The Payroll Powerlist Ep 01. Redefining Payroll, Globally & Locally

[MUSIC PLAYING] Insights from leaders powering payroll across the world, real stories, real insights, and real payroll conversations. This is Payroll Power List, a podcast series by Niyamo. Welcome to the Payroll Power List by Niyamo, the podcast where we spotlight the people, idea and innovation shaping the future of payroll. I'm your host Nancy, and in every conversation, I sit down with global leaders, change makers, and payroll visionaries to uncover lessons in leadership, transformation, and impact. Whether you're in the payroll trenches or leading from the boardroom, this is where the worst payroll conversations come to life. Today, we are joined by Anseline, head of people services at Topella. And it's a pleasure to have you here. Hope you're doing great today. Hi, Nancy. Yes, very well. I'm with you, and I'm super happy to be able to participate in that podcast. Thank you for inviting me. Perfect. Thank you so much for joining us. So let's quickly kickstart with our podcast. Let's begin with what major shifts over the last couple of years transformed payroll from a more transactional cycle into a core and a blur of workflow strategy. I think what makes Payroll really interesting is, exactly as we said, we started. It was a basic accountant where we were just there to collect the working time of people and to calculate taxes and contributions. So we can really give the salary to employees. And now what is very important, and what I see at least at Topella, as well as my personal employer, as well as on the market, is that we are more and more a partner to really use all the components that we can use to increase the composition, to increase the employee experience. And now Payroll is part of the strategy from HR or what we call us in Opella, people and culture, to attract talent and to retain talent. So it's not only a question of figures on the paper, it's more about how can we make the experience of an employee financial or non-financial component more exciting. So when the joiners, they have a real full experience and to an experience. And on top of that, on the other side of the pay if I may say, we also give some additional data to the business, to the decision maker. So they have real, clear and transparent visibility on how we spend the money on what we call the personal cost. To make sure that when the tech decision to maybe build a manufacturing site in one country or to hire your temporary employees in another one, or if they want to improve the retention of some talent, they have all the data that need Form Payroll in order to take those decisions. So really we've switched from just admin pure transactional activities, as you said, to that strategic partner, really collaborating with HR and with business to make sure that all companies can go in the right direction. And again, cannot track talent. - Well, well said, Anne, today's Payroll system generate rich work for the intelligence, right? So what impact has this had on how senior leaders could leverage Payroll in decision making? - Oh, definitely is how we can anticipate based on what happened in the past. So the foundation of analytics and predictive analytics is you look at what were the trends of the previous 12 months is, or maybe more if you have more historical data, and then to see what are the different criteria that influence that trend. So for example, if we look at terminates people so the resignation, we could maybe find a way to categorize them based on their seniority, their age, their maybe job family, or maybe their location. We can maybe add additional excel criteria to also try to interpret those trends. And based on that trend, we can try to anticipate what could happen in the future. And it's exactly the shift we are trying to do in Opella. Today we are the basic company where we look at our data, you know, during reporting, excels, and comparison, and maybe some graphs. What we are building right now is really pure analytics that will help to predict the future. So we cannot anticipate if we hire this kind of category of people based on statistics and past and experience, how long they could stay in the company, what they could provide to the company. We cannot anticipate which talents will be maybe high potential versus which talents will be excellent execution. So it's something that will help with the hiring process, for example, to pick up the right talent in a certain given situation, not only the position, but the situation as well. We see this new Jane XYZZ. We have so many difference between the way we use to hire and the way we use to feel comfortable at the office and also what drives us to go to the office. You know, we start going to the office. And now we are more working from home, but it's not only what the people are expecting. It's also more this working experience as we were saying. So those analytics help us to predict how an employee could react where we should be more proactive than reactive. So we shift from just high potential to really work force management. Instead of just focusing our attention and money to do that a really high performer or maybe the one that will be the leader of tomorrow, we can really now focus on every single employee of the company, doesn't matter the size. This is what payroll analytics can bring to