A comprehensive study on the state of pay and its future in mid and large Indian enterprises  

There’s no such thing as ‘business as usual’ anymore. Our comprehensive research into the future of pay in India shows how this historically underestimated function has the potential to be a pillar of strategic innovation for organisations in India.

ADP’s Future of Pay in India 2023 research delves into the performance, resilience and strategic contribution of payroll in today’s business landscape, and how HR and payroll teams, systems and processes are evolving to meet the needs of mid and large Indian organisations. We explore payroll from the perspective of HR, finance and payroll leaders, and investigate how well Indian companies are meeting the myriad of challenges initially sparked by COVID and now fuelled by a difficult global economic climate. 

The Future of Pay in India 2023 captures the perspectives of senior leaders with responsibility and oversight for payroll in Indian organisations with 500 to 5,000 full time employees. Key topics span payroll accuracy, efficiency and strategic value, the potential of payroll, and reimagining pay as a key lever for organisational success in the years to come. 

Key findings: Main themes

Reimagining Pay

With pay and access to pay being crucial and fundamental to employee experience and financial wellness, respondents demonstrated strong recognition of the need to adopt a mix of non-conventional approaches towards pay over the next 5 years.

  • 80% agreed or strongly agreed they’ll need to introduce faster access or early access to wages to fund “emergencies” or “unplanned expenses” to achieve the financial wellness of employees.

Building skills to future-proof ‘pay’

The need for greater compliance, stronger risk governance and standardisation is acute. Now more than ever, it is imperative for organisations to upskill, reskill and foster agility in payroll operations. 

  • 67% are trying to upskill existing payroll staff and change the way they work.

Payroll that can scale

Future of Pay in India 2023 research found that in the next 2-3 years, regulatory compliance, data privacy, data security and investing in new technologies top the payroll attributes organisations wish to improve upon.

  • Nearly 3 in 10 (29%) are optimistic and are planning to improve payroll by investing in new technologies.
  • 86% of respondents report data security as particularly important or crucial to their payroll strategy, not surprising given authorities’ intentions to clamp down on data breaches and tighten rules for holding sensitive data.

Driving strategy through payroll data

Stronger integration across business systems would ensure that business leaders can extract the full value from payroll data. 

  • Payroll data is influencing strategy at the top level, with 40% of respondents saying that C-suite (CXO) increasingly request it.