During a webinar hosted by PayrollOrg on February 26, industry experts championed the establishment of a Chief Payroll Officer (CPO) within the C-suite. Jason Lee, Workplace Futurist and Chief of Chime Enterprise, and Pete A. Tiliakos, Chief Payroll Champion at PayrollInfluences.com, argued that payroll meets the criteria of a strategically critical business function.
They emphasized the role of payroll in compliance, technological integration, and its significant impact on an organization’s profit and loss. Both speakers advocated for a paradigm shift in how payroll is perceived, highlighting its potential to support operational success and mitigate risks.
“This is probably the most important topic that I’ve ever spoken about in this type of forum,” Lee said at the beginning of the presentation. Tiliakos echoed, “As long as I’ve been a payroll practitioner, we’ve needed this in this industry.”
Aligning payroll with C-suite criteria
Lee explained that payroll’s strategic importance aligns with the characteristics of other C-suite roles, citing historical trends in the evolution of executive titles such as CFOs and CIOs. “Directors become chiefs when their departments become strategic to the overall business,” he said.
He outlined four key criteria for elevating a department to the C-suite: delivering long-term organizational value, operating in a dynamic marketplace, having cross-functional impact, and demonstrating future-oriented thinking.
According to Lee, payroll meets all these benchmarks, with its influence on every employee, ability to adapt to evolving market demands, and critical role in shaping business strategy. “Clearly, payroll delivers value,” Lee started. “It resides in a dynamic marketplace, it impacts every single person in the company, and because the payroll market is evolving so quickly it needs to constantly be thinking about the future.”
Proactive strategies for elevating payroll perception
Tiliakos noted persistent misconceptions about payroll, such as viewing it as a simple administrative task, which undermines its perceived value within organizations. “I think there’s still a broken lens, or a clouded lens, if you will, in the C-suite for what payroll actually is,” he acknowledged.
Tiliakos stressed that payroll operates as a complex system managing compliance, taxes, employee engagement, and risk mitigation. He further argued that failures in the payroll function could expose organizations to legal liabilities and disrupt operational goals.
“[I]f payroll fails, and I mean in a compliance way – taxes, tax filing, responding to garnishments, responding to compliance-related activities…your C suite can 100% go to prison,” he added, further emphasizing the importance of payroll in an organization.
Tiliakos urged payroll professionals to proactively educate executives on payroll’s strategic importance and to move beyond being viewed as process operators.
Both speakers encouraged payroll professionals to take charge of influencing C-suite perspectives by presenting data-driven insights and demonstrating payroll’s strategic impact. They proposed using tools like generative AI to simplify communication and share actionable strategies addressing organizational challenges, such as workforce contractions and evolving wage trends.
Tiliakos emphasized that this proactive approach could elevate payroll to a trusted advisor role, enabling businesses to enhance agility and competitiveness. “Start leading the organization and having these conversations with your executives,” he began. “It’s going to change the lens, change the attitude.”
The session included a poll where 85% of attendees recognized payroll as strategically important, though only 14% considered it extremely strategic. Tiliakos expressed the need to raise this perception closer to 100% to achieve wider recognition of payroll as a critical function in modern organizations.
Launch of the “30 by 30” initiative
At the close of the event, Lee announced the launch of a “30 by 30” initiative, with the goal of establishing 30 Chief Payroll Officers by 2030. The program aims to provide payroll professionals with resources, data, and actionable guidance to further their influence and secure C-suite recognition. For more information on the initiative, interested parties can visit chiefpayrollofficer.com .