decision maker. Rightly said, integrations have begun the foundation of modern payroll ecosystems. So what do organizations often underestimate about the importance of a connected payroll stack? Yeah, all the mess that goes with non-integration. So then, finally, I can tell you in a pile-up so we are only 10,000 employees, but we have 40 plus countries. And when you look at the size of our company, versus the number of countries, you can imagine we have countries with 1,000 plus employees, but we also have countries with one employee. And one employee is not the same interest or business case if I may say, when we speak about integration, then when we have 1,000 or 10,000. And what often we underestimate is we say, "Oh, we have only 10 employees or 20 employees." And in that case, let's not build an interface. Let's just do development trees. And what we are often forgetting is the risk, the human risk of those manual entries and how they will be actually put on short consequence on payroll and potential consequence of the credibility of the company and potential issues with unions. So the understimation is really about the manual workload and the risk of errors. And just because we want to save money, just because we consider that a small country does not deserve the same attention that the big countries. We are putting our company at risk. We are putting our reputation at risk. And if we start to have errors and it starts to be known on the market, how can we attract talents and say, "Hey, guys, trust us. If you join us, we will really recognize your work and you will receive the compensation package and your benefits package." And the reality, they see in the press that, no, we were not paying properly our employees. So that's something that sometimes when our IT colleagues or even our decision maker, they try to cut budget by thinking small countries, again, do not deserve the same effort than big countries for me, that's the error. Because when you don't do any effort for those small countries, at the end of the day, and I see it again in Nopela, when you need to have that global picture of the total workforce, as we were explaining earlier, that now we can focus on the full set of employees, not just the high potential. Then you are missing those opportunities to get those data from the small countries. So you don't have the complete picture. You have a partial picture. And if I look at Opella, we have about 20 countries where we have less than 100 employees and 20 countries where we have more than 100 employees. So if I'm bypassing those 20 countries that are less than one other employees, I'm missing half of my countries. So it's not a question of making some savings here and thereby not implementing integration. It's really missing the opportunity to have a full picture of the entire company and making sure that we are addressing the taxes, the local taxes and the local issues and the local legislation risks, just because we want to save 100K here and there. Wonderful. And that was really lovely to hear from you. I had this quick question, which was, employees today always expect not only today, well, even in the past, to we expect transparency, speed and personalization rate. How are these expectations reshaping the way organization design payroll crosses? Let's say down the line, two or three years. I've been asked several times if we could do like more often payments. So instead of paying on near the end of the month, maybe we could do systematic advance payment middle of the month or maybe we could do on-demand pay. So we know the salary of an employee. Of course, we take the assumption that the employee will still be there at the end of the month. And the question I was asked was, can we do adult pay rolls with an employee immediately need something to buy a new car or whatever accident of life? And personally, and again, maybe I'm old too much. So I don't believe the real-time payroll can work. At least not yet. The systems are not ready. The mortality is not ready. But what we can definitely improve is real-time requests announced. So I'm an employee today. If I have a question, either I go to HR or I go to a ticketing system or I go to a portal where I can find some information about the policies, but I always have additional questions, for example, on my pay slip. Imagine I'm someone from another country, so I'm a foreigner, and I don't understand my pay slip. I always need to speak to someone to understand. And often I have to wait. So I'm raising my ticket, and then I don't have the immediate answer. So I need to remember the day after that I have the question to that ticketing system. I'm checking, still no answer. So the day after I'm going, and then the end satisfaction starts to rise. What we are trying to do, I think, and what is the future of HR/paywall is the real-time answer. Not real-time paywall, not yet. Maybe I'm again, too old, and I don't see the future. I'm not visionary enough. But for sure, the real-time answer is what we are looking for. So to, again, propose self-service so people can play with their own pay slip. They can click, and you have this information explaining everything. You have today the total composition sheet, which is often proposed to all our employees. So they understand the portion of benefits, versus the salary, versus the bonus, versus the pension, versus