REWARD
Payroll progress: stepping into the future
I am always proud to say that I actively chose a payroll career more than 30 years ago and I am enormously proud to be part of the payroll community. As a payroll expert, I value our dynamic and changing industry and the many highly motivated professionals we work alongside. We’ve cultivated a collaborative approach, working with other business divisions to deliver strategic insights. We’ve invested in technology and embraced innovation, expanding our capabilities, accuracy and efficiency. And, possibly most importantly, we’ve elevated our profession, transforming it into a complex and fulfilling career path that attracts and rewards talent, offers diverse specialisms and skillsets, and provides education and qualification pathways to enable our success. Payroll progress It’s fair to say we’ve come a long way from the traditional view of payroll.
When I joined the industry, we were processing payroll on mainframes, still sending tapes to Bacs each evening by courier, producing money envelope payslips which Securicor would fill with the relevant cash and seal before passing to the client, or triplex printed payslips that had to go on special machines to separate. Reports were printed on hundreds of pieces of A4 paper, year end returns were manually reconciled and yellow books were everywhere! While having fond memories of times gone by, I certainly don’t miss the incredibly manual processing. This often resulted in long working hours under high pressure, so the payroll function was often seen as a major risk and a laborious administrative task. Thankfully, things have moved on. While ensuring that staff are paid accurately and on time remains at the heart of our industry, through our hard work and willingness to embrace change, we’ve also positioned the pay and reward profession as a vitally
strategic component of the business and have won a seat at the decision-making table. We’ve achieved change through a systemic shift in how we work and the way we deliver value back to the business. I have watched us move away from these manual tasks and embrace new ways of doing things; Bacs is now sent electronically, reporting is automated, HMRC finally moved onto electronic filing with real time information and BDO hasn’t printed a client payslip since 2020! Artificial intelligence (AI) assists with the processing of payroll, along with tools to move and store the data that payroll holds, task management systems, data checking and analytic tools that enable us to be able to provide businesses with real time data that drive their business decisions. Strategic partners In today’s social and economic landscape, challenge and risk aren’t just a possibility,
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward | October 2024 | Issue 104 38
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