Blog: Career Development

Payroll salary figures circulate widely and are used badly, because the job title is a poor description of the job. "Payroll Manager" covers a single-state semi-monthly salaried population of 200 and a 40-state operation with union agreements, certified payroll, and tipped employees. Those roles are not comparable, and a benchmark that averages them tells you little about either.

This guide covers what actually drives payroll compensation, where to find current figures, and how to ...

Payroll is a field where knowledge expires. Three significant changes landed within a short recent period — the OBBBA tips and overtime reporting requirements, the rescission of the 2024 exempt salary threshold rule, and ongoing independent contractor rulemaking — and a professional working from two-year-old knowledge is now wrong about all three.

That makes continuing education a compliance control rather than a career nicety. This guide covers what to use, starting with what costs ...

Predictions about payroll's future tend toward two errors: assuming automation will eliminate the function, or assuming nothing meaningful changes. Both are wrong, and the direction of travel is fairly legible from what has already happened.

The processing is being automated. The compliance judgment is expanding, because the regulatory environment is fragmenting faster than it is simplifying. Those two trends together describe the profession's next several years ...

Payroll events fall into recognizable categories, and choosing well matters more than choosing many — most departments can justify one or two a year, and the right one depends on what you actually need rather than on which is largest.

This guide covers the fifteen types of event worth considering, what each is genuinely useful for, and how to build the business case. Dates, locations, and registration details are published by each organizer on their own schedule and ...

Payroll professionals researching certification encounter two very different kinds of credential, and comparing them as though they were competing versions of the same thing produces the wrong choice.

One is an association-administered professional designation with eligibility criteria, a proctored examination, and ongoing recertification. The other is a training-based certification program that establishes competence in a defined body of knowledge ...