The majority of companies do not measure the effectiveness of their payroll operations, according to a new ADP Employer Services report.

Of the 750 HR and finance professionals asked, 57% do not measure payroll efficiency. The study also reveals that more companies give payroll responsibility to the finance department (49%) than to HR (40%).

However, a quarter of finance professionals with payroll responsibilities would prefer if it came under HR's remit, while 22% of their HR counterparts would rather it was finance's responsibility.

"Payroll is important to both HR and finance, with both sides requiring the data and information that it provides," says Don McGuire, managing director at ADP. "But there seems to be a lot of disagreement over who should take overall responsibility and a lack of best practice about how the two departments should work together. The fact that so many HR and finance professionals feel that it shouldn't sit in their department highlights that neither see it as part of their core job role."

Results also show that the majority (63%) of HR departments choose to retain the function in-house, to keep control of data and for fear of security breaches.