A third of employees surveyed by Censuswide for Zellis said they had delayed an important financial decision because they were unsure about the finer details of their pay. Among respondents aged 18 to 24, that proportion rose to 52%.
The findings come from The Pay Understanding Gap. Censuswide surveyed 1,500 full-time employees and 300 payroll professionals in organisations with 1,000 or more employees across the UK and Republic of Ireland between 26 August and 2 September 2026. The results describe respondents’ experiences and confidence; they do not establish that payslip confusion causes wider retention or wellbeing outcomes.
Confidence in checking pay
Just 32% of employees said they read their payslip in full every time they were paid, compared with 49% who checked a restaurant bill carefully every time. Some 34% had taken no action in the previous year to check that their pay was correct.
The research also found that 38% would not feel confident spotting a payslip error, while 49% were confident they knew their tax code.
“Pay has to make sense in the few moments people actually give it.”
Abigail Vaughan, Chief Executive Officer, Zellis
A gap between employee expectations and payroll capacity
Seventy-seven per cent of employees believed payroll should catch every mistake before payday. Only 4% of payroll professionals surveyed thought that was achievable. These percentages come from the two separate respondent groups.
Meanwhile, 40% of employees said identifying a mistake on their payslip was payroll’s responsibility, compared with 22% who considered it their own.
Zellis is calling on HR and benefits leaders to use everyday language, offer guidance when pay changes, and make explanations easier to find within the systems employees already use.
Employees are turning to AI for answers
One in ten employees surveyed had put information from a payslip into ChatGPT or another AI chatbot to help check or understand it.
Zellis warned that this can expose sensitive information and produce answers without the context of an employer’s pay policies or benefits rules. For HR teams, the practical question is whether staff know where to get reliable help and which tools their organisation has approved for handling pay data.
Why it matters for HR teams
The findings suggest that accurate payroll processing and clear employee communication need to work together. A useful starting point is to explain changes in hours, benefits or deductions when they happen, make the route for querying pay obvious, and check that guidance answers the questions employees actually ask.
Zellis recommends checking gross and net pay, pension contributions and other deductions, and raising unexpected differences with payroll or HR. Employees in the UK can also use HMRC’s tax-code guidance; tax arrangements differ in the Republic of Ireland.
Research note: Findings are from Zellis’ commissioned Censuswide survey, rather than an audit of payslip accuracy. The employee sample covered full-time staff at large employers, so the findings should not be treated as representative of all workers or smaller organisations. Agreement and confidence figures combine the relevant positive response options.
Editorial illustration created for Onrec.
