Extremely cloud and incredibly close: the five most important international payroll trends for 2018 Cloud software has already transformed the way many businesses operate – and payroll is no exception. In a world of porous borders, technological advancement, and increasing corporate ambition, multinationals are empowered to manage employees, salaries, and taxes more efficiently and more effectively...
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ndeed, it wouldn’t be a massive stretch to call 2018 the year of payroll. Many businesses are already experiencing the advantages of more globalised systems, and the months ahead will see even more changes. Plenty will be beneficial; some will doubtless cause growing pains; and all must be adjusted to in good time. But what’s specifically going to change, and if you’re a payroll manager or business owner, what do you need to do? The following five international payroll trends may well redefine the function in 2018. Embrace them, prepare for them, and integrate them into your business strategy and your team and the wider organisation will benefit. 1) Tighter data regulation Let’s start with the hard part. 26 / Issue 14
@PaySpace
Bruce van Wyk, Sales & Marketing Director, PaySpace A founding member of PaySpace, Bruce has over 16 years of experience in designing, conceptualising and implementing functional payroll and HR solutions for local, multinational and blue-chip organisations. Bruce heads up Finance and Sales at PaySpace with a love for entrepreneurship. Exposure to the technical, consulting and client requirements have given him vast experience in solution design, comprehensive international tax legislation, quality human resource approaches, talent trends and client relations.
The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is perhaps the most comprehensive and wide-ranging piece of information security legislation for decades. It will affect all manner of industries, in all manner of ways. To put it simply, if you process, store, or destroy data relating to EU citizens, you’re subject to it – and potentially subject to its penalties, which at the upper end can amount to millions of dollars. So what does this mean for the payroll function? Well, if you keep information relating to EU employees– and if you’re running a multinational business you most probably do – then you need to think about how you’re handling it. Essentially, you need to think about whether or not you’re complying with local information security legislation and the EU GDPR. What’s more,
the regulatory burden is shared with your technology partners, so if you’re using a payroll software provider, they’ll need to be fully compliant too. Records must be kept for longer, data must be more thoroughly encrypted, and payroll professionals must stay scrupulously current when it comes to further legislative changes – in their host country, and now in the EU as well. 2) Payroll administrators will come into their own In 2018, payroll administrators will become truly empowered. Technology will relieve them of time-consuming tasks – such as data entry – allowing them to focus on deeper trend analysis and strategic improvements. Essentially, if you’re a payroll
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