In an exclusive interview with CanadianSME Small Business Magazine, Elvira Ciambella, Vice President and General Manager at ADP Canada, discusses how payroll and HR innovation can drive trust, efficiency, and resilience. She shares how automation and AI are empowering small businesses to create stronger, more connected workplaces.
As Vice President, Business Innovation, Transformation and Shared Services, Elvira leads the team that plays a key role in advancing ADP Canada’s strategy, ongoing transformation, and growth.
Elvira has been part of the ADP Canada team for over 32 years. During her tenure, Elvira has held a variety of increasingly senior roles across Enterprise Learning, Global Product and Technology, Service Delivery, and Implementation. With over 25 years of operational leadership, she has extensive knowledge of all aspects of the Canadian business.
Elvira lives with her family in Montreal. She is the General Manager of ADP Canada in Quebec, is a strong voice for Francophonie culture, and she is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Payroll Institute (NPI), serving on the Board’s executive committee.
Elvira earned her MBA and Post-Baccalaureate Diploma in Management at Athabasca University. She holds a Payroll Leadership Professional (PLP) designation from the National Payroll Institute.
How does payroll accuracy, timing, and transparency impact employee trust, morale, and retention in small and medium-sized Canadian businesses?
For small businesses, managing payroll is more than just a recurring transaction; it’s a fundamental expression of credible reliability. When employees receive accurate, timely pay with clear explanations of deductions and contributions, it elevates transparency and reinforces an employee’s sense of security and value within the company. At small businesses, where personal relationships have a larger impact on workplace culture, a single payroll error can erode trust and lead to problems like disengagement and turnover.
The small businesses that get payroll right will blend transparency with technology. Leveraging HR and payroll technology not only helps manage payroll accuracy and timeliness but also creates an easily accessible platform for your employees so they can review pay history and pull historical documentation should it be needed. This type of tech-enabled transparency will help turn payroll into a smoothly run asset for your small business and workplace culture.
As we recognize Small Business Month in October, how can SMB leaders elevate payroll from a routine back-office function to a strategic business driver that supports engagement and strengthens employer branding?
Small Business Month is an ideal time for small business to consider how they can elevate payroll into a strategic lever for growth and employee engagement. It starts with leveraging the right payroll and HR technology.
For example, according to ADP Canada’s recently released Small Business Toolkit, cloud-based payroll and HR solutions can help new business owners tackle challenges like cost control, security and scalability. These solutions often include built-in compliance tools to help you navigate complex federal, provincial or territorial regulations.
Moreover, payroll technology can help automate and standardize tasks, preventing costly errors and lowering administrative costs. For instance, moving to paperless payroll reduces expenses for printing and banking, while also providing clear insights into where you can save time and money. For compliance, make sure your payroll system calculates vacation pay, overtime, public holiday pay, and statutory deductions in line with your jurisdiction’s employment standards.
When the right payroll and HR technology is helping your small business manage accuracy and compliance amongst other things, this is when the opportunities for strategic growth emerge. For example, whereas before your time was spent running payroll manually or reading up on regulatory updates, now you have time back in your day to pull those strategic levers that will help your small business thrive.
If you own a pizza shop, perhaps now there is more time to reoptimize your supply chain to ensure you’re getting the best ingredients at the lowest price. Or maybe now you can dedicate time to providing more customer experience training for your staff.
Finally, don’t forget that the right HR and payroll technology can also give your small business valuable data to inform strategic decisions. You might see that a manager on your team is making less than they could be making based on their experience and location. If this is the case, you have an opportunity to proactively give this employee a raise before you lose them to a more competitive offer.
Payroll and HR are being redefined by trends such as automation and AI. How can small and medium-sized businesses in Canada leverage these innovations to simplify compliance, reduce administrative burden and deliver a better employee experience?
According to ADP’s Potential of Payroll survey, adopting AI into payroll processes was one of the top priorities amongst Canadian business leaders when asked for the key business drivers transforming their payroll operations in the next two to three years.
Good news, the opportunities are endless. Starting with running payroll, reducing reliance on manual entry can help minimize the risk of inaccuracy while keeping payroll running on-time. AI could also help flag any payroll irregularities.
When it comes to compliance, automation can help manage deductions and reduce the chances of non-compliance. And when one considers today’s increasingly borderless world of work, having AI help manage various HR and payroll compliance considerations that change by province or country could be greatly beneficial for a small business. Additionally, the right technology can help keep all this documentation organized and together should an audit occur.
Now, let’s discuss time-savings. Leveraging AI for payroll and HR functions can provide small business owners with incredible time-savings via automation. Whereas before, you might have been bogged down in data entry and payroll deductions, now you have that time back to focus on your small business and employees.
When it comes to delivering a better employee experience, there’s more time to focus on career development, regular check-ins, and better understanding what motivates your employees. There’s more time to build chemistry within your small business team.
For a small business owner, time is often amongst their most precious resources. As AI realizes its potential to streamline HR and payroll tasks that previously sucked up bandwidth, small business owners may find themselves with a lot more time to prioritize the activities that drive growth, innovation, and a small business team that is cohesive, engaged, and retained.
In what ways do ADP Canada’s Happiness@Work Index findings inform your approach to business innovation and help organizations address evolving employee expectations?
The ADP Canada Happiness@Work Index serves as an ongoing pulse check on what Canadian workers value and what drives worker satisfaction across different workforce groups.
According to the most recent data, ‘work-life balance & flexibility’ and ‘recognition and support’ have emerged as decisive factors in employee satisfaction. Considering this, organizations should consider their strategic programs that address work-life balance and recognition to understand if there are areas to improve.
For example, as a small business it may be impossible to offer remote work flexibility due to the nature of the business. That said, where else could this small business offer flexibility to workers? Can they offer flexibility in how they work day-to-day if they’re unable to offer that flexibility in where they work. Giving workers autonomy in how they get their work accomplished can be empowering.
Using data from ADP Canada’s Happiness@Work Index to inform business decisions is just one example of how small businesses can be looking to workforce data to help them better understand their people and adjust talent strategies as a result.
Finally, what is the most important piece of advice you would offer to small and medium-sized business leaders who want to build trust and resilience through their payroll and people management practices?
As your small business integrates exciting new technologies like GenAI, transparent communication is imperative. Help your workforce understand how the business is going to use it as a tool to empower workers. Provide real-life use cases. The less they know about how the business is going to use GenAI, the more worried they become. The more they know and visualize their future with GenAI at work, the more excited they can get about the possibilities.
Sticking with GenAI, invest in skills development for your people so they have the necessary skillset to get the most out of GenAI. Reassure your workforce’s future with the small business by giving them the skills they need to flourish in this changing world of work. If your workforce isn’t brought up to speed on new technology investments, those investments are going to fall flat. To make sure technology is having the greatest possible impact on your business, you need to have an engaged, knowledgeable workforce behind the wheel.
Your people are your greatest asset. The small businesses that take a human-centric approach to the future of work will develop a resilient and engaged workforce that is excited about their future with the business and fully knowledgeable on how to get the most out of technological advancements to drive positive business outcomes.