the taxes, the pay. So this is something that now we are transparently offering to employees. So they have the full composition package at the early. But what is missing is how can we help them to understand? So I got this guy to know later than yesterday about someone not understanding his pay slip. And that's a standard legislation in this country, but the guy do not understand. So if we would have like an interactive screen where he could say, OK, this is my pay slip, can you help me to understand this and this and this, and this way it's coming from? That we don't need any more tickets. They don't need any more to waste their time waiting for the answer and getting frustrated not having it. And I'm talking here about a white collar. Imagine you are in a manufacturing site where people maybe do not read the language or maybe do not have access to a computer. They do have the mobile phone to speak with the kids. So they have nothing else than the mobile. Those guys, if they have questions, they need to wait for their break because they're working in a manufacturing site. They kind of just say, oh, I have a question. I will go at nine to the HR office and get the answer. They have to wait for their break. Of course, they will not enjoy the break because they will have to work to the HR office or to where a cross is available in the plans. So they will waste time to go to raise the question. And again, it's not real time answer. So they will raise the question and they will go back to their machine or whatever they are doing. Same situation under the white collar. No answer, no immediate answer, I mean, frustration. So they will come the next day and they will lose their second break. And then maybe the next day again, depending on how fast behind the scene, the team can answer. So if you could push a kind of intelligence that can answer immediately the question, and I'm not talking only about Robo and A, I think, but something that can smartly understand the question from the employee and provide them the right way, that will become a highly satisfied thing for the employee. They will be able just to do it in the bus or in the taxi or even if they think about something over the weekend, they can check directly online. So for me, the future is definitely to develop this analytics, as we said, and the predictive one to absorb more and more data. It's also to be able to answer our real time to employees. And I think another thing that we see more and more in the market. And again, I can observe it in Opella. We are more and more seeking for benchmark. To compare ourselves with all the companies that we think are best practices. OK, we have to define what means best practice. We're talking about the most efficient in terms of employee ratio or cost or real time. I don't know what means best practice in parallel to be honest, except parallel to zero. But if you look at the decision maker today, the new leaders, they are looking at how the others are doing to take some sense of what could be the next step for their own company. What can we do better? Are we paying correctly our employees? You know, before it was a secret, a secret, nobody was talking about payroll at the coffee machine or in the meeting. It was something extremely secret and confidential. Now more and more we do benchmark. We ask those big vandals, those big consulting firms, tell me what's the benchmark that you see in all your clients. And we are taking this-- you know, again, it cost a lot. Maybe now is AI. We can have it in one click. But we are always trying to compare ourselves with others. And what we are missing is someone with a vision. Someone who will say, I don't care about others. I think what brings the employee experience, the well-being at the office is decent, decent, that. Let's go for it. You know, last time I saw an interview of someone, I think it was a US company. And the guy was asked, you know, I've learned in the press that you don't have any HR department in your company. Are you sure it will not melt down and you will lose the opportunity to have proper policies and everything? And the guy was saying, you know, what makes the employee staying at the office? It's not only about the company and the vision of the company and the product that they are saying or services. It's also about the relationship with the team and with the managers. So if we completely empower the manager, will that not bring more, you know, happiness to the team or more relationship or closer relationship? Will that not bring more autonomy to the manager? So he will feel comfortable to take decision and promotion or talent development or whatever. Of course, there is a risk if the manager is not good, definitely we lose everywhere. But if you think about it, and I'm sorry, I don't want to kill my job, but it could be an idea that for some kind of company, we trust more than managers. So I have plenty of ideas. I don't want to spend the entire day on that question. But yeah, definitely between the technology and completely shifting the way we used to work today, that is something that will be required in the future. Well, let's talk about the elephant in the room, which is compliance. Regulatory change is faster and more frequent than ever, right? So how can organizations build a compliance model? That is both globally consistent yet locally