REWARD
Why I chose
Jason Davenport MCIPP MIoD, managing director, Calendar Consulting Ltd, discusses his unique payroll career, highlighting that the path isn’t always linear M y career has been focussed on payroll and pensions management. Unlike many, I me exposure to business development within a contract setting, and I gained a lot of experience in the sales environment, including how to understand client needs. I joined NorthgateArinso and was
for me and the family, so I then moved to Capita, starting as a service director within one of their shared service centres. I eventually became chief operating officer of the human resources (HR) services division within a very short space of time. I took overall responsibility for a significant business, with 11 centres across the UK delivering a variety of HR consultancy, HR administration, payroll and pensions services. Capita also provided the impetus to set up my own consultancy business, which I’m delighted to state has gone from strength to strength, even during the pandemic when I expected businesses to reduce spend on consultants, as they focussed on core business. However, having built strong relationships with key clients, they were keen to retain services and ensure project focus was maintained. My tips on building a successful payroll career On reflection of my own career journey, I would suggest to always be on the look out for new opportunities. Don’t be afraid of moving sideways to gain more experience, and often moving out to move up is the correct choice for career management. I would also suggest never burning bridges. I have made many fantastic connections throughout my career journey and am still in touch with many colleagues as my network has grown and developed. The world of payroll is still hugely exciting to me, and I really enjoy going into schools to discuss the opportunities available in this fantastic industry to the next generation of payroll, pensions and reward professionals. n
actively decided to pursue payroll when working in construction, within a finance team with responsibility for payroll. I realised in construction it was engineers and surveyors who ultimately made the top grade for senior management and executive posts and therefore took my career on a direction that would support that goal within payroll. In the late 90’s, I joined CMG, and although this was as a senior payroll administrator, it was with a targeted approach to be selected to join their management development programme. I wanted to become an associate director with my own profit and loss responsibility for a payroll service business. My payroll journey Having previously delivered payrolls in- house for civil engineering and construction contracts with more than 5,000 weekly paid employees, with CMG I now found myself responsible for the growth of the North of the UK. This involved managing teams within shared service centres, delivering across multiple sectors including finance, gas and oil, retail, logistics and the public sector. CMG also provided the opportunity to work internationally on a sales opportunity with Coca Cola Enterprises across Northern Europe, that once won, became an operational contract that I led. I really enjoyed going into new countries, meeting teams and helping shape new service models. This international exposure focussed the next stage of my career on gaining more experience within the global growth of payroll. This also gave
quickly working across multiple European countries with other operations directors, supporting the growth and development of the offshore centres in India and the Philippines. Working internationally gave me a huge insight into other ways of working and diverse cultures, along with new approaches to problem solving and business development. I flourished in this environment and headed up the global payroll process tower of work for NgA (as it was then known). I had regional payroll process owners reporting into me to ensure global standards for payroll processing were developed for the benefit of the client base. During this time, I also worked on various multi-country payroll deployments, planning and project managing aspects of implementation and delivery for both countries that NgA operated within, and those handled via the partner network (third party vendor). Not all career steps are about climbing a particular ladder, and during this time, I also worked alongside product development teams to act as the operational review for technical developments, ensuring the user experience was kept first in mind. I found working with the technical teams as challenging as learning a new language, and ultimately rewarding, to understand the broader implications of setting up payroll and enterprise resource planning systems. Upon further reflection of my career direction, I decided that taking up a senior post within the UK was the right next step
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward | March 2023 | Issue 88 44
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