Global Payroll — 10 min

Global payroll trends: what your business should know

Written by James Doman-Pipe

July 18, 2024

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If your business operates in multiple countries, then your global payroll operation is crucial.

A well-managed global payroll system helps you comply with local tax and labor laws, streamline complex administrative processes, and pay your employees accurately and on time.

However, global payroll trends change rapidly. To stay compliant and implement the most effective processes, you need to understand the driving factors for how global payroll is shaped and delivered.

This article breaks down some of today’s most important global payroll industry trends and how your business can stay a step ahead.

What are today’s biggest global payroll trends?

The traditional approach to payroll has evolved rapidly. It’s crucial to be aware of and understand these developments, as well as implement them into your own organization’s processes.

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What are today’s biggest global payroll trends?
Stay ahead of global payroll industry trends with Remote

Here are some of the top trends in payroll.

The emergence of cloud-based global payroll software

Cloud-based global payroll programs have simplified and streamlined employee payments across the globe, making it much easier to manage the payroll process.

Specifically, this shift to a cloud-based approach now gives your organization:

More accessibility points
Enhanced and up-to-date security
Simplified reporting
Greater accuracy calculations
Increased scalability
Easier user management

The cloud-based approach also removes the need to set up and maintain an internal software and hardware infrastructure, with your payroll provider taking on and managing the technical burden. This can create significant cost savings.

Integration of automation and AI

One of the biggest global payroll trends is automation. This allows you to process your international payroll in hours rather than weeks, saving you significant amounts of time, money, and resources.

Automation also has a positive impact on other elements of payroll. For instance, when you automate complex manual tasks, you reduce the risk of human errors and improve the accuracy of your data.

The latest platforms have AI features that go beyond automating payroll. They can help with tax compliance, employee benefits management, and comprehensive reporting and budgeting.

Examples of technological advancements in payroll include the following:

Natural language processing: Using chatbots and virtual assistants to handle employee questions about payroll. This helps improve employee satisfaction while freeing up time for your HR staff.
Robotic process automation (RPA): Streamlining administrative tasks such as timesheet management, pay calculation, employee onboarding, and termination processing. RPA also makes it easier to store and retrieve HR data quickly.
Machine learning: Used by over half of businesses to manage fraud, such as employees inflating working hours. It can also be leveraged to predict absences and other factors that affect payroll, helping you plan ahead.

This transformative approach to payroll processing is boosting speed and cost-efficiency — which is essential in today's competitive business landscape.

Streamlined payroll processing

Companies are moving toward payroll systems with faster processing capabilities. Beyond direct deposit and mobile payments, even more advanced capabilities such as same-day pay, shorter payroll cycles, and payroll advances are gaining traction.

A significant current trend is on-demand pay, which gives employees the opportunity to access their wages before payday. On-demand pay is particularly beneficial for employees who live paycheck-to-paycheck. It’s also helpful when working with independent contractors; making a payment right after a project is finished helps set the stage for a solid working relationship.

On-demand pay empowers employees to navigate cash flow challenges, improve their financial management, and minimize stress. All this ultimately leads to higher productivity and better engagement.

Streamlining your payment systems is a great way to demonstrate your commitment to your employees’ financial wellness. It’s cost-effective and won’t disrupt your overall workflow.

At the same time, faster processing allows for more timely reporting. This makes it easier for your HR team to spot errors and take action as needed.

Some payroll platforms even let you customize pay schedules based on your employees’ preferences. Demonstrating this extra level of flexibility is a great way to stand out to prospects and attract top talent.

Remote and hybrid workforce management

The work landscape is evolving, with 82% of companies expected to adopt a hybrid model by 2025. This shift requires a more flexible and innovative approach to payroll software.

For instance, mobile access is now more important than ever before, with many employees working within different locations and time zones. Team members should be able to seamlessly view pay stubs, update information, and request time off through their phones.

And as businesses globalize, so do employees. It’s becoming common for people to relocate to different countries under the same employer, and this fluid approach to global mobility is reflected in the way businesses are structuring their payroll.

These changes bring new challenges. Employers need to understand the requirements around varying tax regulations, employee classifications, and multi-state payments. Certain countries have employment laws that influence the structure and timing of your payments.

Plus, standard time-tracking isn’t possible when employees are working across multiple locations. That’s why it’s crucial to adopt a sophisticated payroll system that can help you navigate these complexities.

With the help of an experienced global payroll partner, your business can mitigate these challenges with ease. Remote has in-country labor law experts who can ensure your international hiring and payments are both compliant and hassle-free.

Improvements in employee onboarding experiences

Global payroll trends have had a positive impact on employee onboarding, with digital tools and resources taking up much of the slack.

