This seems like the most obvious fix. Create the Payroll Job in the "WAITING FOR APPROVAL" state instead of the "APPROVED" state.

Perhaps the OG JCL cutely encoded the job state into a single bit and no one has dared touch it since the Ford Administration.

Begs a loosely related question: what VCS do you suspect the JCL is stored in? I'm going with the "incremental .BAK system", if any.

People who live paycheck-to-paycheck not getting paid at all is potentially a much bigger issue, particularly when you have laws and unions involved. The conditions for that issue are also far less stringent, you don't need an extremely unusual operator error and an unplanned federal holiday happening at the same time, all you need is a single person forgetting to click "approve".