responsive? It's a very fair question. And actually, I think, even in my organization, we have this challenge. So we are setting up some policies around data privacy and everything, which is in one hand asking us to be more conservative, or be more aware of sensitive data and how we manage sensitive data, we store sensitive data, we archive sensitive data. We are now obliged to put in place this transparency towards the employee, if someone is asking us, which kind of data do you have about me? Could you please delete because you don't need them? We need to have that flexibility. And at the same time, exactly as you mentioned, we need to remain compliant with little color legislation. In some countries, you need to keep your pay sleep forever. In some countries, you need to keep your pay sleep for 10 years or five years or whatever. And we even have situation. And I remember this in my all experience, it happens to me when I was a payroll manager in the past. We had an accident, the employee unfortunately died when he was commuting from his home to the office. And we had to retrieve some information from the system. And it was very painful because we couldn't, of course, get his approval to share this information with third parties. So we had to go through the wife and it was a whole story. So this kind of very sensitive situation is really secure by local legislation. Same, we had once an investigation by police about the criminal and we were asked if the employee was at the office 10 years ago, on a certain day, on a certain time. So we had, you know, by chance at this time, we were still having all the archives with us. But imagine if with this new legislation, we say, oh, we don't need any more that information so we can delete it. And those kind of cases arrive when you need to provide something that you delete it because of the new data privacy policy. So what we are trying to do, and again, we so collide something that we are, you know, flirting, what is it if I may say? We look at the global guidance and then we adjust each and every guidance based on the local legislation. And this is only for the data privacy. But then, as you were saying, in terms of legislation, some of our governments are very creative and they like to change legislation at any time. Maybe you noticed I'm French with my accents and my name. And in France, we keep voting new laws, new legislation that, of course, will benefit the employee, mainly more than the employer. And each and every year, we have to set up like 15 new rules in the payroll system. So I don't know how, especially when you also are able to vend us, how vendors can bring partnership with the local governments to receive, you know, all the details of the legislation in a free event so they can set up in the system. Because the problem is not only the change, it's also the time we have to adapt. And in some countries, I remember, in Greece recently, we had a change of legislation where we were obliged to clock in, clock out, same in Spain one or two years ago. And sometimes you just have three or six months is to adapt. And when you have such short period of time, it can be challenging for the payroll vendors or the payroll integrator or payroll system to adjust and adapt the configuration for all their clients. This is for me the real challenge. It's how can we connect those guys, you know, to be facing all those changes. And again, in some countries, you have also, you know, kind of federations, unions, et cetera, that could bring additional complexity to the legislation. How can we make sure that we are not only real time because you always have to set up and test and everything, but at least in a very short time, align with the new legislation, the new governments. How can we build system that we bring the reassurance that we are flexible enough to adapt whenever there is something happening? And it's exactly the same question, you know, when you have a company that are acquiring other companies or that carve out, because you have to integrate new payroll, new company, new rules in less than three months. Same when you carve out, you need to organize that carve out often in less than a year. And it's not a needed thing to do. So the compliance is giving us a frame in which, like a playground, in which we need to stick. But still, at the same time, we have a business to run, so we need to find a balance between, how do we stick to those rules? And how can we be flexible enough to adjust to the business needs? And this is also what is I'm doing in Playboy, if I may, you cannot get bored every day. Some things are happening every day. There is something changing here, an issue there, an error there. And this is why I think more and more companies go for outsource model, where the trust partner, who has those connections with local government or with local statutory bodies, so they are aware in advance. That's the case of Miyamoto, if I may say, you guys, you are doing it. You have that newsletter on the compliance what is changing in which country, and we know we can trust you, as well as some of your competitors, on how can we get compliance, updated on time in our payroll system. And when you're in-house, it's another story. You need to make sure that your team is aware of everything. And you have those agreements with the company that are responsible for legal