MY CIPP
Spotlight on...
Vickie Graham DipM ACIM ACIPP Business development director
Tell us a little about your career and background.
As for the profession, if there’s one thing true of payroll and pensions it’s that they’re constantly changing. What does the future hold for the CIPP? Although the past 19 years have been exciting, I believe we’re currently in one of the most exciting periods of the CIPP’s journey. During the last 19 years, we’ve grown in terms of brand and membership numbers, which has enabled us to invest in our products and services. The pandemic, though challenging, has put payroll in the spotlight and we’re at a critical point to capitalise on that. For the immediate future, we’ve invested in our learning management solution, embracing a digital-first approach to our training course delivery and in doing so, ensuring we’re accessible to all. We’re in the process of integrating this with our website and customer relationship management system to achieve streamlined processes and improved levels of customer service. We have a new policy team representing our membership and building and developing relationships within government, to maintain and increase our presence as a critical friend. Through this amazing policy team, we’re delivering content in different and engaging ways, and listening to members to ensure our content and events are relevant and topical to support them. The role of payroll is changing – technology is enabling robotic process automation, which means some of the low value, transactional aspects of the role are now automated (or should be), and payroll professionals can play a more strategic and analytic role within their organisations. This will lead to changes in our offering to ensure we’re leading the payroll and pension professionals of the future. n
1. grow membership and brand awareness 2. lead innovation and engage certified solutions 3. provide knowledge and skills to practitioners 4. provide governance and advice to all payroll professionals. To achieve these, I developed and recommended a vision, mission and set of values, based on market research, which have been approved by the board. My immediate priority is to work with the team internally to communicate and instil these in our ways of working, to support the CIPP in achieving our corporate objectives and ensure our members receive a high level of support from their Chartered body. You’ve been at the CIPP for 19 years – how have you seen the CIPP, and the payroll profession itself, change over that time? There have been significant and positive changes to both the CIPP and to payroll and pensions over the course of my career. As I mentioned earlier, when I started at the CIPP, it was known as IPPM. Soon after I joined, we went through a re-brand, and we became the Institute of Payroll Professionals (IPP). This was to make the Institute more inclusive as there had been a misconception that because ‘management’ was in the organisation name, you had to be a manager to join. Another reason for the re-brand was the pursuit of Chartered status. This was something I worked with the board at the time to achieve, initially having Chartered status granted for the Institute in 2011, and the ability to award Chartered membership from 2016. This was such an amazing achievement and has helped to raise the professional standing of our Chartered members within their organisations, putting them on equal footing with their Chartered counterparts in accounting and human resources.
I’ve been working within the industry for nearly 20 years, initially joining the Institute of Payroll and Pensions Management (IPPM), which is now the CIPP, as a marketing administrator in August 2003. Prior to joining the CIPP, I worked as an administrator for Cleanaway. This was my first role after college, and I didn’t know what I wanted to do as a career. The general manager at Cleanaway, David Brown, was very encouraging and wouldn’t let me ‘settle’ for the role I was in. He recognised my potential and guided me towards my career choice, telling me my skills would ‘suit a role in marketing or public relations’. Shortly afterwards, I saw a role advertised for a marketing administrator at the IPPM – no experience required, as training and professional qualifications were provided. I loved the role, which mainly involved organising print campaigns and postal mailings to advertise training courses and qualifications. Since 2003, I have held many roles within the CIPP, always in marketing, sales, membership and events. As business development director, I’m responsible for setting the strategic objectives and direction of the CIPP alongside the chief executive officer, senior leadership team (SLT) and the board. I find the role challenging, but incredibly rewarding as, through our membership, best practice standards and education programmes, we’re supporting payroll and pension professionals through their careers. We give them a voice within government as legislation changes are proposed, and we’re also raising the value of the profession within businesses. What are your main priorities as business development director? I’ve worked with my colleagues in the SLT and board to outline four strategic objectives as part of our ten-year plan:
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward | October 2022 | Issue 84 10
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