Employment Hero, following its acquisition of HR and payroll platform and consultancy, Employment Innovations, is now targeting to streamline the arduous task of payruns faced by HR and payroll professionals. This strategy makes Employment Hero the premier technology provider to provide an integrated HR and Payroll solution, with plans to accelerate the creation of the world's most intelligent AI for payroll.

This development means that Australian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can, from this day, tap into AI-fuelled payroll automation that is on par with human expertise, thereby saving as much as 80% in payroll processing time. With the implementation of Employment Hero's most recent automated payroll function, accountants and bookkeepers who utilise Employment Hero can now reallocate 80% of the time previously spent on manual payroll processing towards offering analysis and advice to their clients.

Employment Hero unveiled its Future of Payroll Report, which sheds light on the issue, revealing that a staggering 95% of payruns take an exhausting 3 days to complete, eating into businesses' time and burdening them with outdated processes. This is particularly challenging for Australian SMEs which often have fewer resources and less time to manage sluggish payroll procedures.

Key findings of the Future of Payroll Report disclose that 73% of Australian payruns take longer than a day to complete, with 95% taking up to 3 days. Furthermore, 89% of payroll professionals are inclined to trim down payroll processing times through AI and automation use. Also, respondents view AI as a platform to refine their data analysis skills (51%) and enhance payroll proficiency (45%).

Apart from tackling payroll pain, numerous SMEs are looking to AI as a potential solution, with 89% finding it somewhat or significantly attractive to cut down payroll processing to mere minutes, using AI or automation. The top three facets of payroll respondents would like to see automated encompass pay calculations, payroll reporting, and creation of payslips, each favoured by a third of the respondents.

Australian SMEs listed troubleshooting payroll errors (33%), soliciting clients for payroll data (31%) and handling complex legislation (29%) as their top three payroll challenges. Looking forward, 81% of respondents predict that the usage of AI and automation would somewhat or significantly increase across their organisations within the next year.

As AI and automation technologies progress, 51% of the respondents perceive it as an opportunity to improve their data analysis skills, 45% believe it will enhance their payroll expertise, and 41% think it could boost opportunities for professional development."

Following the successful merger with Employment Innovations, Employment Hero will subsequently launch a fully automated payroll service. The expertise brought on board by Employment Innovations will substantially expedite the development of the world's first fully automated payroll offering. The aim is to cut down payroll processing time, currently taking SMEs up to a week in some instances, to minutes or a few hours, depending on the complexity of the payrun. Targeted benefits to customers will be greater efficiency and more accurate payroll processing.

Existing Employment Hero customers will shortly have access to seamlessly integrated managed payroll services into the platform, as well as HR advisory services, making professional managed services affordable for businesses of all sizes. With this technology in place, Employment Hero users will be able to optimise their entire payroll process from start to finish, by having a professional managed payroll service executed by expert payroll support and HR advisory services. In addition, they will be provided with complete visibility and assurance of compliance and accuracy.