watch. You have to delegate the legal watch to another company. It's another story. But that's what makes payable so exciting. At least for me. OK. With advancements like real-time compliance updates and automated shifts, what do you think can be like a shift or a change? You foresee and how payroll teams could manage risk. That's a good question. So it depends what we mean by risks here. I know it's in the context of compliance. Exactly. I would like to maybe highlight something else that we didn't discuss. And I think it's something very important nowadays. It's what we call fraud. It's definitely a compliance topic, but it's another angle. And you know, with the new technology, with everyone having a computer, with all those AI technology and some senior engineer, knowing more and more how to code things, what I see is we have more and more attempt for fraud, where we are fishing, so we are saying, hey guys, could you please send me my pay sleep? I lost it. And if we send it and it's not an employee of your company, then you have a risk. Or maybe someone is asking to change the bank account. Or recently in my company, we had someone who received an instruction to change a bank account. Sorry, I was looking for my own bank account. And it was a fake employee. But this guy found a way to find the manager name, the manager email. The people I did just to give some context and make the request even more realistic. I even heard, I don't remember what it was, but someone acting at the CEO, saying, hey guys, I would like to have the payroll results of the last 12 months is blah, blah, blah. And if our team in payroll are not trained to, you know, capture those fraud attempts, to realize that it's a fake request, this is where we lose all the benefit of this legislation and this compliance framework I was talking about before. Because if we don't know how to stop those requests, then once the point of being compliant with payroll, if you have a data wish the day after. And for me, this is what we should really focus on now. Making sure that we understand what type of fault we have. We have several different categories of fraud. In Opella, we have a kind of monetary training to explain what data are sensitive, how to react in case of fraud. In my payroll team, we have built our own payroll academies, so we train every single new joiner and we have this ratio where we explain them what kind of fraud we put in place, some security questions to make sure that an employee is an employee. It even works when the employee has left, you know, and they are asking for additional information from where they were working for Opella. But we are really creating additional barriers. Cucun, if I may say, around the team, to make sure that they can recognize real requests versus fake requests. So for me, the biggest risk is fraud. It's not compliance or real-time changes. It's a challenge, but it's not so huge risk for me anymore. I mean, you guys, you have like 20 years plus of experience. The biggest vendor, I have also the experience. But fraud, we are all at risk. Any good hacker can go in your system and, you know, just copy your data, steal your data, resell them somewhere else. We have seen so many examples with big companies with data bridge where you inform your I-Burn or your personal information, I've been hacked by your bank or whatever company. And for me, this is the next fight we need to win. Is to make sure that our payroll is becoming kind of no IT experts. They need to shift from basic data input things or control things, which I hope we will all automate at one point with all those new technology and to be more into employing experience and fraud prevention. Okay, very alarming, but a very critical and important point is what right, sale. It's happening. Yeah, I mean, scary, but yeah, I mean, like I think it's high time. We all should be like very technically sound, right? Moving on to transformation and many organizations know they need to modernize payroll or to transform. Okay, but don't know where to begin. So what guiding principles should shape a strong transformation roadmap? To be honest, it really depends on the vision of the data. Not all solution will fit all companies. As we were saying earlier, some companies prefer global, some other prefer 100% local, some will prefer this hybrid model, same with the outsourcing model. So some companies will prefer in source, some will prefer outsource. So I think the starting point is what is your vision? What is your need? Do you want to have your in-house expertise because you know you are complex and there is no way you will change it? You know, public companies, for example, they will not just be transformation. They will try first to keep it in-house, to make sure that the master everything. But all the companies say, no, my business is to sell whatever computers. So I don't care about payroll. I want this to be managed by experts, external experts like vendor like you guys. So you start by your vision and based on the vision, it will give you the kind of proven methodology on how to transform, depending what's on your budget. But let's assume that you want to outsource, which is the most known payroll model, where you outsource payroll. And let's assume you have limited budgets because with the new world, you know, we need to be careful of how we spend