About the Payroll Proficiency Index

With the Payroll Proficiency Index (PPI), we embark on an annual journey to give you insights into the complexities of payroll in various European countries. And more importantly: on how to act when you stumble across these complexities. Zooming out, the country ranking serves as a compass for international businesses, while it gives local organisations crucial insights to increase their payroll proficiency. This is how it works.

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The country ranking inside out

The Payroll Proficiency Index of each country is determined by 6 proficiency drivers: legislation, reward, technology, capability, workforce and partner.

For every driver, a country gets a score between 0 and 100, based on direct questions and feedback on the different stages of the payroll process. The higher the score, the more positive the impact of that particular driver is on country’s payroll proficiency. For example, Spain and Norway, with top scores of 73.91 and 73.70 for technology, report significant benefits resulting from streamlining their payroll with specialised tech.

The overall result for a country is quite simply the average score for all 6 proficiency drivers.

Who took part in the 2023 Payroll Proficiency Index

To guarantee representative results, we surveyed a total of 4.500 companies across 16 countries. About 2 in 3 companies are SMEs (up to 250 employees), while 38% has employees in multiple countries. We also made sure to target companies in different economic sectors: industry, education, logistics, finance, communication, etc.

Participants by country

Participants by company size
Participants with international employees
Participants by sector

More to follow soon

The 2023 Payroll Proficiency Index is the second of a new annual series by SD Worx – in which we will also be looking at other European countries. Every year, we will share a new ranking, expert insights and proven payroll solutions.

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