Back in the (payroll) day
FEATURE TOPIC
Rosemary D’Emanuele MCIPPdip, EMEA and APAC payroll contractor at Cision, casts her mind back and shares memories of the payroll roles she held in the ’80s, explaining just how different things were back then
I n 1980, my first job was that of a you sat behind – it reminded me of a church organ! Each employee had a card with two magnetic strips. My job back then was to input the timesheets. You typed in the hours and pay details, and then fed the card in as I recall. I always smiled at one manager’s comment where he signed his name – there was a capacity section beside it, in which he always wrote “five pints on a Saturday night”. A Burroughs engineer once visited and couldn’t believe the contraption he saw. He said they had one just like it in their museum. At this company, they also used Telex, which was the precursor to fax. It’s amazing to see how the technology we use in the payroll function has changed over time. By 1982, I had moved to the payroll junior payroll clerk at a local company in Hendon, London. The company used a Burroughs computer, which department at St Thomas’ Hospital. There, we completed cards which were then sent to punching clerks. I remember you had to cross the zero and use a continental seven. Reports were returned on large green and white computer paper (perforated continuous printer paper). It was here that someone explained to me about the origins of the suffix of A, B, C or D on a National Insurance (NI) number. It was originally used to indicate which quarter the NI cards would be sent over to the government office. Cards ending in A would be sent in
March, B in June, C in September and D in December. By the time I worked here, this whole system has been computerised and administered annually, and had been since 1975. However, it was interesting to understand where the suffix came from, as A, B, C and D are still used even though not necessarily required since the change to the process. “It was here that someone explained to me about the origins of the suffix of A, B, C or D on a National Insurance (NI) number. It was originally used to indicate which quarter the NI cards would be sent over to the government office”
I had my very first personal computer station! They were using a system called ‘The Spirit’ – we were guinea pigs for it, which meant the IT team was always on hand. I remember one particular incident during my time there. The system was extremely slow at processing, so we ran a pension payroll, applying pay increases overnight. The next morning, we found that no decimal point had been processed so a £1,000 pension became £100,000. Luckily, we were able to correct and rerun. We had to cycle Bacs tapes to Colindale. I once visited to see how it operated, and I remember having to walk through a section to be ‘decontaminated’. I also remember using tax and NI booklets from HM Revenue and Customs to perform manual calculations, something that software largely handles for payroll professionals of today! However, we should still understand the calculations behind the software, to ensure we have a good grasp on tax and NI, should we ever need to answer employee queries or in cases where software isn’t performing correctly. n Do you, or your friends / family have earlier memories of payroll processing? If so, we’d love to hear from you. Contact our editor, Kavitha, at editor@cipp.org.uk for the opportunity to share your story, as Rosemary has done here.
By 1985, I had moved to BTR payroll department in Pimlico. It was here that
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward | October 2024 | Issue 104 54
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