our money. The first thing I will advise is to look at the input. Because sorry for my English shit in shit out. Maybe I should say garbage in garbage out. But what is important is if you are not able to control your payroll inputs, the quality, the real time, who is allowed to provide payroll inputs, who can confirm that the payroll input is correct, like not too high, not too low, etc. Then your payroll will not be correct, accurate. You may pay on time, but it will not be accurate. So first advice, look at the first type of payroll, which is preparation, input, make sure everybody is aware, make sure you automate the data collection, make sure you have controls, make sure you have everything in place real time to feed payroll properly. And once you have done that payroll inputs and it's under control, then you can look at the controls of payroll itself. So making sure that all the specificities of the local local legislation is properly set up in your system, so it's fully automated. Again, either you do it in-house or you rely on vendors that have those controls, but the most important is to make sure we do not forget. I used to have and it's still the case unfortunately. Some control are still manual and when the inputs are arriving late, the team doesn't have time to properly control payroll. And we missed once, and now pay who has 100K too much. Not 1K, 100K, you. So it's not a small error, we should have spotted it. But the payroll expert was spending so much time in preparing input that this person didn't have time to control the payroll results. So step one, payroll input, step two, controls. And if you are into outsourcing model, definitely do a proper RFP, expose your situation, discuss with different vendors, and they will help you to design what would work the best for you. Based on, as we said, number of employees, number of countries, split between white-collar blue-collar, do you have manufacturing sites or not? And they will be able to help you to design that model and to deploy the model. Each company is different. There is no one solution fits all. So we just need to be aware and hopefully our leaders know it. There is not one solution again for all situation. So if you have a good leader and if that person has a vision, it's easy to partner with and to design the target model with them. And that was a wonderful piece of information, having visionary leader to kickstart everything, lovely Anne. So looking ahead, what innovations, real-time payroll, let's say global instant payments, like you said, on wage access on demand paid, AI-driven accuracy. Do you believe have the greatest potential to redefine the end-diopayroll industry? Maybe for some people, but not for all. I guess for what we call the blue-collar, so the one that are really having low salary or very difficult condition of life, it will help them to have this real-time thing. Because once again, if they are facing an unexpected issue with kids, with cars, with their own job, I mean, the partner jobs or whatever, with doctors, with health, it can definitely help them to be more flexible and do not have to wait the end of the week or the end of the month to be paid. So that population will definitely benefit from any real-time thing we can implement. But when you look at stabilised watercolours, population, I'm not yet convinced, I don't want to say no, I don't have the crystal ball for the future. But I'm not sure it will fit with everyone. Same than for the compliance, same than for the global versus local. There is not one solution that fits all. Depending on the type of people, the generation of that population, they are skills, their competencies, the type of job they do, is the manual job, is the computer job, it's not the same need. So I will not say that there is one future for people. I think there is, like, the multiverse, we are in the Marlmouille. The multiverse, we need to adapt to the situation and I think the most important future for paywall is flexibility. It's not to have one good trained. Of course we are benefiting from all those changes, so computer first, so printers, then computer, then AI. So we are following the same training as all the other functions, like finance and everything. But whether than having one direction, I would prefer myself to feel that I can opt in or opt out any options that are available on the markets or that guide like you can invent to make our life easier. And in the Niger world, I should be able to prove paywall from Hawaii, so I don't need to go to the office and I can do it. This flexibility is, I think, what will help the most our new generation to stay and engage with the company. We see more and more people jumping from one company to another just because they will earn $1 more in the second floor versus the third floor. And the retention of those times is more and more critical. For the knowledge and for the expertise. Again, not yet convenient real time is the solution for everything. Flexibility. We should be able to say, "Oh, we want you. You live two hours from for the office. Okay, do it from home. Oh, you are next to the office. You want to go five times a day to the office. Five times a week to the office. Go to the office. You want real time paywall. Oh, you want monthly paywall. Oh, you want an advance. Oh, you want this. Oh, you bonus instead of being paid once a