AI In Payroll Needs Trust, Not Just Automation Ft. Kelli Rico, Chief Product Officer At isolved

In this episode of TechDogs Discover Dialogues, host Jemish Sataki, Senior Content Lead at TechDogs, speaks with Kelli Rico, Chief Product Officer at isolved, about how AI is transforming payroll technology, workforce management, customer trust, and product leadership.

Drawing on more than 14 years of experience at isolved, Kelli shares insights from her journey across implementation, customer training, and product management. The discussion explores how AI agents are improving payroll processes, why human oversight remains essential, and what organizations should consider when building reliable HR technology.

At the center of the conversation is a fundamental idea: payroll technology should not only automate tasks. It should safeguard accuracy, strengthen employee trust, and make work easier for the people responsible for managing it.
 

Payroll Accuracy Is About Employee Trust:

Payroll is one of the most important responsibilities organizations have toward their employees. Kelli explains that most employees rarely think about payroll until something goes wrong. A missed or incorrect paycheck can immediately affect an employee's ability to pay rent, cover expenses, and trust their employer.
 

How AI Is Transforming Payroll Processing

Traditional payroll systems can detect errors and alert administrators when something appears incorrect. AI creates an opportunity to go further. Kelli explains that AI agents are beginning to identify problems, investigate their causes, and propose solutions rather than simply generating alerts.

For example, an AI agent may detect an issue in a payroll run, determine what needs attention, and prepare a recommended correction for human approval. This approach could reduce repetitive investigation and manual work while helping payroll teams resolve issues more efficiently. The objective is to move from error detection toward more complete issue resolution.
 

Guided, Assisted, And Autonomous AI

One of the central themes of the discussion is how organizations should introduce automation responsibly.

Kelli explains that isolved is designing its agents with different levels of control:
 

• Guided mode: Organizations retain greater direct involvement while using AI assistance.

• Assisted mode: AI can support investigation and recommend actions for review.

• Autonomous mode: AI can perform certain repeatable tasks with less direct intervention once organizations have established sufficient confidence.

Rather than expecting customers to adopt full autonomy immediately, Kelli emphasizes allowing organizations to choose their level of readiness. The goal is to build trust progressively instead of treating AI adoption as an all-or-nothing decision.
 

Why Human Oversight Still Matters

Payroll automation involves people's money, making human oversight particularly important. Kelli believes that organizations should retain meaningful human involvement as they introduce AI into payroll workflows.

Before an agent operates autonomously, teams need confidence that its decisions are accurate, repeatable, and appropriate for the task. This involves observing its behavior, reviewing recommendations, identifying mistakes, and progressively increasing autonomy as trust develops.The broader goal is to combine the strengths of intelligent automation with human judgment and accountability.
 

Who Is Accountable When AI Makes A Mistake?

As AI agents take on more responsibilities, questions about accountability become increasingly important. Kelli makes an essential distinction: organizations remain responsible for outcomes, regardless of whether work is completed by a human employee or an AI agent.

When something goes wrong, the priority should be identifying the issue, understanding its cause, correcting it, and preventing recurrence. This requires transparent workflows and appropriate checks and balances. Kelli also emphasizes that errors can happen in any organization. What matters is how teams respond, learn, retrain, and improve their processes. AI does not remove organizational accountability.
 

Making Enterprise Technology Accessible To Smaller Businesses

Small and midsized organizations often lack dedicated HR, payroll, or IT teams. Employees may handle multiple responsibilities, making complicated enterprise software difficult to manage. Kelli believes ease of use must be a priority when building technology for these organizations.

She also highlights the role of supporting services. isolved offers HR and payroll services that can help organizations manage responsibilities they may not have the internal expertise to handle independently. These services can provide immediate operational support while helping customers develop confidence and capability over time. The goal is not simply to deliver software, but to help organizations become more effective users of it.
 

Product Leadership Requires Trust And Ownership

The conversation then moves into leadership and team development. Kelli reflects on how her own leaders gave her opportunities to experiment, make decisions, and learn from mistakes without immediately putting her career at risk.

Those experiences helped her develop judgment, confidence, and her own leadership style. Today, she aims to create similar opportunities for her team. Instead of expecting leaders to provide every answer, Kelli believes organizations should build environments where employees feel empowered to solve problems, make decisions, and take ownership of outcomes.
 

Calm Leadership Builds Stronger Teams

One of Kelli's most important leadership lessons is that employees often reflect how their leaders behave. During difficult situations, leaders may not have every answer. However, they can still communicate openly, remain composed, and make themselves approachable.

Kelli believes teams should feel comfortable raising problems, reporting unexpected changes, and asking for help. When employees trust that their leaders will support them, even when something goes wrong, they become more confident in their work.

For her, leadership is about creating an environment where people know their contributions matter and their leaders have their backs.

Key Takeaways
 

• Payroll accuracy is essential to employee trust and confidence.

• A single incorrect paycheck can damage months of goodwill.

• AI agents can move beyond identifying payroll errors toward recommending and resolving issues.

• Guided, assisted, and autonomous modes allow organizations to adopt AI progressively.

• Human oversight remains important in sensitive financial workflows.

• Organizations remain accountable for outcomes, regardless of whether humans or AI agents perform the work.

• HR technology should reflect real customer workflows rather than idealized processes.

• Simplicity, transparency, and customer control strengthen software adoption.

• Small and midsized businesses need intuitive technology and accessible support.

 

About Kelli Rico

Kelli Rico is the Chief Product Officer at isolved, bringing more than 14 years of experience across software implementation, customer training, product management, and workforce technology. Her career at isolved has been shaped by working closely with customers and understanding how software affects their day-to-day responsibilities. Today, she focuses on customer-centered product innovation, payroll accuracy, responsible AI adoption, and building reliable HR technology that supports real business needs.