Payroll as Financial & Compliance Infrastructure with Special Guest Shala Druin

[00:00:08] [SPEAKER_00] Welcome everyone to another episode of the HR & Payroll 2.0 Podcast. I'm Pete Tiliakos and as always, I'm joined by the legendary Julie Fernandez. Welcome, Julie.

[00:00:15] [SPEAKER_02] Thanks so much, Pete. And I think we have a guest that is our first ever fractional payroll expert.

[00:00:20] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, yeah. I read a lot of her posts and have really gotten, you know, gotten interested in that. She and I got to meet and I thought, hey, what a great conversation to have on. So I want to welcome Shala Druin. She is the founder of Strategic Payroll Solutions, a longtime payroll leader and expert. And yeah, just doing some cool stuff out there. So welcome, Shala. Welcome to the show.

[00:00:40] [SPEAKER_01] Awesome. Thank you so much for having me.

[00:00:42] [SPEAKER_00] Look, I want to jump right into one of the posts that you had recently that I thought really caught my eye. And that was, you know, your point of view on payroll being financial and compliance infrastructure, right? And often a major blind spot. I agree completely on both of those things. And I love that. And I'd love to start there and just have you kind of talk about that. Why you have that perspective. What your thoughts are on that.

[00:01:05] [SPEAKER_01] Absolutely. So I think it's kind of high time that it has become common sense now. Payroll is pushing out some of the largest expenses that a business has. And they're also holding on to huge liabilities, things that can bring a company to their knees if they don't get it right. So I see a lot of companies treating payroll as like a back office function, doing data entry and so on.

[00:01:33] [SPEAKER_01] And really skimming on their payroll departments, which is causing a lot of problems, right? And that's kind of how I've created my business. And I've been very successful of helping companies navigate this. But I think it's time that we start looking at payroll departments and seeing how we can help them and help the business.

[00:01:58] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, absolutely. I think that point you make about the blind spot, right? I've posted and talked about this a lot. We've ranted about it here on the show is that I think there are a lot of C-suites that certainly don't know what payroll actually does. But more importantly, I don't think that they respect or understand. Maybe they're completely ignorant to the actual danger that they're in. When you think about, to your point, right? Over half the P&L often is labor costs, right? That's payroll. We talk about tax compliance, right? Wage and hour compliance. There's so many elements of that.

[00:02:28] [SPEAKER_00] And I think that, look, I've been in big enterprise and I started my career in small business. The controllership element of all of this is much more apparent for payroll, I think, in the enterprise. But I think below that, where they don't have that sort of public company Sarbanes-Oxley requirement, it gets forgotten that there's this danger that payroll could send the C-suite to prison, right? I mean, and that's a little exaggerative, but it does happen, right? They will lock doors and they will seize assets, the IRS or local governments.

[00:02:56] [SPEAKER_02] You know what's funny about that is part of it is just the way that it's set up because it's very clear in the benefits side of the house that there are certain individuals that serve as the benefits fiduciary. And that explicitly goes along with that territory. And yet we don't do the same thing on the payroll side of the house. So, you know, it's not as purposeful or as explicit that you are a fiduciary and, in fact, you carry some of the same risks.

[00:03:20] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. I think a lot of it has to do with human nature and that payroll's not exciting. It's not thrilling when it's working, right? Right. And when it's doing what it's supposed to do, it's doing nothing, right? It's just doing what it's supposed to do and that's payroll winning. And it's not exciting for a CFO or CEO to see, oh, my payroll's doing what it's supposed to do. So I guess I'm good, right? And let's skim down a little bit. Let's save some money.

[00:03:49] [SPEAKER_01] But realistically, I think we just need to get creative in how we talk to the C-suite and make it exciting and make them understand, you know, hey, I can help with this acquisition by going through the payroll and save you some money versus, you know, we're just bogged down doing a bunch of work. They don't really hear that or, you know, understand that, I think.

[00:04:10] [SPEAKER_02] We're having all sorts of visuals right now about payroll as an extreme sport, right? And how dangerous that is because that would just, you know, kind of imply that the bumps are the rides. So let's go, right?

