Payroll may not grab the headlines when it comes to global expansion, but it plays a pivotal role in building trust and employee relationships. Ensuring workers are paid accurately, securely, and compliantly is one of the fundamental responsibilities of any organisation. Yet it’s also a sensitive and complex area where compliance is critical, especially when expanding rapidly across new markets—highlighting the need for a robust and innovative technology solution.

The stakes are even higher for Workday, one of the major players in AI-driven human capital management and financial technology, based in California. Delivering a smooth payroll experience for their ‘Workmates’ is consistent with their drive to empower employees as a core value. Payroll innovation serves as an opportunity to demonstrate the platform’s potential to secure seamless global operation, while also offering advanced analytical capabilities to aid business expansion and transformation. In essence, it’s a marketing opportunity as well as a business-critical function.

When we first engaged with Workday, we recognised the unique challenges they were facing due to their rapid expansion. They needed a robust global payroll solution that could handle the complexity of operating across multiple countries with varying regulations and payroll systems.

Chris Watt,

Director, Global and UK Payroll Services Co Leader, PwC UK

Fragmented network of payroll vendors

In their current markets including the US, UK, and Canada, Workday’s own payroll platform was already being used to great effect. However, through rapid success they had expanded into more than 20 countries within a few years—hiring or acquiring thousands of new Workmates. This need for speed meant that wherever Workday’s own payroll platform wasn’t available, payroll was handled by a local vendor—creating a disparate mix of systems with inefficient manual data exchanges and no integration with Workday’s global human capital management (HCM) platform.

As Jean-Pierre Young, Partner, Global Payroll Technology, PwC Mauritius explains, “The Workday HCM platform is the ‘single source of truth’ when it comes to their human capital, with a database of all Workmates across the regions—whether they are full time, part time, or contractors. But they didn’t have that single source of truth when it comes to payroll—from the unique tax codes to social security arrangements and so on.”
Without this, ensuring the right people were receiving the right pay was creating a considerable reconciliation workload. It also increased the risk of payroll errors or fraud, with the additional complexity of vendors operating across different time zones and languages.

Workday knew that an even more substantial opportunity was being missed. The Workday HCM platform is designed with powerful capabilities for real-time data transfer—which in turn enables seamless, automated payroll processing, tailored to employees and countries. However, due to lack of integration between vendors and the Workday HCM, many of the benefits were unavailable.

With more ambitious expansion plans to come, Workday initiated a tender to find one partner that could deliver reliable global payroll operations—in every market where Workday’s own payroll platform wasn’t used.

Simplify. Integrate. Automate. Innovate.

No one knew what good looked like—it had to be created. But implementing Workday HCM is a significant business within PwC—we understood what they were looking for and we had the underlying technology to achieve it.

Chris Watt,

Director, Global and UK Payroll Services Co Leader, PwC UK

As a long-time partner, and certified Workday services provider, PwC had a sound understanding of their platform and overall vision—along with a track record of close collaboration. Together, we had helped other clients deliver major payroll transformation, with the PwC Global Payroll platform already integrating in multiple ways with Workday HCM. Crucially, our international network could complement this technical capability with thorough consultancy support for Workday’s global expansion—from growth and transformation strategy to local market knowledge and compliance expertise across all regions.

After conducting a thorough analysis of the present payroll set up, our teams set about developing a solution that would put the Workday HCM platform at the heart of their future plans—making it the central hub, not just of human capital management, but of financial management, too.

Working at speed, we began a meticulous global standardisation project—harmonising pay codes, benefits, and operational processes. Simultaneously, we began collaborating on the integrations between the PwC Global Payroll platform and Workday’s. These included automated, real-time data flow and direct payment processing—the foundations of a secure, seamless payroll operation. More advanced integration allowed for time-based tracking and improved data accuracy—enhancing analytical and planning capabilities for future salary changes, recruitment, and onboarding processes.

Outside of the US, UK, and Canada, all payroll operations were now fully managed by PwC Managed Services. This allowed Workday to streamline their own involvement in reconciliation—reducing expenses while knowing that everything from compliance to fraud risk was now handled by local PwC experts.

From an employee perspective, Workmates could now access pay slips, tax documents, and other important information, enjoying the same Workday user experience wherever they were in the world—reinforcing trust in the Workday brand.

We both knew this would be a journey—iterating approaches and integrating with technology in ways that had never been done before. That’s why Workday chose PwC—as a partner they could trust to collaborate, innovate, and deliver value from ideation to implementation.

Mike Loydon,

Global & UK Payroll Leader, PwC UK

A robust, seamless, and fully scalable global payroll solution

As a payroll technology company, we lean on PwC where we don’t have payroll processing capabilities today. The speed of entering new markets is a big one—we really look to PwC to give us that higher-touch support. They have really helped us understand the legal complexities and do it in a quick fashion.

Kristy Duvall,

Finance Operations Leader, Workday

PwC now delivers Workday’s payroll services in 31 out of their 34 international entities, using automated data to pay over 6,000 Workmates globally. Together, we have evolved the integration capabilities to create an extensive framework including 17 different third-party integrations covering banks, stock platforms, and general ledgers. These integrations enable seamlessly automated data flows and advanced analytical capabilities for global cost analysis and strategic decision making.

The partnership has also developed a template for new country entry—a seven-step process that rapidly and efficiently implements payroll services, while leveraging PwC’s global network for compliance and tax. Importantly, our flexible approach means Workday can start from as few as four to over 2,000 employees per country, giving them—and other clients—maximum agility when entering new markets.

“We support every client in a way that delivers the right platform for growth,” says Loydon. “Even businesses like Workday need to start small in some places. Their Costa Rica entity recently launched with only 20 people and has quickly grown to over 200. So, our flexible approach has enabled them to grow while ensuring payroll and compliance is managed and analysed with the same standards as much bigger markets.”

For Workday and PwC, the partnership has also accelerated innovation, continuously pushing each other to optimise every area of technical capabilities. “Our relationship has become a mutual testing ground, and our technology teams collaborate very closely,” says Loydon. “When Workday releases new functionality, they encourage us to adopt it very quickly—and we help them refine it in practice. It helps us both stay ahead of our competitors.”

As well as supporting Workday’s expansion into more territories, future plans include optimising AI—improving areas such as anomaly detection and variance explanation—and advancing new API-based integration that is even more seamless and effective. “Our collaboration has really put us at the forefront of the global payroll market,” says Loydon. “We’re only part way through the journey with them. We’re still rolling out further integrations. We’re still making other improvements.”

We look to PwC as both an operational and technology partner, to help us expand quickly, globally—and do so in an agile, scalable way. We’re leveraging tech, leveraging AI—especially as it pertains to more complex markets with multiple languages. Wherever we lean into technology to scale our operations, we lean into PwC as a partner.

Kristy Duvall,

Finance Operations Leader, Workday

Published on 26 September 2025