HR is being asked to behave like finance. Report on cost, forecast headcount, explain what the company spends on people and why. That shift is real, and most HR and finance leaders welcome it. The problem sits underneath. In a lot of companies, the data that would answer those questions is spread across five payroll systems in five countries, and none of them agree. In Episode 5 of the Workpay podcast, Paul and Jackson sat down with Thomas Otter, venture capitalist at Acadian Ventures and previously in charge of the HR products at SAP. They worked through six statements about where HR data is going. The conversation kept landing on the same point: the ambition is fine, the foundation is not.

The people function does not shrink. It gets better instruments.

Thomas pushed back on the idea that HR is becoming a data function and leaving the people part behind.

"I partly agree with the question. I don't agree with all of it. The people function part doesn't go away. In fact, it becomes even more important."

Thomas Otter, Acadian Ventures

His example was concrete.

"Let's imagine you have a thousand people in your company. You can't talk to each of them every day. Where technology becomes helpful is it helps you analyse: of the thousand people in my company, who are the five that we need to be talking to today?"

Thomas Otter, Acadian Ventures

That is what good people data buys you. Not a dashboard for its own sake, but a shortlist. Which five conversations matter this week. Which manager is about to lose someone. Where succession planning is thin.

None of it works if the underlying record of what you paid people, when, and under which rules cannot be trusted.

Payroll is the one system your employees audit every month

Most internal systems fail quietly. A reporting error sits in a spreadsheet for a quarter before anyone notices. Payroll does not work that way.

"Every week or every month, the payroll results are actually audited by the employees. There's no other system that you have in your business, at least an employee-facing system, that when it's wrong, you know."

Thomas Otter, Acadian Ventures

Thomas framed the whole subject around one word: respect. He described opening his first payslip.

"When I went home and opened the envelope and I saw the salary and the tax and the deductions for pension, it filled me with pride that I was now working."

Thomas Otter, Acadian Ventures

Then came the line that belongs above every payroll project.

"We forget sometimes that payroll is a major part of why people go to work. And if you're not able to produce that accurately and correctly, then why would the employees trust you about anything else?"

Thomas Otter, Acadian Ventures

Jackson made the same argument from the employer's side.

"The biggest promise that any employer makes to an employee is related to the salary. When someone is going to hire, the first thing they discuss is the salary. They don't start discussing things like 'we offer transport to and from work'. That's an added advantage. But the key thing that an employer promises an employee is the salary. And you need to keep that promise. If you keep that promise, then from day one they'll start trusting you."

Jackson, co-founder & CFO, Workpay

Employee experience programmes usually start with onboarding flows and engagement surveys. The foundation is simpler and harder: pay people correctly, on time, in every country you operate in.

"Global payroll really is a myth"

The third statement was whether global HR trends translate into emerging markets. Thomas answered it from the inside of the largest vendor in the category.

"SAP is the most global vendor in the world in terms of international coverage. But somebody like SAP will spend most of the time considering what goes on in the US market, the German market, the French market. And African payroll was never at the centre of our strategy at SAP."

Thomas Otter, Acadian Ventures

That is not a criticism of SAP. It is where the revenue sat. But it explains why coverage on a vendor map and capability on the ground are two different things.

"So this concept of global payroll really is a myth. Until we all speak global, until we have a global currency, until we have a single global tax, there's no such thing as global when it comes to payroll. The rules are at a country level."

Thomas Otter, Acadian Ventures

He then turned the point around, which is the part most companies expanding into Africa get wrong in the other direction.

"Not all the best practices are in America. If you take M-Pesa and what's been done here in terms of electronic payments, it's far ahead of where the Americans are. I think the number is 15% of Americans still receive their pay by cheque."

Thomas Otter, Acadian Ventures

Local is not the compromise version of global. On payment rails, this market is ahead.

The question a CFO cannot answer

Jackson brought it back to the number a finance team gets asked for most often.

"One of the critical questions that a CEO might ask a CFO is: how much am I spending on people? The question then becomes, is that data readily available?"

Jackson, co-founder & CFO, Workpay

"If you're in one country and you have one payroll system, that answer can be available to you very quickly. But if you are in 15 countries and you are using different payroll systems, you don't have a single dashboard. That data will never be available to you. Or if it's available to you, it's available at the wrong time."

Jackson, co-founder & CFO, Workpay

That last clause is the one to sit with. Data that arrives late is not a slightly worse version of data that arrives on time. For a decision that has already been made, it is the same as having nothing.

Payroll is usually among the largest costs in the business. You cannot manage the biggest cost you have if you can only see it one country at a time.

The problem is fragmentation, not absence

Companies scaling across Africa rarely lack systems. They have too many that do not connect.

"I don't think the problem is that companies don't have access to systems to manage their operations. I think the biggest problem is that these systems are fragmented. They don't talk to each other."

Jackson, co-founder & CFO, Workpay

Workpay ran into it internally.

"We started Workpay here in Kenya, but when we decided to start expanding across the continent, our second stop was Nigeria. We completely found different systems there. We were still using our internal payroll solution, but those two payroll solutions were not built in such a manner that they were talking to each other. So even me, as a finance leader, I could not make decisions like how much is my payroll in Nigeria, how much is my payroll in Kenya, by just looking at a single dashboard."

Jackson, co-founder & CFO, Workpay

If a payroll company can end up in that position, most companies expanding across the continent are already there. Every new market adds a system, and the full picture moves one step further away.

What this actually asks of you

The six statements in this episode point in one direction. HR data is becoming the input for business decisions, and the quality of that input is decided in payroll.

Three things follow.

First, treat payroll accuracy as a trust question rather than a compliance question. Employees check it every month and draw conclusions about the rest of the company from what they find.

Second, stop shopping for global payroll. Buy country-level depth with one accountable owner across markets. The rules are national and they will stay national.

Third, judge any system on whether it puts every market on one screen. If the answer to "what are we spending on people" takes three weeks to assemble, you do not have a reporting problem. You have a structural one.

Listen to the full conversation

This is the short version of a longer conversation with Thomas Otter on where HR data is heading and what it takes to make it usable.

Listen to Episode 5 of the Workpay podcast.

If your payroll data lives in a different system in every country you operate in, that is the first thing to fix. Talk to us.

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