MY CIPP
Meet the new CIPP chair
Liz LayMSc FCIPPdip FHEAACIPD, CIPP chair, outlines her career, the qualifications, experience and skills she brings to the role, and her ambitions for the Institute, members and the profession
M y career began as an office clerk for a sheet metal engineering company in Leicester, with one of my tasks to process the weekly payroll manually. Payments were calculated and recorded using HMRC’s tables and Kalamazoo sheets. A cash breakdown was completed followed by a visit to the bank to collect the money, to then make up the brown cash pay packets to distribute. I moved then into finance, credit control and reconciliations until I moved to a truck sales company. The payroll administrator there went off sick, so, as I had processed payroll previously, I was used to provide cover on a regular basis. By then, payroll had progressed and was computerised; the payslips were printed in-house with the printer located at the furthest and lowest point of the building in a room with no windows. You couldn’t leave the payslips to print unattended because it was inevitable that they would mis-align and you would have to start again! Moving into a purely payroll role I grew with the company, becoming payroll manager, providing supervision and leadership, building on this by graduating with my Diploma in Payroll Management in 1997. From there my payroll career has been diverse: providing technical payroll advice to businesses, proof-reading payroll publications, writing payroll articles, being a member of an editorial board, working with businesses as a client account manager, delivering presentations, and
providing payroll training across the UK and in USA and Canada.
from the ground with my husband during a recession, but as my heart and passion was with payroll we accepted an offer to sell the thriving and successful business we’d built. I am now a payroll manager for a large supermarket. The role has enabled me to bring together all my knowledge and skills including technical, team building, leadership and strategy. With numerous projects on the go – centralisation, robotic process automation (RPA), and a new human resources system – thinking ahead and planning for the future are skills that support my role on the CIPP board. My family have always been supportive of my passion to learn and my desire to take on new challenges, which have provided good grounding for my two sons’ own careers. Attending the passing-out parade of my elder son when he joined the RAF as a mechanical engineer, and attending my younger son’s graduation when he was presented student of the year on completion of his plastering apprenticeship, were very proud moments. Having recently become a grandparent I look forward to supporting my granddaughter with her studies and helping her to achieve whatever her ambitions may be. Elected to join the CIPP board as a non-executive director three years ago, and then elected as vice chair at the beginning of 2020, I now find myself in the position of having to fill very big shoes in taking over as chair. Jason Davenport has done a
...my payroll career has been diverse...
I have been involved with the CIPP for nearly two decades as a payroll tutor, also working for them in various roles both employed and self-employed including being instrumental to the design, development and project management of the CIPP Payroll Quality Partnership, now encompassed in the Payroll Assurance Scheme. I passed the Preparing to Teach in the Lifelong Learning Sector for tutors, and the Certificate in Assessing Vocational Achievement to become an apprenticeship assessor for level three apprenticeships (prior to the introduction of the new framework). Being promoted to a role that focused on supervision, team management, leadership, and engaging in strategy, I graduated in the MSc in Payroll and Business Management in 2010 and gained the post graduate Certificate in Professional Development to become a tutor on the MSc programme. Always looking for a new challenge, I became a consultant working in the retail sector working with businesses to support the launch of a credit union. This coincided with setting up an estate agency
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward | April 2021 | Issue 69 8
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