year. You want it 12, settlement of 12 months, et cetera, et cetera. Today, it's time I receive a request. We categorize it as exception. In my dream, there is only exception. We can adjust without painful processes to almost all type of employees. And that for me is the future. More than real time things. Flexibility. Adapters to you versus to me. Adaptability. Yes. Adaptability and flexibility. That was very interesting about Unwage Access Anne. My last question for you is, if we imagine payroll three to five years from now, what does a truly borderless and intelligent payroll ecosystem look like to you? Okay, we spoke about integration. Definitely the dream, I think, for all companies is to have entry and integration. So once we do something in one system, it's automatically taken into account in one paywall. I don't know if I will be very popular for it, but paywall should be fully automated. There is no reason why we should have a bunch of 10 people looking at paywall. Of course, we will always have what we call time management specificities. Like I work overtime, I don't want to be paid, I want to take time off in year. I was late one minute, but please don't deduct my payroll. I have issues with my wife. Could you please help me to pay this, etc. etc. So we will always have those challenges with employees that need specific attention. But the whole payroll process should be fully automated. We enter you as a new hire in a company, but you are paid without any human intervention. We should trust the system and vendors like you to set up the compliance framework, the controls and everything and to provide the pay skips and the bank payment without any issue. Today, you know, we are a big company, Topela. We are brand new, but we still have people who enter the bank account with errors. And garbage and garbage out, as we said, I have regularly in my email escalation about people not being paid. And when we look at the reason and the road cause, it's because they didn't enter the bank account correctly. And this would be the dream to have more connection with statutory bodies, governments, banks, so there is no errors anymore. So not multiverse here, all in one universe, but really exactly as you mentioned, that landscape where everything can be automated, because we are partnering with statutory bodies. Again, another example of our friends. We used to send like five or six different pay-all results to the pension, social security, the insurance, the unemployment agency, etc. Now, we send one file to one portal and all those different statutory bodies come and pick up what they need. And this is exactly where we should, I mean not exactly, but this is where we should try to go, is where everybody is contributing to these seamless expense. Again, we receive and put directly maybe from the bank so we don't have those guys giving you the paper or making mistakes when they are typing it. So between the capital letter of the i and the L, you know, it's the often one. And then the O versus a zero again, often this error, where you enter, you are hired and you know 100% you will be paid exactly as you should be paid. So we release the stress of people. And I'm saying stress, I'm not stressed myself, but I know people that are stressed to receive their payment at the end of the month or end of the week. So they can focus on the day to day activities. They can sell products if their job is to sell. They can manufacture products if their job is to manufacture. So in an ideal dream, we should have payroll clearance only to help people to answer them in that day to day issues. So we spend more time on the well-being than on the data. Well, okay, this is my future. Well, just out of curiosity and like as you said, payroll has to be fully automated like down the line for the future. But I had this recently, I had this opportunity to travel to Australia to attend TAPS conference where I had a converse with a lot of people, a lot of customers about Neyamo Bay's Australia. Do you think people would also like to have that pinch of control over the payroll system rather than imagine a payroll system that's fully automated? What's your take on that? And if people would want. Yeah, yeah, finish your question, finish your question. If people would want a certain level of control over the payroll software, what is that control and do you see this as an opportunity or yeah, what's your take on it? Very easy answer, change management. It's just change of mindset. So remember when the first computer was there, there was super huge and we were a bit scared to connect to the computer because we prefer paper. And then internet arrived and we were scared because we thought people will be able to have access to our computer and steal our information. And then we went with AI. How long did it take to AI to become so easily accessible where everybody can ask questions to chapter T or co-pilot or whatever. So the automatic payroll, it's a change of mindset. It's just a step in our evolution. So yesterday they asked us, yes, today they are wondering, can this work? We are coming from a world where payroll accuracy is the first battle. It's the goal of every HR director because we want to make sure that people do not care about paywall that just do their job. They don't have anything else to think about. And it's not happening. I mean, I