Payroll should not be this painful in 2026

The UK’s year-end payroll season may now be behind us but, for many human resources (HR) and payroll teams, the stress of getting real time information (RTI) submissions, P60s, benefit reporting and complex tax treatments over the line is still lingering. 

Even when year-end is done and dusted, it is only one of several predictable pressure points. Tax year-end, Christmas payroll, bonus season and summer staffing peaks all bring familiar bursts of activity and, with them, the same last-minute scramble that feels increasingly unsustainable.

Given the incredible technology available to organisations today, you would be forgiven for wondering why payroll still feels so painful during peak periods. But the answer is rarely a lack of technology, nor is it the statutory obligations themselves creating the most acute pressure. 

Business leaders will clearly see the rising compliance risk and overtime costs that come with these periods, but they won’t always see the root causes. The real challenge is usually found upstream, driven by late or incomplete data from managers, disconnected HR and payroll systems, unclear ownership of benefits information, and manual checks squeezed into the last few days of the cycle. Alongside this, technology is too often being used to make existing processes run faster, rather than to redesign them so issues can be surfaced and addressed weeks earlier, with the right processes, ownership and visibility in place. 

Practical steps HR and payroll leaders can take now

In many cases, the scramble we’re seeing play out time and time again can be avoided with a modern payroll system that works proactively, not reactively. Look for a system that can connect data between HR, benefits and payroll, establish clear workflows for starters, leavers and changes, use anomaly detection to flag unusual movements, and give early visibility into what’s changed before the deadline pressure hits. 

Just as importantly, though, is that organisations stop normalising payroll friction. Just because payroll runs every month, does not mean it’s running well. I see too many accustomed to manual reconciliations, spreadsheet workarounds, email approvals and processes that all heavily rely on individual knowledge. With that in mind, take the time to identify where friction repeatedly occurs, whether that’s missing data, unclear ownership, duplicate checks or delays between teams. This is about HR, finance and payroll teams all needing greater visibility of the same information and a shared understanding of who owns what, and an end to treating payroll as the final checkpoint for changes made elsewhere in the business. 

It’s also worth taking a step back and asking whether payroll teams are spending their time in the right place. As payroll complexity continues to grow – which it no doubt will – the opportunity is not only to produce payroll more efficiently, but to generate better insight from it. Things like labour costs, absence patterns, benefits and workforce change are all visible via payroll and can be used to spot trends, resolve recurring problems much earlier, and improve the process itself. But if teams are stuck spending their time hunting through records, chasing approvals and fixing avoidable issues, this golden opportunity is essentially lost.