HR & Payroll Pulse 2025

In this episode of the SAP HR Mavericks podcast, our colleague Silvia Moreno Rodriguez, SAP Marketing Director, is joined by Elton Schwerzel, SAP Sales Director, to explore what cloud sovereignty really means when it comes to employee data and HR systems.

In this episode, we cover: 

• Why organisations are accelerating data governance initiatives: Payroll data, performance records, health information and career histories directly affect people's lives, pushing sovereignty from an IT question into a leadership and trust issue. 
• How geopolitical pressure is reshaping cloud strategies: European organisations are increasingly weighing local and regional cloud providers as reliance on global infrastructure comes under scrutiny. 
• What "data sovereignty" really means beyond infrastructure: It's not just about where data is stored, but about who can access it, under which laws it's processed, and how transparent organisations are with employees about it. 
• Why this isn't a separate project, but embedded in every HR and payroll decision: From jurisdiction and cross-border data flows to AI-driven people analytics, sovereignty now touches nearly every decision HR and IT make together.

At SD Worx, we see this every day. Success does not come from choosing cloud vs on-premise. It comes from building a strategy that aligns technology, compliance, and operations from the start.

Choosing an HR and payroll vendor is not like choosing a software subscription. You’re not selecting a tool, you’re selecting a partner that’s going to sit at the heart of your operations, touch every employee in every country that you operate in, and either grow with you or hold you back. 

This year’s HR & Payroll Pulse report brings those pressures into focus, offering a clear view of where the foundations of work are holding and where they are starting to strain.