don't know any companies where the payroll accuracy is 100%. I mean globally, for small companies, probably, but for big companies, you always have something which is not going well. Either you have a latent put or the employee make mistakes or the manager make mistakes or I tell my smith, or paywall make mistakes or vendor make mistakes. It can always happen. So change management or change of mindset is just the normal trend when something new is popping up. Again, coming back to my French example with that one report for all the statutory bodies, we were all scared when it happened. Same when you go from a paper or a pay slip to a e-pay slip. The first reaction is it will not work. How can I make sure that my pay slip is not accessible to anyone else? How can I make sure that I will be the one receiving my pay slip and no one can steal my personal information? You know that the policy of, I think it was Instagram and Facebook changed recently. Where they start to say, "Oh, we will take whatever you post and it will become public." It's a change of mindset. A lot of people are scared with transparency due to the data, not anything because it can be used by unfortunate bad people that will steal your data and do fake fake videos or whatever. So which I understand. But here we are just talking about real time and control. We are not talking about, you know, sharing sensitive data. It's just, legislation has the frame. The system is the mean. So why should we have a human overlooking on what a system can do? Of course, chat, DPPT and all AI, we need control on this because it can answer correctly or incorrectly based on how the system was fed by internet or blog or whatever. But here we are talking about a machine like a robot that would just do calculation and check if it's correct or not. So yes, we will always be scared at the beginning when a new features or big transformation is coming. But that's the normal process to evolve to the new world of people, to the zero if I may say. Even me, you know, you asked me for the real time. My first reaction was like, "Let me think, maybe I'm not sure." And once you know, you see others having the courage to do that transformation and you can witness that it's working. "Ah, maybe." Why not me? So that's normal process. I will not be scared. You know, when I bought Miyamoto in Opella, the first reaction was, "Who are you sure?" And now, I mean, you are one of our best vendors. So definitely, any change is scary at the beginning. And at one point, when we see it's working, when we see there is no risk, of course we have risk everywhere, but not your risk, it will be easy to transform. Remember, when Amazon created those centers where you have a robot that pickups the product for you so you don't have any more guys running that little truck picking up the product and they have this automated packaging thing. It was a brand new evolution. And we always say, "Ah, we're not working, we're not working." And it's working. When McDonald's or all the supermarket, they introduce this camera that can look at what you put in your in your bag. So when you pay its automatic, so you don't have to pay with the credit card, it's within your bag and you can just go outside of the supermarket. We said, "Ah, it will not work." And people will steal things. But no, it's working. Okay, we may not like it, but it's working. You will always have people that will abuse the system and that we try to steal things. But if we start to stop ourselves, due to that 10% maybe 5% of people that just want to abuse the system, you will not progress. And this is not where we want for the world. We want to progress. We need to take care of the future. We need to take care of our kids and our environment. Yeah, being scared is the first step of the change. It's just question of demonstrating, finding the one that will have the vision. Remember what we were saying earlier? You need to have a leader with a vision. This guy will bring it. Elon Musk may be not the best leader, but he has a vision. And he was the one bringing, you know, some technologies I never before we had. So we are always scared by the change. Okay. Let's make fully automated payroll system. The new normal then. Perfect. It was lovely talking to you. And I think we should do this often because you have great points on earned which access on compliance and even on technology. And I'm very sure you're very curious to know about Neamos Arya as well. So I think. So in case if you're freed next week or maybe sometime after Christmas next year, then probably we could have a virtual podcast again and talk about this more. Yeah. With pleasure. Thank you so much Nancy for welcoming me again. Thank you for very interesting question and discussion. We appreciate it. And yeah, let me know whenever I can help you again. Yeah, I'm sure a lovely young. Yeah, I'll email you. Thank you and have a wonderful day. I think we'll see you too. Yeah. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Bye. Thank you for tuning into the payroll power list by Neamo where the people, ideas and innovation takes center stage. And it's been a pleasure guiding today's conversation. If you enjoy this podcast, be sure to follow, share and join us again until we continue exploring the future of payroll one liter at a time. Until next time, this is Nancy signing off. [Music]