PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
When we were young
Ken Pullar FCIPP, CIPP’s chief executive officer, recalls his early years and those of the emerging profession
H aving been ‘volunteered’ to articles to date by industry stalwarts Tim Kelsey, Mike Aldous and Vince Ashall, I realised an alternative title was ‘Now I am old’. How did that happen? And what a journey payroll has played in my career, from wages/bonus clerk through to chief executive officer of the CIPP today. I had better start at the beginning (and thus dig deep into my memory banks). Leaving school in Newcastle Upon Tyne at age seventeen, armed with four ‘O’ levels, and the advice of my careers teacher that “you’re good at numbers”, like many (if not most) I fell into payroll. St Fergus gas terminal (which is located between Peterhead and Fraserburgh) contribute to the ‘When we were young’ series, and following the was my first foray into payroll as a wages/ bonus clerk in 1978. As an exiled Geordie I turned up for the interview in Peterhead and sat in a waiting room with two other candidates, both of whom were local to the area. I was the last to be interviewed and eventually got to shine with my four ‘O’ levels and aptitude for numbers – and found that the finance director was a fellow Geordie. I’m sure it was my qualifications that got me the job. At eighteen years old I embarked on my career working in a portacabin, with my desk next to a large window which was a key viewing point of the clocking stations. Yes, young readers, in the olden days the men – for they were all men – formed a queue before 08.00 every morning to pass their clock card with a ‘thud’ of the clock card machine with the start time and later in the day the finish time imprinted on the card.
And so my first job – other than watching for any skulduggery in the clock card station (and skulduggery there was aplenty) – was to collect the 300 cards after clocking-in had ended, and record the hours on hand-written timesheets for the previous day. If you clocked in at 8.01 you were deemed to have started at 08.15 and so your time was ‘quartered’ – no, that’s not a means of decapitation. If you left at 16.29 – instead of the official finish of 16.30 – you were quartered again, as you were deemed to have left at 16.15. Initially timesheets were sent to the Stockton office – well, they had a computer! – and I received back each week payslips and a detailed cash analysis. This required collection of monies from the bank (taxis seem to be a common theme in the series of articles for the collection of large sums of cash). Cash packets were duly made up – thank goodness for the detailed cash analysis! – ready for the Friday stampede of workers for collection of their pay. And they knew to the penny how much they were entitled to, and woe betide if I – because it was always my fault, being the human face in front of them – got it wrong. I realised quickly that because pay was calculated on a computer hundreds of miles away, and being challenged weekly on pay, I needed to learn the basics. Which I did. It was a great start to my career, but in 1982, as the gas terminal came to completion, I found myself in Northallerton, newly married and needing a job. Almost immediately North Yorkshire County Council advertised for a superannuation assistant on a six-month temporary
contract. I remember little of this role – other than the silence of the pensions office – as within a month I was whisked upstairs (literally) as a payroll clerk where it was thought I would be of better value. And here was ‘real payroll’ and a grounding that in reality set up my career. Having interviewed staff over the years for various roles I have always believed that in terms of knowledge and complexity, payroll staff from within the National Health Service were the best – and that those in local government payrolls were pretty close. Before I was let loose on my first ‘home helps’ payroll I was mentored and taught payroll by Anne Grainger. I will never forget the patience and skill with which I was taught. I remember well the first day she left me to my own devices, with a pile of timesheets to code – and I froze; well, for a short while. North Yorkshire County Council had an ICL Unipay system. I’ll always have a
fondness for the green screen! Another momentous event (in
hindsight, I realise) was the introduction to me of a professional body called the Association of Payroll and Superannuation Administrators (APSA), also in 1982. A professional body which had a newsletter, qualifications, technical articles and news was something I had to be part of, little knowing the journey it would assist me in for years to come. Statutory sick pay (SSP) came along in April 1983. With the help of APSA journals as well as government guidance notes and software developers one of my first jobs was to write a process manual for SSP for the payroll office. (Coincidentally, when at Cambridgeshire County Council I had to write up the process manual for statutory maternity pay in 1987.) Another key feature of my time at North Yorkshire County Council was working
I’m sure it was my qualifications that got me the job.
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward | September 2020 | Issue 63 18
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