much going on; we’ve got many more stages than we had last year. So is there anyone that you’re particularly looking out for?

AK: So first of all, I think UNLEASH is a fantastic platform to network, meet people in in your space, your peers. I’m looking forward to talk to the different payroll vendors that are there in the UNLEASH [expo] hall as well.

One of my dear colleagues is doing a presentation on data, Alan Susi. I’m a data person so I’m really looking forward to his presentation, but also change management. Figuring out what the future of payroll systems holds. I think it’s a fantastic event to just learn something new. Or at least plant a seed in the back of your brain that you can note along while you work on what your next steps are in payroll.

JK: We always like to say that it’s the start of the conversation, not the end of it, where these important discussions begin. So Annemarie, thank you so much for your time.

AK: Thank you for having me.

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Tickets for UNLEASH America 2023 are still available. Don’t miss out.