MEMBER TAKEOVER
My life in payroll
Emma Sumner ACIPP, payroll supervisor, ASA Recruitment, discusses her varied payroll career, which spans an impressive period of nearly 20 years
I haven’t always worked in payroll. I started off training to be a nurse in stroke rehabilitation. After about a year, I decided I wanted to be in an office environment. I had worked for a few months in my Mum’s office while I waited for my university course to start and realised the office environment was where I was happiest. That, and it gave me my weekends and evenings back. I’ve been doing payroll for 19 years now and have always worked full-time. I’m also a mother to a teenager, which is a job in itself, as is being a wife (I say this with some sarcasm). I began my payroll career in a recruitment company running the branch payroll, which was very complex, with a lot of elements to the processing. It’s safe to say this is where my passion for payroll started. I dabbled a little in the sales side of things and worked the commercial desk for permanent placements alongside the branch payroll. I genuinely enjoyed it, but with the sales targets as driven as they were, and being pregnant, I decided to go back to a less stressful desk job. A few years later, I was made redundant while I was on maternity leave, which nowadays wouldn’t happen. Since then, I’ve gained more and more knowledge. I moved out of my comfort zone and started working for a Chartered accountants running the payroll for 157 clients, across a wide variety of industries and pay frequencies. This was challenging on so many levels, as we all know how legislation changes. However, this allowed me to make my stamp on both creating
and improving processes which were implemented within the bureau. This worked to dispel the myth that payroll is simply a back-office function. Payroll professionals have endured so many tests since the Covid-19 pandemic, and, as an industry, we’ve adapted and overcome these obstacles. I think a newfound respect for the payroll industry was born, which is refreshing. There’s a huge sense of achievement when you’ve worked all hours, sometimes seven days a week, to get your clients’ payrolls run and furlough claims submitted. During this time, once you’d gotten into the groove of payroll, and accustomed to furlough and statutory sick pay rules, the goal posts got moved again. There were then only 14 days to complete claims, as well as run the payrolls and send Construction Industry Scheme (CIS) submissions. Before I knew it, I was single-handedly running payroll, while making submissions for the coronavirus job retention scheme and CIS for 157 clients. At times, I felt like changing career path, however, my passion for payroll runs deep and I persisted, but it wasn’t easy. The pandemic taught me a lot of things about myself and made me stronger both personally and professionally. I was a full-time payroll professional, mother, wife and carer, and had to adapt to working completely from home. Payroll can be a lonely, unrecognised profession. It was for me at times, but once things began to return to normal, I looked for a new challenge within a more established organisation and industry. That
brings me to my current position, and I feel like I’ve found such a wonderful team and company to work for, which always aims to be bigger and better. I’ve come full circle back to working in recruitment payroll. Working for ASA Recruitment is an absolute pleasure. It’s lovely to have my skills and experience recognised and to pass my knowledge to others. To be with a forward-thinking, cutting-edge business and team feels wonderful. I’m always looking to improve my knowledge, and I take my continuing professional development very seriously. I couldn’t do that without the tools the CIPP provides us with as members. You couldn’t associate yourself with a more reputable payroll body (I wasn’t paid to say that). I’m happy to see some normality following the pandemic, but there’s still a long way ahead. As we’ve seen over the last few months, changes have been occurring daily. We must be at the top of our game as payroll professionals, to be the very best at what we do and remain knowledgeable. We need to be the epitome of approachable and informed. I enjoy payroll and can’t see myself doing anything else now until I retire. There aren’t many people who can say that nearly 20 years in, they’re still as passionate about their career as the day they started in their profession, but I can. Here’s to another exciting year – nobody knows what it will bring, but let’s hope no more furlough. n
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| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward |
Issue 86 | December 2022 – January 2023
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