Brent Skinner, Executive Community Lead for HR.com, is a subject matter expert in human capital management (HCM). As executive community leader for the “Future of Payroll and Workforce Management (WFM)” online community, he acts as HR.com’s industry analyst, covering payroll, human resources information system (HRIS), and WFM. He also hosts a related podcast with HR.com and helps lead HR.com’s Future of Payroll advisory board to actively work with thought leaders to establish standards, relevant research topics, common metrics, and education.

Previously, Brent was the lead HCM industry analyst at 3Sixty Insights and Nucleus Research. In the press and as a speaker at industry events, Brent is a frequent voice on HCM-related topics. Brent also has experience working for large vendors of HCM technology, such as Ceridian, Cornerstone OnDemand, and isolved.

 

Q. What are the biggest challenges the C-suite should know about and address for their payroll teams?

The biggest challenge is that payroll is often still seen and treated as a downstream processing function when it’s almost always an upstream risk and decision engine. Global complexity, such as multi-jurisdictional compliance, real-time payments expectations, and fragmented systems, creates exposure that isn’t always visible until something breaks.

What matters most is integration and ownership. Payroll can’t operate in silos across HR, finance, and operations; it needs a unified data layer and clear executive accountability. The C-suite should also recognize that accuracy and timeliness are table stakes. Resilience, auditability, and scalability are the real differentiators.

 

Q. What more could the C-suite do to understand the changing role of the payroll professional?

Payroll professionals are becoming data stewards and strategic advisors, not just processors of transactions.

As organizations globalize and workforce models diversify, payroll sits at the intersection of compliance, finance, and employee experience. That position gives payroll visibility into trends such as those in labor costs, mobility patterns, and retention signals. This is the kind of information the C-suite needs but often overlooks.

Payroll leaders must be involved earlier in business decisions, from market expansion to workforce design. The emergence of the Chief Payroll Officer (CPO) reflects this shift: organizations are recognizing that although payroll is about paying people, there’s an opportunity to understand the workforce as a system through the lens of payroll.

 

Q. What leadership qualities are essential for payroll executives to influence C-suite priorities effectively?

Credibility, translation, and foresight are all essential.

Credibility comes from mastering compliance and operational excellence. Without that, nothing else matters. But influence comes from translation: the ability to convert payroll complexity into business impact, whether that’s risk exposure, cost implications, or employee trust. Foresight is what elevates payroll leaders into strategic partners to anticipate regulatory changes, workforce shifts, and system constraints before they become issues.

Strong payroll executives also operate cross-functionally, building alignment with HR, finance, and IT rather than defending a silo. Ultimately, the leaders who influence the C-suite are those who frame payroll not as a cost center, but as infrastructure that enables scale, trust, and decision-making.

 

Q. How do you incorporate cultural intelligence and diversity into your global payroll strategy?

A global payroll strategy must balance standardization with local nuance. Compliance is non-negotiable, but how employees experience payroll varies significantly by culture and even generationally. Expectations around pay frequency, benefits, transparency, and communication all differ.

Incorporating cultural intelligence means designing processes that respect these differences while maintaining a consistent operational backbone. It also requires local expertise, whether in house or through partners, to interpret regulatory and cultural context correctly. Diversity comes into play in how compensation structures and pay equity are managed across regions.

Payroll can be a powerful mechanism for fairness, but only if it accounts for local realities rather than forcing a one-size-fits-all model.

 

Q. How do you maintain alignment between payroll goals and overall business objectives, especially during periods of rapid organizational change?

Alignment starts with visibility and integration.

Payroll needs access to real-time data across HR and finance. They need it to understand how changes attributable to acquisitions, restructuring, new market entry, and other events impact pay outcomes.

During periods of rapid change, static processes break down, so payroll must operate as a dynamic system, not a fixed workflow. This means scenario planning becomes critical: modeling the payroll impact of business decisions before they’re executed.

Regular communication with executive stakeholders is also essential, helping to ensure payroll is part of the planning process, not reacting after the fact. When payroll is embedded in decision-making, it can maintain alignment even as the organization evolves.

 

Q. How do you see AI and automation reshaping global payroll processes in the next five years, and what opportunities and challenges do you foresee?

Artificial intelligence (AI) will prove to be the key in finally shifting payroll away from reactive processing and toward proactive intelligence. Automation will continue to handle calculations and compliance checks, but AI’s real value is in anomaly detection, predictive insights, and decision support—for example, identifying pay irregularities before they occur or forecasting the cost impact of workforce changes across regions.

The opportunity is for a more resilient, scalable payroll function that reduces manual intervention and improves accuracy. The challenge is data quality and governance—AI is only as effective as the data it’s trained on.

There’s also a trust component; organizations need to ensure transparency and auditability in AI-driven decisions. The winners will be those who treat AI as an augmentation of expertise, not a replacement.

