REWARD
Payroll: the job for life
Jody Cox MCIPP, Head of Pay and Reward, Achieve Together, shares a glimpse into her payroll journey and tells us why she loves the pay profession
M y mum always wanted me to be a hairdresser. She promised it wasn’t just because she wanted free cuts, but because people would always have hair that needs cutting, so it was a ‘job for life.’ And although hairdressing might seem like a strange comparator to payroll, there really are many similarities; everyone has a different style, it’s always evolving and when it goes wrong, it can be costly and time consuming to fix. I can say with absolute certainty that hair isn’t my ‘thing’ (mum bun, anyone?), but after almost 20 years in the pay industry, I’ve found my calling, and I couldn’t be happier or prouder that I champion payroll as a career path. As I reflect on what’s encouraged me to stay in this industry, I realise there are
so many reasons, probably enough for me to fill the entire magazine on my own! But fortunately for you, dear reader, I do have a word limit to observe. Join me for a little stroll down payroll memory lane. I started with processing payroll for a relatively small population of staff alongside other finance duties. I still remember manually downloading the tax codes from the PAYE Desktop Viewer, having to check the sequence numbers to get them in the right order and then key them in, how times have changed! A large part of my role was reviewing spreadsheets and payroll reports for variances, channelling my inner Sherlock Holmes to get to the bottom of anything ‘odd’ looking – a skill that’s stayed with me throughout the past two decades. Over the next ten years, I worked on: l the introduction of automatic enrolment
l a complete re-design of payslips l onboarding of new business acquisitions l building a dedicated payroll team from scratch. Although there were many challenging days, there haven’t been any dull or uninspiring ones. And of course, I’ve made mistakes. I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t. Early on in my journey I may have been embarrassed or defensive, however, I now own errors, reflect on them and use them as opportunities to learn and grow. One of my favourites journeys so far has involved working on implementations. The first project I took complete responsibility for involved implementing new payroll software, and this gave me the opportunity to draw on my technical knowledge and learn lots of new project and stakeholder management skills, as well as acronyms. Lots of acronyms.
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward | November 2025 | Issue 115 48
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