Payroll Perspectives — Karl McKenna, NLC Payroll
Summary
Karl McKenna’s career has been shaped by an unconventional path into payroll, combining international experience, early career pivots and a willingness to explore new opportunities that ultimately led him into the industry.
A defining theme throughout his journey is the evolution of outsourced payroll — moving from rigid, task-based service models to more integrated “virtual payroll” solutions that operate as an extension of in-house teams.
He highlights the complexity of managing scope, expectations and stakeholder relationships in outsourced environments, where clear boundaries and communication are critical to delivering effective payroll services.
With over a decade of experience, he has seen the industry shift significantly, with growing demand for flexibility, improved service models and a stronger alignment between payroll providers and business operations.
The other side of payroll
Combine English teaching, Japan, MYOB, and the business opportunity of a lifetime — and you can get a very unexpected career pivot into Payroll.
Karl McKenna, Consulting Manager for NLC Payroll chats to us about the other side of payroll, outsourced teams, and how he’s seen the industry change in the last decade, in his chat with Shawny Smith, for Payroll Perspectives.
Episode transcript
Shawny: Hi, Karl. Thanks for joining me for an episode of the Payroll Perspective. So, yeah, let’s just start off with if you can introduce yourself and give us an overview of your career and life at NLC.
Karl: Yeah, cool. I’m Karl McKenna. My role at the moment is as a Consulting Manager. So I’m managing a team of nine or ten consultants and three developers. I’ll take a step back — you probably don’t meet many people that dreamed of becoming a payroll person. It’s not something you set your sights on in high school or college. But I was over in Japan teaching English, and my in-laws were approached by MYOB to purchase the outsourced payroll for PayGlobal, one of the payroll systems. We ended up doing that. I moved from Japan, where I was teaching English, back to Wellington in New Zealand, and the rest is history. We had an outsourced payroll team — just a few of us — that’s grown substantially in size. I’ve since moved into payroll consulting and now lead that team.
Shawny: I noticed you’ve been there for nine years, obviously since its conception. How has your role changed in that time?
Karl: Yeah, as a family business, it’s pretty easy to pick up roles as you go — like tumbleweed — and sometimes you end up keeping them. I’ve had a brief stint working in the outsourced payroll team, actually processing pays and managing it for a short period. I’ve done account management and sales for the whole business, picked up a bit of marketing, and only recently stepped back from that. Then moved into consulting work and implementations, and now managing that team. I still do a lot of sales work — we don’t have a dedicated salesperson — we manage inbound leads ourselves. So the family business side means you end up wearing a lot of hats. You don’t always have a clean job title, but my main role now is managing the consulting team and projects.
Shawny: Yeah, I can definitely see that — you haven’t really lost responsibilities, just gained more.
Karl: That’s the case for all of us in the family as well.
Shawny: What’s kept you there for nine years, and what is it specifically about payroll that you enjoy?
Karl: That’s definitely changed — probably matured with me. What I really enjoy now is solving complex problems — helping businesses fit their processes into something compliant. A lot of businesses don’t want to change what they’re doing, but they need to be compliant. So it’s about figuring out how to make that work. Is the system still fit for purpose? Do they need something additional rather than a full replacement? Then there’s navigating grey areas of compliance — what’s open to interpretation — and working through that, often with legal input. I also really enjoy implementations — large-scale projects where you can see the magnitude of change, especially when HR systems sit alongside payroll.
Shawny: Do you tend to work across specific industries, or is it broad?
Karl: It’s pretty broad. We’ve got two sides to the business — consulting and outsourced payroll. Outsourced payroll is largely industry agnostic. We work across retail, hospitality, manufacturing — a wide mix. It’s more about the business than the industry. Some industries prefer in-house — especially complex, weekly paid environments where employees like having someone onsite. In those cases, we sometimes operate in the background while the client has someone front-facing internally.
Shawny: What are the biggest challenges working in outsourced payroll versus in-house?
Karl: One big one is managing scope — having a clear line in the sand around what we do versus what the client does. We’ve evolved into what we call a “virtual payroll” model — where we operate like an in-house team, just not physically there. That’s been really successful. We’ve even had situations where employees think we’re internal — they’ll ask, “Where’s Karl?” and the client has to explain they’re talking to us externally. That seamless experience is important. Another challenge is hiring — finding the right people. Not just payroll experience, but the right level of experience. Too much experience can mean unlearning habits before retraining.
Shawny: Let’s talk AI — what impact do you think it will have on payroll?
Karl: I think it’s a bit scary, but also promising. AI will have a strong impact on analytics — workforce management, rostering, identifying trends, predicting demand. But I think we’re still a long way from AI being directly involved in payroll processing — calculating pays, making financial decisions. There’s a trust gap there, especially around data security.
Shawny: Final question — if you’re hiring someone without outsourced experience, what do you look for?
Karl: First and foremost — team fit. That’s critical for us. After that, it’s about multitasking, resilience, and being able to handle peaks and troughs. Can they manage multiple clients and work collaboratively? Payroll skills can be taught — but those core traits are what really matter.
Shawny: That wraps up the questions. Thanks so much for joining me.
Karl: Thanks, it’s been awesome — really enjoyed it.