REWARD
The future’s bright, the future’s payroll
Jaspal Randhawa ChMCIPPdip, EMEA head of products, Collaborative Solutions, explains why the opportunities in payroll both now and in the future are so vast, and discusses the range of transferrable skills the career offers M y payroll career started in 1994, where my role was split 50/50 between human resources
l developing analytical skills l having financial skills (e.g., reconciling accounts) l developing processes to meet complex requirements l being technically competent l developing information technology skills l meeting deadlines l working as part of a team l leading / coaching / mentoring teams l being creative (particularly where software can’t meet all requirements). However, top of this list is having patience and remaining calm under pressure; I guess you could say these are requirements for most roles in any industry, but employees rely on payroll to do their job because they need paying correctly and on time. When this doesn’t happen, it can create emotional and financial pressure for individuals. “Thank goodness technology has moved onto better solutions than using cut and paste” I can recall one occasion where the Bacs file wasn’t submitted for one pay group, leading to its several hundred employees not receiving their pay on pay-day. Thankfully, the payroll officer realised what had happened, so we were able to address it very quickly. However, the only option to ensure employees were paid that day was to cut and paste employee bank information into a spreadsheet within a 60-minute deadline. I managed to achieve this, even with the beady eyes of the chief financial officer peering over my shoulder while I worked on the file. He was only trying to be supportive, but his presence only added further pressure, so I did my best to pretend he wasn’t there! Thankfully, I was able to
send the file across and all employees received their pay correctly before the end of the day. Thank goodness technology has moved onto better solutions than relying on cut and paste! Payroll career prospects Many people choose to stay working in payroll operations because of the variety of work and career prospects; however, there is also the opportunity to cast the net wider. In my case, I transitioned (11 years ago) to the technology and software side of payroll, which has added another dimension to my career. This transition was made possible due to being a subject matter expert in payroll and therefore having a good understanding of technical and legislative requirements, along with being able to communicate this into software functionality. My background also means I can empathise with our payroll software customers because I understand the challenges they encounter. There’s growing recognition that payroll is not just a back-office function; for example, payroll has a major role in ensuring millions of pounds of transactions are processed each month or year. Data managed by payroll can support strategic decision making and there has been greater dependence on payroll in recent years, due to initiatives such as the furlough scheme and employee financial well-being. Working in the software and technology space provides an ecosystem of experts, partners, tools, forums and other resources to research the market and develop a product roadmap to build solutions that support payroll’s strategic growth. It truly is an exciting time for the payroll industry – the career opportunities are vast and rewarding beyond anything I imagined when I started my first payroll job! n
and payroll. I enjoyed the payroll side of my role far more; for a start, I enjoyed the manual calculations and managing employee queries, such as explaining the calculations on their payslips. Very soon, my role transitioned to a full-time payroll assistant. My manager encouraged me to study for formal payroll qualifications which kickstarted my ambition to study and eventually, I become a payroll manager. My career meant I had the opportunity to work for many different sectors. Each organisation I joined was bigger than the previous one, with more reliance placed on payroll systems. But aside from the technology, there were other skills gained, such as the different type of communication styles required depending on whether you were: l talking to an employee l talking to a manager l presenting to a group of colleagues l dealing with a third-party query l handling complex, challenging queries which could have a significant financial impact to employees. The skills enhanced by a career in payroll The scope of work also grew into other areas such as processing student loan deductions, managing expats, assessing employment status and setting up salary sacrifice pension schemes, to name just a few. This also led to needing to understand the software functionality in more depth, to accommodate these new requirements to ensure payroll was compliant. A career in payroll offers a good range of transferrable skills, such as: l being persistent
l setting boundaries l being sympathetic
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| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward |
Issue 88 | March 2023
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