Payroll is an often-misunderstood function within Canadian organizations and given the effectiveness with which it is executed, it is often seen as invisible. This frequently leads to a lack of investment in payroll improvement until a process or technology fails completely. The challenge is that payroll is a tremendously critical function within organizations, responsible for one of the most important aspects of the employee experience: Compensation.

There is significant room to enhance the real and perceived value of payroll by defining a formal payroll operating model with the right tiers of support; well defined channels of access to payroll; increased standardization; clear role and responsibility delineations; a thoughtful payroll insourcing/outsourcing strategy; investment in automation and predictive operational analytics; and use of payroll data.

The following provides a look at the prevalence of formal payroll operating models by industry.