Blockchain's Potential Impact on HR and Payroll

Blockchain technology is revolutionizing the way systems record and store information and has imaginations running wild. The cross-industry disruptor has a variety of use cases, and industries are applying it to any situation that calls for a trustworthy record. The network-to-network chain has the potential to reshape the way businesses conduct payroll processing and HR by enhancing security, transparency, and efficiency.

Regardless of an organization’s size, the invoicing and payroll process is stacked with substantial amounts of compliance regulations that often require highly specialized procedures to conduct. Payments, wire transfers, and bank payments are intrinsic properties of the complicated relationship that exists between employers and employees, and are often outsourced.  Adopting the decentralized, secure ledger that gives participating parties a method of validating information related to a transaction, can speed up businesses by cutting out the middleman.

Blockchain technology can be a particularly useful solution for businesses that conduct payroll overseas. Unlike domestic payroll, overseas payroll is associated with lengthy processing times due to the multiple intermediary banks and third parties involved. Continually shifting world currencies accentuates the difficulty of conducting overseas payroll, and often has adverse effects on both the employer and employee. In the long run, these inefficiencies add up and result in high costs for businesses and long waits for employees. In a world where time is money, blockchain payroll solutions could mitigate the costs of cross-border payroll by reducing the fees for employers and the wait time for employees. Blockchain’s structure ensures security through a decentralized ledger, can provide payment to employees in real time, and can manage shifting currencies as a result of cryptocurrency.

Developments in blockchain systems are also becoming increasingly appealing to human resource departments. In today’s business landscape, job recruitment is a data-intensive process. Employers are tasked with sifting through resumes that incorporate a multitude of experience and education. Although this level of diversification has some benefits, employers are experiencing much higher levels of candidate fraud. Now, one of the major tasks for human resource departments is verifying the information on a candidate’s resume. Screening candidates to ensure their resumes are accurate is a recurring setback for employers that can result in high costs regarding both time and money. HR has transformed into a data-intensive function, and blockchain technology poses the potential to redefine how candidates apply by establishing candidate information and then preserving it for companies that may need this information in the future. Blockchain has the potential to follow employees throughout their careers and provide an efficient, trustworthy mode for employees to present credentials. Although not all of the details of how using blockchain for HR have been resolved, the ideas for its implementation continue to evolve;

In essence, blockchain technologies have the power to improve the exchange of information within the employer to employee relationship. Startups around the globe have been working towards tackling some of the most challenging payroll and human resources dilemmas with this industry disruptive technology.