AI in Payroll: Are you Human, Cyborg or Centaur?
We recently released the 'Beginner's Guide to AI and Automation in Payroll' eBook, which you may have seen. We got incredibly positive feedback from payroll teams on hearing about all the latest and greatest in AI. As its author, however, I must admit I'm not feeling that great about it a few days later.
Why? Because what I wrote didn't feel very actionable as a beginner.
It's great that there is AI coming, but what should you and your team do about it **today**? Your job is complex and multifaceted, and not everything can (or should) be a candidate for AI/ automation.
So, where do we even begin, when it comes to adopting AI in your people and payroll processes?
As all things in life, the latest research suggests that the answer is, "it really depends".
Recently, Harvard Business School released an incredible study about how knowledge workers at a prestigious consulting firm approached AI for the first time in their careers. The data and learnings from this study present a fantastic framework that is directly applicable to Payroll, IMO.
The framework is called 'Human -> Cyborg -> Centaur'.
Simply put, it turns out people take on three distinct personas, as it relates to attitudes towards AI and automation in knowledge work today:
1. Human: These individuals are "laggards" towards AI, and believe their work is more art than science, and it's too early to think about automation
2. "Cyborg": These are people who treat AI and automation as an extension of themselves, working back and forth with it to iterate faster or better towards the task at hand
3. "Centaur": These are people who treat AI as separate from themselves and their work, assigning it tasks to take care of, while they work on other "higher leverage" things.
Are you a Human, Cyborg or Centaur, when it comes to how you use, or plan to use, AI and automation for yourself and your customers?
I would argue that you're a bit of everything, and that people can't be put in boxes. I should also note that being a "laggard" on tech isn't necessarily a bad thing at all, when it comes to not messing with people's money and livelihoods.
Perhaps a better thing to do is not to think about who you are, but to break down what you do.
There are many workflows in payroll, and each of these would benefit from you taking on different personas. Here is the same "persona" framework, but with a slight twist on the persona needed for workflow.
I find it interesting that I couldn't think of a workflow that wouldn't benefit from either a Cyborg or Centaur mindset today.
Am I wrong? Where are you in your thinking here?
I look forward to continuing the conversation,
Kunal Sarda
Founder, CEO
Arya || Getting More from Pay