Payroll and labour sit at the centre of workforce cost, compliance and performance. As organisations scale across regions, often navigating complex regulations, their visibility and control are often hampered by fragmented systems and inconsistent processes.

Labour management extends beyond payroll processing to encompass workforce planning, scheduling, time and attendance, absence management and labour cost optimisation. Increasingly, organisations are applying AI across the end-to-end labour lifecycle, from scheduling and time capture through to payroll, compliance, workforce insights and performance measurement. Together, payroll and labour provide the visibility and control organisations need to improve productivity, manage cost and support a better employee experience.

At the same time, payroll is evolving beyond a transactional function into a source of workforce insight, cost control and compliance intelligence – placing it at the centre of enterprise performance.

Are you facing these challenges?

Is workforce operational data fragmented across systems, vendors and geographies?
Are you confident in compliance across different worker types and jurisdictions?
Is manual effort across time, scheduling and payroll limiting efficiency and control?
Is your global vendor landscape delivering value and consistency?
Is your investment in technology delivering expected outcomes?
Are you able to generate timely, reliable insight on labour cost and performance across regions?

These constraints often result in hidden cost leakage, operational inefficiency and reduced confidence in workforce data – limiting the ability to manage one of the organisation’s largest cost bases. This leakage can represent a material proportion of total labour spend when left unaddressed.

As AI adoption accelerates, the shift towards more autonomous, agentic ways of working is reshaping how payroll and labour operate. Realising this opportunity requires organisations to rethink service delivery models—moving from manual, fragmented processing towards integrated, data-driven operations designed for automation, control and insight.

Alejandro Modarelli

Partner, Financial Services People Consulting

KPMG in the UK

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How can we help

We help organisations address these challenges by making cost, risk and performance visible. We strengthen data, controls and service delivery foundations, and enable the transition to more connected, AI-enabled and future-ready payroll and labour operations.

Our payroll and labour transformation experts bring deep experience across complex, multi‑country environments. They work at the intersection of payroll, labour, HR, Finance and Operations, combining transformation, compliance and regulatory expertise. The result? Organisations are empowered to navigate complexity and deliver sustainable change.

KPMG’s Velocity approach brings together leading practices, methods, tools, data and AI into a single, integrated delivery model. This accelerates transformation and enables organisations to design, deliver and scale intelligent, resilient payroll and labour operations.

Our capabilities and solutions

Our offering spans the following areas, supporting clients at any stage of their transformation journey:

Current State Assessment

We provide a data‑led view of how payroll and labour operate across your organisation – covering systems, vendors, service delivery, compliance and the true cost to run payroll. This includes current vendor analysis and global benchmarking, helping identify where cost, risk and performance challenges sit and quantify opportunities for cost reduction and workforce optimisation.
Strategy & Value Case

We combine operational payroll and labour expertise with data-driven and AI-enabled assessments to establish a clear baseline of current performance, identify payroll leakage and quantify the true cost of payroll delivery. This evidence-based approach enables us to prioritise improvement opportunities and build compelling business cases and transformation roadmaps aligned to workforce cost, productivity, compliance and performance outcomes.
Operating Model Design

We define a target model across payroll and labour capabilities - covering time, scheduling, absence and payroll - aligning roles, governance, service delivery and vendor strategy across HR, Finance and Operations.
Technology Delivery & Modernisation

We implement and modernise payroll and labour technology across leading platforms including SAP, Oracle and Workday. We support organisations to assess the right transformation path, prepare for change, and deliver successful transitions across data, integrations, testing, validation, cutover and stabilisation.

Programme Delivery, Business Integration & Change Management

We combine programme delivery expertise with hands-on payroll and labour operational experience across payroll, workforce management, time and attendance and labour transformation. By bridging business, HR, operations and technology teams, we help organisations achieve successful adoption, operational readiness and sustainable business outcomes.
Payroll Protection & Future Readiness for HR Transformations

We support organisations undergoing HR transformation to protect payroll delivery and enable a future‑ready capability. This includes addressing risks across data, integrations and upstream processes, and supporting design, testing and go‑live to maintain pay accuracy and strengthen controls.
M&A Transactions (Acquisitions & Carve-outs):

We support payroll and labour transitions across M&A, helping organisations assess options, determine the appropriate approach by country or population, and coordinate delivery to support Day 1 continuity, integration or separation, and transition to the target operating model.