payroll vs department

payroll and department both are nouns.

Word	Noun	Adjective	Verb	Adverb
payroll	Yes	No	No	No
department	Yes	No	No	No

As nouns, department is a hypernym of payroll; that is, department is a word with a broader meaning than payroll:

payroll: the department that determines the amounts of wage or salary due to each employee
department: a specialized division of a large organization

Other hypernyms of payroll include section.

payroll (noun)	department (noun)
the department that determines the amounts of wage or salary due to each employee	a specialized sphere of knowledge
a list of employees and their salaries	a specialized division of a large organization
the total amount of money paid in wages	the territorial and administrative division of some countries (such as France)