[00:04:23] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. It's part of the fun. I mean, it really is. It's what keeps it exciting. We have joked about that here. I'm about being an extreme sport. Yeah. Keep two hands on the wheel, man. Let's talk about, like, how do we get the C-suite to understand that, right? That it is. And it's more than that, right? I mean, we've had some folks come on and talk about being data stewards, and I've talked about strategic partners. But how do we at least get them to understand the baseline of what you're talking about around compliance and financial infrastructure to fuel their businesses?

[00:04:51] [SPEAKER_01] The only thing so far that I've been able to implement that works, and I say this in this way because it is hard to do, you need to monitor all of the mistakes you're making. And I know that seems counterintuitive because the last thing you want to do is tell the executives all the mistakes you're making. But it's important, right?

[00:05:12] [SPEAKER_01] Because we need to talk about how much time you're spending on fixing these errors or running an off-cycle payroll or going back and refiling a missed tax because ADP didn't handle it. You know, all of these things add up and they're expensive.

[00:05:29] [SPEAKER_01] And when you can keep a track of all of that and present it and present the cost associated with it and why it's happening, I think they will understand that, you know, maybe you do need another person to help you or, you know, have someone come in and help you for the interim to get things settled.

[00:05:48] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, I think there's just like, I talk about it like in my research in the Payroll Profession Confidence Index, which by the way is coming out very soon, Julie. It'll be launched by the time this is live. So if you're listening, stop what you're doing and take the Payroll Profession Confidence Index and get out there and get it in the hands of some of your friends. What we found in that is that half of payroll operations are not fit to support the strategic directions of their businesses. That to me is a bigger fear factor, if we want to call it that, to the C-suite than anything that I don't know that they realize.

[00:06:19] [SPEAKER_00] And I'm just concerned that we're still dealing with a lot of these systemic problems that are just kind of shameful in a lot of ways, right? I mean, again, in the Payroll Profession Confidence Index, we highlight how a lot of the problem is actually HR holding payroll back and sort of diminishing what they do and not bringing them in to their own detriment. So I'm just wondering what your thoughts on how we get, how do we get everybody together, right? How we get a line of sight that has everybody holding hands and singing from the same page.

[00:06:44] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, I think a lot of payroll people need to also kind of stick up for themselves. I see it a lot because most payroll people are, we're resilient. We are some of the smartest people I know, but we're willing to take things on and figure them out without any guidance. And I think that's a great thing to have, but I think we've done it so much that it's become a detriment to our, you know, our own profession.

[00:07:11] [SPEAKER_01] And so, you know, not taking on those extra projects and saying, you know, I can process the payroll, but if you guys want to implement a new software, you're going to have to hire somebody else to come in. And just really holding that line. I also think that we need to sit down with our C-suite and really talk to them about how business has changed. Since COVID, we have just accelerated with the remote work.

[00:07:40] [SPEAKER_01] So now everybody's global and all over the place. And the laws that and compliance that payroll has taken on has just kind of gone unnoticed, I think.

[00:07:51] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah.

[00:07:52] [SPEAKER_02] I have, you know, just jumping on what you said, Shella, about sitting down with the C-suite and having that conversation. I know that a lot of my experience is that who you're sitting down with in the C-suite and what the role is matters a lot. And it doesn't matter because they're not, in some cases, they're not all equally engaged, right? But somebody owns it, somebody doesn't. And it can be the hot potato.

[00:08:15] [SPEAKER_02] But I would say more than that, each lens of the C-suite has a different vested interest and motivation. And so I think that makes it very difficult to have a conversation magnanimously across the whole C-suite because you're going to speak to someone more than you speak to someone else. And so there's a lot of that tag teaming of stakeholders, I think, that makes that successful.

[00:08:38] [SPEAKER_02] And then, yes, ideally, everyone is hearing the same message or interprets what you're saying in a way that is really specific to them. And that just takes a lot of time and effort, right? I mean, you really have to be a professional people navigator in order to do that well.

[00:08:55] [SPEAKER_00] Julie, we had an episode, right? We talked diplomacy, and I think that's actually coming out soon still. But that's really what a lot of this is. Look, I want to go back to something that you were talking about, Shala. I think payrolls, one of payrolls' biggest detriments has been themselves. I don't want to say afraid, but not being the me people, right? It's very much a thankless sort of organization that just puts their nose down, gets it done, blocks and tackles, and makes it happen, right? And that's special. It really is special.

