The majority of respondents do, however, agree that payroll needs to be connected with the HR and finance departments regardless of where the function resides.
Advanced Business Solutions carried out the research with 79 HR and payroll professionals from both the UK and the USA.
The survey reveals that 36% of HR and payroll professionals believe the payroll function should sit between an organisation's HR and finance departments. A quarter state that the payroll function should reside within HR and 24% believe that the function should be part of the finance function.
The remaining 15% of participants took the view that payroll should be outsourced to a third party payroll specialist.
Simon Fowler, MD of Advanced Business Solutions (Commercial), said: "These findings highlight the uncertainty about the payroll function in general. As payroll naturally spans both HR and finance, it appears to be the precious orphaned child of an organisation - highly valued but without a clear home.
"If payroll systems and processes operate in isolation from the rest of the organisation, the payroll function is not operating as efficiently as it could be. By duplicating data entry across the different payroll, HR and finance systems, this could result in administration errors and lengthy processes. A standalone approach to payroll also fails to deliver a single, holistic view of each employee, which could result in ill-informed decision making."
