Confessions of a payroll manager – It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it
Another episode in a series of occasional yet insightful / inciteful, anonymous and whimsical reports revealing the arcane, weird and sometimes torturous world of payroll frequented by payroll professionals. N ine words, “Penny, I need to see you in my office”, that immediately fill the heart with dread and the brain catastrophising. When Mr Crumbitt says them other thoughts intrude, such as will I eat some top secret inedible biscuit creation. Munching on a battered Crumbitt crinkle, Mr Crumbitt announced that he’d met an important customer at an annual charity golf day who was thinking of bringing their payroll back in-house. He’d decided to impress this customer by inviting their management team in for a presentation entitled ‘The added value of in-house payroll’. Despite my interview presentation a few years ago having gone down in Crumbitt’s history as a ‘lorry load of stale crackers’, I had been selected to deliver it. Well, I’d seen oodles of presentations since so I was hopeful that I’d picked up some good dos and don’ts. What makes a good presentation? Enthusiasm – check (I love payroll, it’s in my blood); eye contact – sort of check (if I started blushing for any reason, the floor would become very interesting); don’t read the slides – check (I like a mostly visual presentation with lots of graphs and pictures of people pointing and smiling). What makes a bad presentation? Monotone – check (I’ve a voice like a Radio 4 presenter according
to Tom); apologising throughout – check (I apologise when someone else walks into me); no interaction – check (I was planning on whizzy quiz gimmicks). Though I knew what and didn’t work, things didn’t turn out as I wanted. By the time I’d completed two slides (which had somehow got into a never ending loop, switching between each other in a migraine inducing strobe effect) I was a gibbering wreck. I’m an intelligent woman – why was this so hard!? Thankfully, Tom is good at dealing with gibbering wrecks and, coincidentally, a right old whizz on PowerPoint. He sat with me, supplying quality cups of tea, a gentle shoulder-squeeze every time it looked like I was going to lose it again and, most importantly, offering amazing tips on using animation. By the finish I felt like I’d completed post production on the next Star Wars film and was bursting with pride (and tea). I had a successful run through with the team who made good points and suggested adding humour (jokes courtesy of Jace and Billie). Harry was chuffed that I’d added a slide about the benefits that can be offered through payroll (including his image with trademark double-thumbs- up and toothless grin combo), and Tom beamed at my pensions slide as I’d done an extra special ‘special effect’ on that one. The day of the presentation came and suddenly all my words (which had flowed easily in front of the team) disappeared. My hands were shaking and everything was a bit muffled as I turned to address the newcomers. It was then that I saw
Jace, Billie and Tom outside the window with a homemade sign – ‘You can do it Penny’. So, with a grateful smile, I was underway. At one point I used an interactive tool found on the internet to let the audience vote on questions which then cleverly showed on the screen. How la-di-da. This created excited murmurs and positive conversations in the audience. Mr Crumbitt was clearly loving it; so much so, that when I was talking through the benefits he acted out a cycling motion for the cycle2work scheme and a driving motion for the car scheme. Thanks goodness the yoga club was cut at the last minute. Afterwards, discussing my team with the visitors made me realise how far ahead of the game we are – and how proud I am of them. So, all in all, an interesting week. While I still think that presentations are daunting it’s a great way of communicating ideas and getting people interested in new things. It’s also a really good way of getting to know the unexpected talents of your staff. Who knew that Tom was so creative with computers? Which reminds me I need to talk to him about next week’s team briefing – I want to put the theme from ET over the presentation introduction and consider a Britain’s got talent golden buzzer style ending… ❑ The Editor: Any resemblance to any payroll manager or professional alive or dead, or any payroll department or organisation whether apparently or actually portrayed in this article is simply fortuitous.
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| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward |
Issue 29 | April 2017
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