[00:09:22] [SPEAKER_00] But that is also a negative because they tend to be inward and not wanting to be out there, right? And when we were kids, when we were young, back in my day, we were told, Julie, what were we all told, right? Now I hear this is offensive, right? Dress for the job that you want, meaning I understand what they mean about the offensive part. You know, maybe some people can't afford to dress a certain way. I get all that. I apologize if people see it that way.

[00:09:45] [SPEAKER_00] But the core part of that message, I think, still applies of if you want to be seen as a strategic leader, you've got to walk and talk and behave and present and have a point of view like a strategic leader. So payrolls got to come out of their shell is my point, right? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:09:59] [SPEAKER_02] Pete, I think the other thing is it's hard to be the, you said, be the me person, right? That kind of like puts that light on things. And what is absolutely true for the payroll leader and the payroll staff is you see the warts and you know what it takes to make those not happen, right? And keep the watermelon looking green, right?

[00:10:18] [SPEAKER_02] And so it's very hard to tout and to sing the praises of the greenness of your watermelon when, in fact, you know everything that's going on that should be done differently or should be done better. And so you have to, you know, you have to be able to be a little bit bipolar in that way and, you know, and see the warts, but know that the outcome is absolutely high value and worth singing about.

[00:10:44] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. Yeah. Shala, how do you suggest payroll leaders do this? Because one of the things that I get asked, I'd say it's the number one thing leaders come to me and say is like, okay, great. This is all good advice. But like, how do I get my leadership to listen to me? How do I get an organization that doesn't respect my, what I even do to come to the idea that they need to invest in me both as an organization in terms of dialogue and support, but also monetarily, hopefully in fortifying the operations. How do you crack that egg? Because it is hard.

[00:11:14] [SPEAKER_00] It is. And I think you do reach a point where you find that the organization is just unwilling to learn and change and then you have to decide whether it's right to stay. But what do you do? What do you say to leaders today in that space?

[00:11:25] [SPEAKER_01] Absolutely. I think the important thing is, again, to monitor the work that you're doing. And you have to get creative and think outside of the box. Because CFOs or whoever you're reporting to, you need to address financially. And then if it's HR, you need to see how it's going to affect their point of view and their department.

[00:11:51] [SPEAKER_01] So each business sector has their priorities and you need to figure out how what you're doing affects their priorities rather than, you know, I have too much work and I'm, I can't take on any more. I need another head. Because that they don't, they're not, that's not going to resonate with them. They need numbers and they need to understand that if, if they're, if you're acting in a reactive payroll, it's going to cost you a ton of money.

[00:12:20] [SPEAKER_01] It might not be tomorrow, but it will happen eventually.

[00:12:23] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, that's a great point. You got to, I think now you've got to talk in terms of not so much what's in it for payroll. What's, you know, hey, we need to be more efficient. It's got to be more, hey, here's what we need to be doing for the business to give you back value. And I think that's, that's the essence of a business case, right? If you're not making a case, if all you're doing is complaining and saying, me, me, me, we need, we need help. It's too much. It probably is. That's probably true. But the only way you're going to get that is if you can articulate how that's going to benefit the business. They're not going to just hand you cash because you feel understaffed.

[00:12:53] [SPEAKER_02] You can't even get cash when you know your technology is bad. And it's that or you invest in the business and the business investments. Those usually outrule, you know, outrank and outrule whatever we're doing to keep the lights on.

[00:13:07] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah.

[00:13:08] [SPEAKER_01] I also think that a good way for leaders to kind of jump in and find a good spot to jump in is when you know, like a project is coming down to you, right? And you're the last one to hear about it and you know that you have to implement it in way less time than you probably should get. That is a time when you can sit down and say, hey, this is going to take me, you know, if it's say it's an implementation, this is going to take me six months and you guys only gave me three months to do it.

[00:13:37] [SPEAKER_01] So this is going to cost you this much more money because you didn't include me in these conversations beforehand and constantly having those conversations when they're making those type of mistakes about how you can help them in the future down the line.

[00:13:53] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, what I think there needs to be is just so much more integration. And I don't mean technically, that's a given. We should have everything integrated now, technically. I'm talking about HR and payroll being tightly working together, especially in an enterprise. They've got to be incredibly woven together and have that line of sight and be at the table like you're saying. But often what happens is HR blocks them from the table. We don't need payroll. We'll let them know when we need them.