 

Q. How can payroll data be leveraged to inform executive-level decision-making across the organization?

Payroll data is one of the most complete and reliable datasets in the organization. It reflects who is being paid, where, how much, and under what conditions.

When integrated properly, it can inform decisions around workforce planning, cost management, and geographic expansion. For example, payroll data can highlight labor cost trends, overtime patterns, and compliance risks that directly impact financial performance. It also provides insight into employee behavior, such as turnover signals tied to compensation.

The key is moving from reporting to insight. Payroll leaders must champion the connecting of payroll data with other business systems to create a holistic view of the information. When that happens, payroll becomes a source of truth for strategic decision-making.

 

Q. What role does payroll play in fostering financial inclusion and global equity within multinational organizations?

Payroll is usually the most direct financial relationship employees have with their employer, which makes it a powerful lever for inclusion and equity. Ensuring timely, accurate pay is foundational, but it goes further.

Employers tuned in properly here will offer access to financial tools, support multiple payment methods, and accommodate workers in regions with limited banking infrastructure. Globally, payroll also plays a role in enforcing pay equity by standardizing how compensation is calculated and reported across regions.

Transparency is key; employees need to understand how they are paid and why. When designed thoughtfully, payroll can reduce disparities and provide more equitable access to financial stability across a diverse workforce.

 

Q. How do you anticipate the role of payroll leadership evolving with the growing prevalence of decentralized, hybrid workforces?

Decentralized workforces introduce complexity that payroll is uniquely positioned to manage. Location determines tax obligations, benefits eligibility, and compliance requirements. The situation can be highly fluid and call for real-time responses.

Payroll leaders will need to operate as orchestrators of this complexity, ensuring that workforce flexibility doesn’t create compliance risk. This elevates payroll into a strategic role in workforce design wherein leaders in payroll advise on where and how organizations can employ people.

Effective leadership in this area will also require stronger collaboration with HR, legal, and finance to manage distributed teams effectively. As hybrid and remote work become permanent, payroll leaders will increasingly shape policies, not just execute them.

 

Q. In what ways can payroll departments contribute to driving sustainability and CSR initiatives?

Payroll contributes to sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) primarily through transparency, compliance, and equity. Accurate reporting of wages, taxes, and benefits supports regulatory compliance and ethical business practices.

Payroll data can also inform a company’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting, particularly around workforce metrics like pay equity and labor practices. Digitization is another lever. It reduces paper-based processes and improves operational efficiency.

Beyond operations, payroll can support CSR by enabling fair and timely compensation in all regions, including those with less developed financial infrastructure. While payroll may not lead sustainability initiatives, it provides the essential data and recurring discipline that make them measurable and credible.

 

Q. What are the top risks in global payroll today, and how do you mitigate them at the executive level?

The top risks are compliance failures, data fragmentation, and lack of visibility. Regulations change frequently across jurisdictions, and without centralized oversight, organizations can quickly fall out of compliance. Fragmented systems increase the likelihood of errors and make it difficult to maintain a single source of truth.

Mitigation starts with consolidation, an integrating of payroll data and processes into a unified framework. Here the technology an organization selects plays a critical role. Strong governance and audit controls are also essential, along with partnerships that provide local expertise. At the executive level, the key is in recognizing payroll as a risk function, not just an administrative one, and investing accordingly.

 

Q. How do you balance the need for cost efficiency with the demand for employee satisfaction in payroll operations?

Cost efficiency and employee satisfaction are often seen as competing priorities, but in payroll, they’re closely linked, arguably one and the same. Errors, delays, and lack of transparency create dissatisfaction that ultimately drives costs through turnover, rework, and reputational damage.

The goal is to optimize at once for reliability and experience, together. Automation can reduce operational costs while improving accuracy, and clear communication enhances employee trust without significant expense. Flexibility in the form of, for example, offering different pay options or improved access to pay information can also improve satisfaction without materially increasing costs.

The most effective payroll departments and leaders recognize that investing in experience is a form of cost control.

 

Q. What advice would you give to a payroll leader transitioning to an executive-level strategic role?

The transition requires a shift away from a narrow focus on just execution.

Operational expertise is essential, but at the executive level, the focus is on impact, on how payroll decisions affect the broader business. This means developing financial fluency, understanding organizational strategy, and learning to communicate in terms that the C-suite values.

It also requires stepping out of the fog of war, so to speak. Get your head out of the day-to-day and into the art of building systems and teams that can operate without constant oversight.

Perhaps, most importantly, payroll leaders need to reframe their role. Sure, they’re great at solving problems, but what if payroll departments could help the organization anticipate, address, and even avert challenges? The leaders who make this transition successfully are those who position payroll as a strategic asset, not just a function.