Report highlights challenges of aging professionals, errors and new tech
A new report suggests that Canada sits mid-pack in global payroll maturity, with an aging workforce, limited AI adoption, and a critical shortage of benchmarking data.
The demographic picture is stark. Just over two-thirds of payroll professionals surveyed are over 45, and roughly one in three have been in the profession for more than 20 years.
"As these professionals transition toward retirement, a significant capability gap will emerge within their organizations and across the broader workforce,” says the report, based on a national survey of 622 respondents, interviews with payroll leaders across Canada and internationally, and a review of industry literature.
Payroll workloads
Seventy-seven percent of payroll professional respondents spend more than 60 percent of their working time on payroll or payroll-related functions — a figure that encompasses everything from validating time and attendance data to reconciling discrepancies with HR and finance, managing government remittances, and troubleshooting system issues.
The survey broke down how that time is spent each week, and the hours add up quickly.
Non-managers: 51 hours/week
- 19 hrs transactional & admin
- 17 hrs operational & delivery
- 15 hrs strategic tasks
Managers & directors: 45 hours/week
- 16 hrs transactional & admin
- 12 hrs operational & delivery
- 17 hrs strategic tasks
The data also shows non-manager professionals at large organizations (500+ employees) spend 31 percent of their time on strategic tasks, compared to 28 percent at smaller organizations — a gap the report attributes to higher levels of automation at larger employers, which reduces the administrative load and frees capacity for higher-value work.
The pressure on payroll and HR teams at tax time has intensified as benefits programs expand and work arrangements become more complex, according to a previous report.
Technology: momentum without transformation
Thirty-nine percent of respondents said their organization had changed payroll software in the last five years, and a further 28 percent of those who had not yet transformed said they planned to do so within five years, said the report.
Cloud migration is underway across organizations of all sizes, not just large ones — though large organizations lead the transition.
As for the top anticipated impacts on their role, 73.5% of payroll professionals cited "adoption of new payroll technologies and automation" while 61.4% cited "changes in government regulations and compliance requirements.”
AI is now transforming payroll, according to a previous report.
Payroll errors in Canada
Seventy-five percent of employee respondents reported experiencing at least one payroll error during the year. The most cited issues were incorrect pay amounts (43%) and missing overtime or bonus payments (36%).
Notably, the report found that most payroll errors do not originate within the payroll function itself. According to Deloitte industry leaders cited in the report, errors "most often are a result of upstream information from other areas of the business, such as time and attendance, which impact the quality of the data that feeds the payroll system."
Only 21 percent of payroll professionals said their organization actively monitors payroll-related KPIs. Where metrics are tracked, they tend to be basic — payroll accuracy rate and number of errors — while more sophisticated indicators around compliance, cost efficiency, employee experience, and technology effectiveness go unmeasured.
Self-service and financial wellness
Nearly half of respondents who identified as general employees indicated that they use a self-service portal when they require information about their payroll.
The preferred support methods are:
- online tutorials or videos (37.5%)
- interactive self-service portal with explanations (33.3%)
- step-by-step guides from HR/payroll (29.2%)
- one-on-one sessions with payroll/HR staff (25%)
- FAQ documents (20.8%)
On financial wellness more broadly, 39 percent of organizations offer an automatic savings plan for employees, and a further 10 percent said they do not yet do so but are interested in exploring the option, found the report.
Earned wage access (EWA) — the ability for employees to draw on wages before their scheduled payday — remains a distant prospect for most Canadian employers. Eighty-three percent of surveyed payroll professionals said their employees have expressed no interest in alternative pay methods, and the majority of organizations said they are not prepared to implement them.