[00:14:18] [SPEAKER_00] And that's I've firsthand lived that in CBA negotiations and, you know, union updates and that sort of thing. I'm just still baffled by that. I'm still baffled by HR being such a blocker to payroll and ultimately responsible for inclusion, but then excluding the most important group in the organization to an absolute self-detriment. It just drives me crazy.

[00:14:41] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, I agree. And I do think it is a huge hurdle that we need to come figure out how to get over. And I personally think the best way to do that is to treat payroll as its own separate department. I don't think payroll should report to finance or HR. I think it needs to be in its own lane. But I do know that typically it's being held under HR.

[00:15:07] [SPEAKER_01] And the best way that I tell my colleagues to navigate that is to, again, you know, you have to find a way to meet their priorities and make it interesting to them. Make them want to invest their time. Yeah. What's in it for them? Exactly.

[00:15:25] [SPEAKER_02] And listen, Pete, you know, I've been surprised too to find it doesn't just happen when HR owns payroll. Working with a number of clients where finance owns payroll, you know, payroll doesn't get the attention that asset management gets or that financial money movement gets and accounts receivables and payables get and planning, financial planning gets. So it doesn't matter really which side of the C-suite you're in or on.

[00:15:51] [SPEAKER_02] There's that tendency to only see part of the value of payroll. And it is still hot potato even on the value side of the conversation, right?

[00:16:01] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. Yeah. Well, again, I think it's rooted in ignorance, right? It's not understanding what they do and the dangers and the risks and the value of what's coming out of there. That's, again, shameless plug, but that's why the Payroll Profession Confidence Index exists is try and say, look, there's more value in payroll. There's more ROI than just a hospice exercise of you keeping them just barely living and barely informed and barely limping along and then whipping them every time that they don't, you know, magically make everything happen by just knowing. You know, so what if, right?

[00:16:31] [SPEAKER_00] What if we turned around and just looked at their value differently and measured their value in terms of the output that they give and the risks they avoid and the insights that they provide? This is what we're really, really trying to impress upon the C-suite with my research is just to say, look, you're missing the point. You're ignorant to what you don't understand and that there is a danger in all of this. And you're eroding the trust in a lot of ways across your organization by not investing in it. Yeah. So we've got work to do.

[00:16:57] [SPEAKER_00] I'm guessing that if you're listening to this episode, that payroll is important to you. And if not, you likely know a payroll leader that powers this critical profession. Well, now's your chance to make a difference for the future of payroll. The payroll profession confidence index survey is now open for input by any and all payroll stakeholders. The PPCI is incredibly unique research. It focuses on measuring the sentiment, relationships, eminence, and strategic impact and ROI of modern payroll.

[00:17:23] [SPEAKER_00] It's completely anonymous with zero PII of any kind ever to take the survey or receive the report. It's also unmonetized and free of any conflict of interest. So please help me help payroll. Head over to payrollinfluences.com forward slash surveys. It takes you just 10 minutes of your time to join in the research and even less to share the survey with the professionals in your network. So let's make sure every payroll voice is heard around the world and amplified in this year's report. And thank you as always for your support.

[00:17:52] [SPEAKER_00] I would be insane not to talk tech with you. And I want to talk about AI. But the first thing I want to talk about, and this is really for you too, Julie, is one of the things that I'm, I spend a lot of my time advising many of the vendors in the marketplace. And I'd say over the last year and a half, there have been an increasing, and I've been really coaching my CMOs and chiefs of strategy that you've got to start talking to the CIO persona. You can't just talk to, you can't just sell HR tech and payroll tech anymore to the CFO and the CHRO.

[00:18:21] [SPEAKER_00] The CIO is increasingly going to have a vested interest in what you're doing because that AI is going to be touching and data and all these things are going to be very, very important. And that's the case, right? We're seeing that kind of starting to come up into RFPs. But Shala, I would just be curious to see your perspective, you know, kind of on that practitioner side of how you see payroll and IT getting closer. And then Julie, what are you seeing on your side?

[00:18:44] [SPEAKER_01] I think the biggest thing is with time, right? So a lot of people have, I've worked with a lot of clients who will come in and say, well, you guys need to implement AI into your department. And that's it. They have no idea what they're supposed to do with it.

[00:19:03] [SPEAKER_01] And I know as far as IT is concerned, the safety risks with AI are real, especially when it comes to connecting it to your email. So it has outbound connections. And there's a huge safety risk of that.