Most global payroll solutions take on and automate many essential elements of the onboarding process, allowing your company to focus on creating a personable, tailored experience for your new hire — wherever they are based.

A positive onboarding experience can enhance your team members’ sense of loyalty and job satisfaction. This helps foster an attractive, thriving company culture, making your people feel more valued and boosting your retention rate.

Employee self-service portals

Employee self-service portals are gaining more popularity, especially among remote workers. These give employees more control over payroll and simplify benefits management.

With self-service portals, employees can update their personal information, view payroll data, submit expenses, and keep track of their own attendance.

Platforms like Remote also allow employees to add notes for time blocks and view a breakdown of both their regular hours and overtime worked. Plus, employees can seamlessly request time off within the portal. Remote’s intuitive calendar view makes it easy to see request statuses, along with total time off used and remaining.

All of these features help prevent payroll challenges and confusion down the road. They also improve efficiency for HR teams by reducing administrative tasks and repetitive questions.

In addition, employee self-service portals provide employees with more direct access to self-evaluations and other types of performance-related data. This boosts productivity and supports professional development goals.

These portals are especially useful when managing independent contractors or freelancers who aren’t set up through standard payroll structures and don’t typically work traditional hours.

And if you have international employees in multiple locations, Remote’s user-friendly mobile app lets employees view payslips, submit expenses, and request PTO from anywhere.

Minimizing risk of non-compliance

Compliance is a huge part of global payroll, with companies who fall foul of local labor and tax laws often facing penalties, fines, and reputational damage. However, with each country’s laws changing frequently, it can be difficult to stay on top of these obligations.

Luckily, advancements in global payroll technology have allowed companies to minimize this risk. Reliable cloud-based platforms — like the one offered by Remote — stay on top of law changes and updates and seamlessly implement them into the payroll process.

Cloud-based payroll solutions also make it much easier for companies to comply with labor laws in different countries.

For example, let's say you have employees in India and the Philippines. Indian law dictates that employees can work up to 10 hours per day, whereas Philippine law stipulates extra overtime pay for anything over eight hours.

Platforms like Remote allow you to adjust entitlements based on these local regulations and ensure that you are compliant in every country.

Integration-focused software

Integrated HR and payroll systems have become a game-changer for global payroll operations, making the entire process smoother, faster, and more precise.

By bringing together employee data into a single central source, businesses can consolidate their HR functions, meaning less paperwork, fewer errors, and a happier HR team.

This capability can also generate valuable reporting insights, which can help you plan better and make smarter decisions about compensation.

A stronger focus on data security

Data security is absolutely crucial for payroll teams, given the sensitive nature of the information involved.

As well as penalties and fines, data breaches can have serious legal consequences, especially if data is mishandled and local labor laws are violated.

Cloud-based payroll solutions are becoming an increasingly popular way to mitigate this. Proven providers like Remote have robust, up-to-date security and authentication measures in place that protect your data at every stage and keep you compliant with regional policies such as GDPR.

Pay transparency

Today’s employees want more clarity around the way pay is determined and how their skills are evaluated. As a result, pay transparency is on the rise, with 72% of employers including pay information in job posts.

Companies are also making pay transparency an ongoing priority for current team members. Advanced payroll software features robust competition tools that make it easier to communicate salary details, reducing the administrative burden for HR staff.

When you maintain an open system where all employees have visibility into each other’s salaries, you prioritize fairness and equality. This prevents pay gaps, encourages loyalty, and improves your company’s overall reputation.

Real-time analytics

The latest payroll software provides access to real-time information about your business performance, helping you make informed strategic decisions, keep track of costs, and adjust strategies based on changing conditions.

Ultimately, leveraging real-time analytics promotes smarter financial planning and improves your bottom line.

Payroll analytics can help you verify that you’re staying compliant with overtime laws and identify other issues that need to be addressed, such as discrepancies in pay or insufficient benefits packages.

Meaningful metrics to consider include average employee cost, total spend per department, or comparisons of expenses on a monthly or yearly basis.

Stay ahead of global payroll industry trends with Remote

To successfully keep up with these global payroll trends, it’s essential to invest in a proven, reliable global payroll solution.

Without proper payroll management, you run the risk of failing to comply with local labor laws, incorrectly calculating tax payments and deductions from employee wages, and falling victim to data security breaches.

Remote provides solutions to all the challenges listed above, including:

Direct access to in-house, on-the-ground tax specialists in every country you hire in
Constant updates to payroll processes in line with legislative changes
One single, centralized payroll system all across the globe (with the ability to pay in multiple currencies)
Seamless integrations with multiple HR platforms (and API access)
A robust and secure infrastructure
Automation of administrative tasks, saving you and your team countless hours

To learn more about how your business can benefit from a global payroll solution, speak with one of our friendly experts — and see how we can help transform your business today.