REWARD
Valentine’s Day may have been and gone in February but Sheryl Steele ACIPP, head of payroll experience, PayCaptain, shares her payroll career path with us and discusses why she loves the industry she works in all year round I pinch myself sometimes when looking back on my payroll career. I never expected for one minute that Some of the main areas of focus were: ● scalability, processes that set strong foundations for steep growth
was definitely a highlight! Within four years and as vice president of payroll operations globally, I was responsible for a UK team of 55 and a team of 20 in the US, processing thousands of payrolls each month. In 2022 and back in the UK, I decided to go back to start-up life and joined PayCaptain, which is proving yet another thrilling journey with a business dedicated to payroll innovation. PayCaptain provides the latest technology and specialist expertise to provide a complete payroll and employee payments solution, for forward-thinking companies who recognise the importance of financial well-being in their workforce. Our proudest moments in 2022 were being the world’s first Certified B corporation payroll solution and winning the CIPP’s Payroll Software Product of the Year award. My mission at PayCaptain is to drive innovation and ensure ‘the most helpful payroll solution on the planet’ reflects the payroll of tomorrow, while supporting the wider business on this steep growth trajectory. As I reflect on the last 27 years, I’m so grateful for the opportunities the payroll world has presented me with and the journey it’s taken me on. I’ve worked with some incredible people, grown so much as a leader, developed a deep passion for payroll technology and I’ve had a lot of fun along the way! I’m an untiring advocate of working in this wonderful industry and cannot wait to see where the adventure leads me next. If I had one piece of advice for anyone reading this, it’s don’t let fear or failure hold you back; there’s no growth and very little excitement in humdrum. Scare yourself and you’ll find you can do anything! n
processing payrolls for local government at the age of 17 would turn into such an exciting adventure and give me so many wonderful experiences along the way. Don’t get me wrong, I could equally write a book on the tumultuous and turbulent tales of payroll but I’ve enjoyed them too… I love a challenge and humdrum doesn’t work for me. I’ll touch on my stint as a payroll administrator all those years ago, as it taught me a valuable lesson early on. I processed payroll for 35 schools for local government, education authority. Payroll queries from employees would be taken over the phone or they could ‘pop in’ to the office and query face to face… there’s nothing scarier than being hurled in front of an upset dinner lady who hasn’t been paid overtime. This taught me my first lesson – this isn’t just a job, this is people’s lives and it needs to be right. Although I enjoyed in-house life, it was in 2000 that my passion for payroll really ignited and that’s when I joined CMG (now CGI). It’s there where my love for bureau life was established: fast paced, busy and very much thrown in at the deep end. It’s where I studied my CIPP Diploma in Payroll and Pensions Management, and I recognise the impact this had on my confidence and how it propelled my career. In 2003, and newly qualified, I started my management journey at ADP. I initially ran large teams with high profile customers, before co-running a department of 30 people, processing ex- pat payrolls for lots of US customers. In 2008, I joined Fourth to scale their UK payroll operation, back then a department of ten with few customers.
● building skilled, qualified and highly collaborative teams, delivering a payroll service to hundreds of customers in the hospitality industry ● removal and management of risk
● increase quality of service ● increase profit margins.
We worked very closely to support the product teams and implemented agile methodologies into the operation. This helped manage the numerous weighty projects we had running along with delivering the day to day. Within a few years, the operation blossomed to a strong team of 55, processing almost 500,000 payslips a month and I’m proud to say there are hundreds of payroll experts that qualified through our academy and have their own career to be proud of. In 2016, Fourth were under pressure from existing UK customers to have a like-for- like solution in the US. The UK was stable, consistently delivering great service and hummed along like a well-oiled machine. My focus switched to the US territories, and it was my job to make this happen. Initially, it was a vendor selection process – looking for a likeminded bureau to partner with. This soon evolved and I decided to search for a software provider, recruit the right expertise and set up a Fourth bureau of our own in the US. In 2017, I moved to Tampa, Florida, opened the doors with the new team, and we went live with our first US customer in October 2017. It was a life changing opportunity, the greatest of challenges and I gained so much valuable knowledge about US payroll, culture, setting up a business and a lot about myself too. It was also pretty fun to go to the beach in my lunch hour – that
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| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward |
Issue 88 | March 2023
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