[00:19:22] [SPEAKER_01] But I think the biggest thing is giving the payroll teams time to learn these things and actually give them guidance of what they should be doing. Because a lot of people don't know how much more AI is than just a, you know, a Google machine.

[00:19:40] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, we're not using it to the fullest. I think we need to understand it's more than just, you're making more than a technology investment with AI. You're making an investment in completely changing the way you do things. And I think it has to be positioned that way in the outcomes that it can provide, the intelligence that it can provide to the operations. So, yeah, a lot of work there.

[00:20:00] [SPEAKER_02] And I see two things there. First of all, I feel like coming back around to the CIO and the IT organization is a little bit of full circle-ness, right? So back when in the ERP days, when it's just a system and a software, honestly, sometimes HR was owned by IT. They certainly couldn't move at all in anything they were doing with the system without IT being a major stakeholder. With SaaS, we've moved a little bit away from that direction because now more about the processing and the functionality and you need that expertise.

[00:20:29] [SPEAKER_02] And so now with AI, I think, you know, there's a shuffle, right? Like, okay, where? Now where? How do we do this now? And then I think the other thing is if I'm looking at having conversations with my IT senior stakeholders, the whole idea of roles-based access and inheriting and solving for some of that security profile,

[00:20:51] [SPEAKER_02] some of the visibility of who sees what data, you know, all of those things are embedded in the provider ecosystem that you're using. And so there's some real legitimate argument to say, as long as we're in or using this combination or this technology or these users, we're inheriting a lot of that and we're minimizing your risk as the CIO or the lead IT because you're embedding it now all in an environment and you can worry about the touch points.

[00:21:20] [SPEAKER_02] And, you know, those are the conversations that I think facilitate getting a little more buy-in from your CIO.

[00:21:26] [SPEAKER_00] So, yeah, yeah. It's going to be very interesting. Everything is going to change. I mean, the way we contract, the way we work together, I just think it's so exciting. Also scary, but very exciting. So scary. Well, I don't know, man. Every time we turn on the TV, it's another debate about AGI, right? Like, you know, it's all going to take over. And look, we're kids of the 80s. We grew up with Terminator and all those movies, right? War Games. Like, let's be realistic here. It's a little scary. But no, but I love it.

[00:21:55] [SPEAKER_00] I love, like these, look, I think back to the days of being a payroll practitioner, man. It was exhausting, right? And when I was working with 100,000 person payroll, that was probably the more complex than anything I've ever, I still have ever come across. And I always say this, like if we had any of this technology, if we just had cloud and integrations and automation, we would have taken over the world. So it's exciting to see this come, but it's also comes with a lot of responsibility that we have to stabilize and protect the trust that we've built as leaders, you know, underpinning our organizations and payroll.

[00:22:26] [SPEAKER_00] So anyway, soapbox there. All right. Shala, I want to ask you again here. So something else more along the lines of payroll, like, look, it's coming fast and heavy. How prevalent is it right now out there amongst buyers? And where do you see real opportunity? Where do you think we're getting a little ahead of ourselves?

[00:22:41] [SPEAKER_01] I think that agentic payroll is exciting, but I think it's also scary. I have built my own payroll agents myself that I have been able to implement and that work well. But the thing is, is AI is lazy and it makes mistakes. It hallucinates. And when you are placing real liability on this software, you need to make sure you have checks and balances in place.

[00:23:09] [SPEAKER_01] You can't just run it and expect it to work all the time. So you need to know what you're doing before you start using it as a, like, depending on it for your payroll, for sure.

[00:23:23] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. No, I think the straight through machine enabled thing is very, very exciting. But you're right. Right now, I think we've got to have very, very strong deterministic capabilities that we can trust to do that. And I think it's going to take a lot of work on the front end of payroll in order for that to actually be a reality. All that data gathering and validation and preparation, companies still struggle with just putting time in. I mean, how are we going to automate a payroll if we can't even get, we can't, we ain't even at the starting block. You know what I mean? Like, what are we talking about? Let's be real too.

[00:23:53] [SPEAKER_02] I mean, the whole idea with AI is the excitement that you can now use unstructured data, right? And that it's able to work with unstructured data. And yet, if you're going to create an agent, you need to start building some structure to the data so that you can tell how to use data in whatever the appropriate fashion is. And so, you know, I don't know how long it's going to be before some of that hype about, well, we could just like use unstructured data becomes a realization that, no, I need to structure data differently for an agent.

