REWARD
Past, present, payroll: reflecting on 40 years of change
Karen Beckett BA (Hons) ChFCIPP, Head of Payroll and Benefits, Dorset HealthCare University NHS Foundation Trust, looks back fondly on 40 years of working in the pay profession I n the last year of school, we had a session with the careers teacher to discuss what we wanted to do by cheques, and then eventually to everyone being paid through Bacs. The next change was how the
holding all the information was sent by courier to the Bank of England, who then ran the tape to make the payments to the various bank accounts. Imagine what it was like when the tape didn’t get sent (and occasionally, the tape didn’t get sent on time because someone had forgotten). Thankfully, in those early days, the cost of postage was much less than it is today. Everything was sent through the postal system. Payslips had to be sent out several days before payday to ensure staff received them on or before payday. All the information for HM Revenue and Customs was sent by post, including P45s, new starter information and the annual returns. Pay teams received P6 and P9 forms through the post for manual input. The advent of computers The days of sending the input to the computer centre for keying eventually stopped and payroll officers began inputting the information directly onto the computer system. But it wasn’t like the computer systems of today. We thought it was great, but looking back, it was archaic. The ‘computers’ were dummy terminals. You certainly couldn’t look at the internet on them!
when we left. I was being encouraged to join the Royal Air Force (we had a base near where I lived). That wasn’t where I took my career. Instead, I spent some time in retail after leaving school, and while I was there, noticed a junior payroll clerk job advertised with the local authority. At the time, I thought it was a job I’d do for a couple of years until I found the job I’d pursue as my lifelong career. However, 40 years later I’m still in the profession, it has become my career and I love it. Highly manual processes I’ve seen many changes in the industry. When I first started in payroll, everything was manual. We even paid staff in cash. Every week, we’d go to the bank to collect the cash (having told the bank the day before how the money was to be split). It was then taken back to the cash office for the staff there to put into brown pay packets. And then, on a Thursday afternoon, we’d travel around the various offices and sports centres in the county delivering the pay packets to staff. In time, the move was made from payment by cash to payment
information used to pay staff was recorded. Initially, the payroll team wrote the details on manual forms which were sent to the regional computer centre by a certain date. Overnight, the computer centre staff keyed the information onto the computer system. The pay was calculated accordingly and the next day, the payslips, P45s, etc., were returned to the payroll team. Upon checking, if we found an error, we had to cancel the Bacs payments, instead performing manual calculations and payments. “When I first started in payroll, everything was manual. We even paid staff in cash”
How the money got to the bank also changed. There was no automatic process we could run to make the payments. Instead, a physical tape
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward | November 2025 | Issue 115 46
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