By Hilary Stephenson, Managing Director at Nexer Digital
Payslips are meant to be one of the most basic building blocks of the employee-employer relationship. A simple record of earnings, deductions, and take-home pay. Yet for more than one in four UK employees, they are a source of confusion, rather than clarity.
According to a report by HR and payroll provider Zellis, 27% of workers say they struggle to understand their payslip. For some, it’s a mild inconvenience. For others, it’s a real barrier to financial wellbeing, independence, and even job security.
During a recent co-design session hosted by Nexer Digital and Laura Parker – a neurodivergent content designer who specialises in making numbers more accessible – we heard first-hand from people who avoid opening their payslips altogether. Some described how financial anxiety made even glancing at the document feel overwhelming, while others admitted they wouldn’t know if the information was correct or not due to a lack of confidence with numbers.
These aren’t isolated stories. They point to a much bigger issue. The payslip, in its current form, isn’t designed for the people who use it. It’s designed for compliance.
A cognitive, emotional, and economic crisis
Approximately 49% of UK working-age adults possess numeracy skills comparable to those expected of a primary school leaver. But this isn’t just about numbers.
Understanding a payslip is made harder by emotional and cognitive barriers such as maths anxiety and dyscalculia – a neurodivergent condition affecting around one in 15 people.
Marginalised and economically disadvantaged groups face additional hurdles. For someone living in poverty, or dealing with grief, trauma, or illness, a poorly designed payslip can quickly become overwhelming. This creates a power imbalance between those who can easily navigate financial information and those who can’t.
These barriers often lead to financial avoidance, where people deliberately avoid looking at or engaging with their finances due to anxiety or a fear of what they might find. Research suggests that one in five workers experience this kind of avoidance. For many, the act of opening a payslip triggers stress or shame, especially if past experiences with money have been negative or if they’ve previously been made to feel inadequate when asking questions. This avoidance, while understandable, increases the risk of financial insecurity, errors going unnoticed, or missed opportunities to query incorrect deductions or access support.
Payslips built for systems, not people
Many of the issues stem from outdated systems and legacy templates still used across payroll operations. Payslips are often crammed with legal jargon, printed in tiny fonts, and riddled with unexplained deductions or codes. Right-aligned numbers can be difficult to scan, and the absence of currency symbols or contextual labels only adds to the confusion. These documents are built to satisfy auditors, not the people who rely on them to make sense of their income.
Even digital access has its barriers. Although more employers are using online payroll portals, many employees find the process of logging in to access their payslip frustrating. Around one in five say that remembering complex passwords or navigating poorly designed systems makes the experience more difficult and is a barrier to checking their pay. As a result, many simply stop checking their payslips altogether.
During our design workshops, participants reviewed a range of typical payslip formats and identified common flaws, including unclear layouts, dense text, and the inclusion of irrelevant or unexplained data. These issues made it harder for users to understand key information like deductions or changes in pay. While some payslips had been annotated with additional notes or links in an attempt to help, participants found these versions overwhelming and impractical, particularly for people with cognitive processing challenges. Employers also noted that maintaining and regularly updating such annotations would be difficult and time-consuming at scale.
Rethinking the payslip: accessible by design
So, how do we fix this?
It starts by designing payslips with people, not just for them. That means involving a diverse range of users, including those with cognitive challenges, language barriers, and low financial confidence, in the co-design process. When people see their own needs reflected in the design of financial documents, confidence and trust follow.
One suggestion is to take a “content-first” approach, treating the payslip less like a spreadsheet and more like a clear, helpful conversation. In a recent prototype developed with Accessible Numbers, this approach involved presenting a clear header with the employee’s name, pay dates, and method of payment. It also included a short summary of earnings, deductions and final pay written in full sentences, replacing abbreviations and symbols with plain language.
Pension contributions were broken down to show both employee and employer shares, and holiday entitlements were clearly laid out without relying on cryptic codes. Year-to-date earnings and deductions were summarised with clearly labelled date ranges, and tax codes were accompanied by simple, friendly explanations.
Initial feedback was very positive. Users found the tone more approachable and the layout easier to navigate. Some suggested improvements, such as clearer visual connections between summary and detailed sections, perhaps using icons or lines, and emphasised the importance of ensuring compatibility with screen readers.
Others noted that relying on colour alone to distinguish information can pose accessibility challenges and recommended additional visual cues.
What HR teams can do
For HR professionals, payroll providers, and fintech designers, it’s time to move away from a one-size-fits-all approach. Improving payslips doesn’t have to mean a complete system overhaul. Start by simplifying the language to remove jargon and ensure clarity. Instead of leaving employees to decipher changes in their pay, clearly signpost what has changed and why. Structure the layout so that related pieces of information are grouped logically and intuitively.
Every payslip should give context to the numbers it contains. A short introduction explaining what the document is and how to read it can make a world of difference. And it’s vital to design payslips that are compatible with assistive technologies so that no one is excluded from understanding their own income.
Crucially, design these changes with input from the people they are meant to support. Including employees with diverse access needs in the design process can prevent unintentional barriers and create genuinely inclusive solutions.
Payslips may never become everyone’s favourite document. But they don’t have to be a source of anxiety, confusion, or exclusion. By taking a human-centred approach, we can create payslips that empower rather than alienate, giving everyone the confidence to understand their pay, plan their finances, and take control of their future.