[00:24:21] [SPEAKER_02] And if you're building an agent, Shala and I'm building an agent, then we might need our data structure differently to tackle whatever those two uses are. So I don't know. You know, the lights will go on.

[00:24:35] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. Yeah. Well, payroll is still getting done. Because my light goes off. It doesn't matter what happens. AGI or not, you're going to get paid on time. Don't you worry. I love it. I love it. I love it. So, Shala, as we go forward, right, with AI, I have a vision that I think we're going to all become, you know, payroll. I say all us. I'm not a payroll person anymore, but I fight for you. I think payroll leaders are really going to become, you know, big four consultants, strategic consultants to their businesses, overseeing, you know, very, very intricate process that'll

[00:25:04] [SPEAKER_00] be highly automated. But what are your thoughts? Like, what do you see as, you know, what the payroll sort of center of expertise will become in the future in terms of serving the business?

[00:25:14] [SPEAKER_01] I agree. I think that AI is definitely going to free up our time to actually implement the things that we all want to see implemented. And that is a beautiful thing. The one thing that does make me worry is that a lot of our expertise as payroll leaders have come from being in the trenches and dealing with these crazy problems that no one could

[00:25:42] [SPEAKER_01] even think of, you know, and constantly, you know, handling those types of things. And once we implement AI to do our data entry and all of the grunt work, you know, that we used to do in the trenches, I don't know if, you know, we're going to continue to see seasoned veterans that are experts in payroll the way that we are. Yeah.

[00:26:04] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. I think we know statistically we're losing people very quickly. And I hope we, I hope what happens is, is that we change the role for the better. And we do attract that higher quality sort of starting point, if you will. We get, we have such high quality folks, but we don't, we're not always the first, the first, we're not the darling of the, of the, of the career space that people are, you know, dying to go jump in line at. But, and that's what I would love to see is start pulling some folks from different lanes

[00:26:30] [SPEAKER_00] over into an exciting world that now has a tremendously different experience. Intelligent experience.

[00:26:36] [SPEAKER_02] You have to figure out too, that you need to be able to use AI and leverage AI. Leaders want to get to the results and the productivity, right? They want you to figure that out. They want you to do repeatable things and figure out how to use agents. But along the way, you have to make sure that you also aren't cutting out the learnings and like, okay, so if an agent's doing all of this and caring for these things, how do I get that ground level experience with why this got messed up when it's not because I'm sorting through

[00:27:04] [SPEAKER_02] 3,000 line items on a spreadsheet. And now I remember it as that was 3,000 times, you know? So we have to figure out how to train as we make AI better and make it possible for the next generation of payroll experts to become expert too.

[00:27:21] [SPEAKER_00] Right? This is our chance to design it for that generation. We know how the pains have been. I mean, our generation has the opportunity to make it better for the next one and prepare it and set it up in that road of what could be, right? I don't know what we want to call it yet. So, Shal, a few more pieces of advice here I want to extract from you if you don't mind. But talk to me a little bit about, you know, just I know you talk a lot about moving from processor to, you know, from being the folks that just run the checks to being the folks that are advising the business.

[00:27:49] [SPEAKER_00] What's your advice to both practitioners that need to do that, but organizations that maybe should be but aren't?

[00:27:56] [SPEAKER_01] To practitioners, I would say that you need to hold the line and you need to stick up for yourself and really start thinking outside of the box. to how you can make your situation better. Because I know from experience and from talking to tons and tons of payroll people that most of us are operating in like close to burnout mode and just not able to take off on Tuesdays

[00:28:25] [SPEAKER_01] or Mondays because we have to process payroll. And God forbid you get sick. And that's not fair. It's not. And if you are a company and you are allowing your payroll person to endure that, you need to take a look at yourself and fix that because it's not fair. You wouldn't do that to yourself and you wouldn't put yourself in that situation. And really payroll is taking care of all of your employees.

[00:28:53] [SPEAKER_01] And they are the difference between if an employee can pay the rent on time or buy their groceries and you need to take care of them. And it's important to invest in them and your business will also be successful in that.

