AI skills every payroll professional should develop

October 20, 2026

Community Manager

One is about efficiency: new tools promise to automate repetitive work, answer employee questions and process information faster than ever before. The other is more personal: if technology can do more of the work, where does that leave the people behind payroll? According to Tatiana Cosor, AI implementation provides a huge opportunity for payroll professionals.

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“I don’t believe AI will replace payroll professionals,” the PLP and global payroll leader based in Toronto says. “What it will replace are some of the manual, repetitive tasks that have traditionally occupied a significant portion of our time. Over the next three to five years, AI will transform payroll from a primarily transactional function into a more strategic and insight-driven profession.”

She expects many of the tasks that occupy payroll teams today, from reconciliations and data validation to routine employee inquiries, will become increasingly automated, allowing the value of payroll professionals to grow alongside those changes.

Global labour market data supports her perspective. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025, based on responses from more than 1,000 employers representing over 14 million workers, found that 86 per cent of employers expect AI and information-processing technologies to transform their business by 2030. At the same time, 39 per cent of workers’ core skills are expected to change over the next five years, underscoring the growing importance of continuous learning and digital capability.

” The ability to ask effective questions and critically assess the responses is becoming an important professional skill ”

“The real opportunity lies beyond efficiency,” she says. “AI will help payroll professionals identify anomalies, predict risks and generate insights from large volumes of workforce data.”

Businesses are already investing accordingly. Deloitte’s latest State of Generative AI in the Enterprise report found that nearly three-quarters of organizations say their most advanced generative AI initiative is meeting or exceeding return-on-investment expectations, even though many are still working to scale AI across the enterprise.

That prediction reflects what researchers are seeing across the broader workplace, too.

The World Economic Forum has said AI, big data and technological literacy will be the fastest-growing workplace capabilities through 2030. Just as important, employers continue to place a premium on analytical thinking, resilience, leadership and collaboration. In other words, AI is increasing demand for technical skills without reducing the need for human judgment.

Payroll brings those two worlds together. As AI in payroll becomes more common, the profession will rely just as much on experience and decision-making as it does on technology.

That has implications for the skills payroll professionals choose to (and will need to) develop. Cosor is quick to dismiss the idea that people need to become programmers or data scientists. Instead, she encourages payroll professionals to become comfortable working alongside AI.

That starts with understanding what the technology can and can’t do. It means learning how to write effective prompts, evaluate AI outputs and recognize when the results don’t align with legislation, company policy or business reality.

“The ability to ask effective questions and critically assess the responses is becoming an important professional skill,” she says.

Alongside those AI skills, she sees a growing demand for data interpretation, digital process automation, governance and privacy awareness. They complement traditional payroll skills rather than replace them. As organizations continue upskilling payroll teams for AI, those capabilities will become just as important as technical payroll knowledge.

The bigger challenge, she believes, isn’t technology but how organizations introduce it.

“One of the biggest mistakes is viewing AI as a technology project rather than a business transformation initiative.”

Research suggests that’s where many organizations struggle. The Deloitte AI Institute™ today found that while organizations remain enthusiastic about generative AI, more than two-thirds report that 30 per cent or fewer of their AI experiments are expected to be fully scaled within the next three to six months. The technology is moving quickly. Embedding it into day-to-day business processes is proving to be the harder task.

“If a process is poorly designed, automation simply allows you to execute a bad process faster,” Cosor says.

She also cautions against assuming AI-generated outputs are automatically correct. Payroll remains a highly regulated profession, and human oversight isn’t becoming less important; it’s becoming more important.

“AI can identify an anomaly, but it cannot fully understand the business context, regulatory implications or employee impact behind that anomaly.”

For payroll professionals wondering where to begin, Cosor’s advice is refreshingly practical.

Don’t wait until your organization launches a formal AI initiative. Start using the technology now.

She recommends experimenting with generative AI to draft employee communications, summarize legislative changes, create process documentation, develop training materials and analyze payroll trends. These everyday tasks offer a practical way to build confidence while developing the digital skills for payroll professionals that organizations increasingly value. They’re also among the most accessible AI tools payroll professionals should know, because they can be incorporated into everyday work without changing core payroll processes.

She also encourages professionals to continue investing in themselves through webinars, conferences, vendor demonstrations and other forms of AI training for payroll professionals. Continuous learning has always been part of payroll professional development, but AI is accelerating the pace at which new knowledge becomes essential.

“The future belongs to payroll leaders who can successfully integrate payroll expertise [into their use of AI], business judgment and digital skills,” she says adding it will also be shaped by those who know payroll well enough to use AI wisely, embrace future payroll skills and continue learning AI for payroll teams as the technology evolves.

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