Blog Summary: Experts Asal Naraghi (ADP) and Pip Trenaman (Accenture) discuss how successful change management can support smooth payroll and workforce management improvements for both global and local teams.
In an increasingly complex world, simplicity remains the goal. Enterprises are more aware than ever that meeting modern compliance standards and integrating AI requires high-quality payroll and workforce management data. Nevertheless, aligning that global vision to local execution can pose a challenge.
Fortunately, change management strategies can help bridge the gap. WorkForce Software, an ADP company, explores the topic in the Workforce Excellence webinar Change management: Aligning global vision with local reality in payroll and workforce management. Asal Naraghi, global innovation leader at ADP®, and Pip Trenaman, managing director, EMEA, workforce transformation at Accenture, provide their expertise.
Together, they explore how to avoid common implementation pitfalls and embrace globally complex solutions that can accommodate local realities.
Why do enterprises need to simplify payroll and workforce management?
Though businesses hold a variety of motivations, Asal pinpoints the most common:
- Increasing employer compliance requirements
- Streamlined data being a precursor for AI-powered workforce insights
- Mounting cost pressures
- Aiming to provide better employee experiences
Pip confirms that the demand for simplicity is a cross-industry shift. But with large organisations juggling dozens of time and pay solutions, complexity persists and workforce data visibility suffers. This creates manual effort for already busy teams, introducing global compliance and accuracy risks.
Where do global workforce management and payroll transformations stall?
Pip reports that most teams run into roadblocks before they even begin. But it’s not the technology that’s to blame: it’s the alignment strategy. Teams must navigate a delicate landscape that forces questions of accountability and priority between global and local needs. Aligning these teams through deliberate change management is the key to a successful transformation.
Asal adds that it’s easy to misunderstand resistance from local teams as a mindset issue. She recommends viewing it as a rational response to the perceived risk ahead and building trust to mitigate concerns. Communicating the value of the change, maintaining local authority and clearly defining success can all support a smooth execution.
3 tips for aligning global vision with local reality through change management
1. Design governance around enablement
Local teams provide invaluable expertise during the execution phase. Prioritising goal clarity, being explicit about task ownership and providing upskilling opportunities where necessary prepares them to succeed. By providing guardrails and a support system, you can respond to market-specific needs whilst remaining globally outcome-driven.
2. Embrace early, deliberate planning
A strong indicator of long-term success is a plan that accounts for long-term results. Our experts recommend establishing future operating models from the start. Implementation works best when there’s an explicit plan for integrating changes into daily operations post-launch.
Pip also recommends investing heavily in adoption through strategies such as:
- Involving super users early
- Prioritising role-based training
- Tailoring onboarding to each audience
Choosing a skilled partner, like Accenture, can also be a proactive way to plan for consistent support through more complicated, intricate implementation phases.
3. Encourage active collaboration
Asal frames local resistance as a rational response, especially with large-scale changes involving time tracking and payroll. Change management designed to build alignment rather than force it allows room for both global goals and local complexity.
When both teams are actively engaged partners, it builds confidence in the transformation and supports its ongoing success. Approaching change management sequentially and starting with clearly communicated outcomes can also reduce pushback before it occurs.
“Ultimately, payroll and workforce transformations will succeed or fail on people. Not the system or the technologies you put it in. It’s on the people. Make sure that’s at the heart of what you prioritise.”
– Pip Trenaman | Managing Director, EMEA, Workforce Transformation, Accenture
How can you support change management success?
Asal and Pip agree: Execution succeeds when design, change, and sequencing are all in harmony. Focusing on progress over perfection will help carry it through. Making steady changes and learning from any mistakes is a more productive and realistic route to aligning global ambitions with local realities.
Discover more ways that change management can help optimise your payroll and workforce management rollouts in the full webinar.