[00:29:08] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. Beautifully said. Yeah. Payroll makes life possible, doesn't it? And yeah, we got to protect that. I think if more businesses understood what the value of payroll was in terms of risk and output and knew how to extract that with the right people, process, skills, and tech, I think that they would find that there's a world of opportunity that they're just completely overlooking. A world of ROI for sure. So look, I want to ask you this, a few last things, right?

[00:29:36] [SPEAKER_00] You do a lot of work with AI readiness, I think with training, right? Helping folks with that. That's something that we've seen in the marketplace as a major problem for the workforce, for HR, for payroll is literacy, right? That's something I'm going to be pushing harder on in the payroll profession confidence index is getting under the hood on where people's sentiment is around AI, but also where they are just maturity and readiness to be able to handle it. And so just curious your thoughts on what you're learning from training teams on this and

[00:30:06] [SPEAKER_00] what your recommendation is around that literacy part.

[00:30:10] [SPEAKER_01] What I'm seeing the most of is people are basically just using it as a chat bot, asking it questions like it's Google. And what people need to do is get creative. But I know in payroll, we don't tend to have a lot of time to do anything. Right. What I would suggest is to help your employee carve out at least like an hour a week and just play with it.

[00:30:37] [SPEAKER_01] There are classes that you can take that are free. I know Claude offers them. But also just try it out and see how far you can push it. Don't take any of its information as you know that it's correct. But seeing how you can use it to take a thousand page PDF and turn it into an Excel file and then

[00:31:01] [SPEAKER_01] validate that information and use it to use it while you're processing your payroll to audit whatever you need to audit, as well as when you're doing your 401k audits. Just start throwing stuff in there and see what it does. And then you'll figure it out of what works and what doesn't work.

[00:31:21] [SPEAKER_02] I also feel like it's OK to take baby steps, baby repeatable steps. So, you know, ultimately, you're going to do these six or seven things with a spreadsheet or a whole bunch of data and needs to go to a spreadsheet, needs to go to a PowerPoint. You know, nothing that you can prompt it in one prompt is going to do that for you. And that's what you're thinking about from inputs to outputs. And so really just even breaking it down and saying, look, I often get PDF data. It needs to go into a spreadsheet.

[00:31:50] [SPEAKER_02] You know, I'm looking at one now. I got 12 more of them on my desk here today. Right. Like, why don't I just take that baby? That step is the same step no matter what. And focusing in on its step, you know, in some logical chunks. Right. Will help you get to the whole idea of it's not just a prompt. It's not just a Google replacement. It is an actor. But how can you tell it to do steps that are recognizable and you get successful output?

[00:32:19] [SPEAKER_02] Then you string those things together. Absolutely. And make a whole football team out of it, I guess.

[00:32:25] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, rinse and repeat. You know, have like a I could just see that army of like on Star Wars of like the stormtroopers coming into the thing. They're all payroll and HR bots, right? No. Charlotte, I want to wrap this up with one last question to you and more advice for the payroll leaders out there. You know, what's what sort of one mindset shift that you would recommend payroll leaders take right now to prepare themselves to level up in this new age?

[00:32:51] [SPEAKER_01] Definitely working on AI, but to focus on not how much work you're inundated with, but how you can help the business grow and how you can prove that your business is the business is going to grow with your help.

[00:33:10] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, absolutely. I think coming with a point of view and backing it up with insight and data is going to be key in that diplomacy. Look for that diplomacy episode. I think there's a good offshoot from this that you'll find there. So, Charlotte, tell me a little bit about what you guys do over at SPS and how do folks get in touch with you best?

[00:33:28] [SPEAKER_01] Absolutely. So, I'm a fractional payroll director and I come in and I help payroll departments mitigate those huge risks that are pending because you're not staffing your payroll department properly. Not in payroll state. Yep. And yeah, you can reach me on LinkedIn or you can find me at my website, which is strategicpayrollsolutions.com.

[00:33:56] [SPEAKER_00] Awesome. Awesome. We'll look, we'll share it. And as always, thank you, Julie. Thank you, Shala, for joining us. Thank you to the audience. As always, you guys are the best. Like, share, subscribe. Please subscribe. We could use the help. It always does wonders for us. And as always, thank you so much to OneSource Virtual, Globalization Partners, GP, and Zoho for sponsoring us ad-free. We appreciate it so much. So, we will be back with more conversations very, very soon.

[00:34:22] We'll see you next time.