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ISSUE 1
ruins, children left homeless: the psychological impact brought by the fallout of the issues ran so deep that people were hospitalised, the pressure pushing one lady to take her own life. As of 2023, it is estimated that 65% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, and a third of the UK population is in the same boat, relying on their employers to process their salaries correctly each period to ensure they can afford to put dinner on the table for another week or month. This is the reality of payroll, the impact when it goes wrong and why I have always believed payroll is a caring profession. We are the relief when they see their payment has credited their bank accounts properly, we are in people’s homes, at the dinner table with them each evening, on the school trip they’ve been saving up to send their children on. Yet we are hearing an increasing number of big names in the news, rushing their payroll system implementations, or not investing in them properly and the result is financial hardship and ruin for their employees. To many, payroll is just numbers and transactions. For CEOs and CFOs, it is the biggest cost to their business and often the first area to be targeted when cost cuts are needed. But payroll is much more than a transactional service. At its core, it is about the hard- working individuals who contribute their time, skills, and dedication to the success of the organisation. It is also the critical touchpoint for employee
experience and satisfaction and by ensuring a smooth transition and completion of any payroll-related project you are not only securing your organisational reputation but also the happiness of the people who keep your business functioning. Having recently completed a transformation project of my own to migrate hundreds of businesses from 5 payroll softwares into 1, I understood that the success of the project relied not only on the efficiency of the new system and the processes implemented but also on the well-being and satisfaction of the employees impacted by the change, and so they remained at the heart of every decision we made and at every step of the project. Planning is Everything Following the disastrous launch of the Phoenix system in 2016, the Canadian Government has acknowledged that the project was rushed. Insufficient time was allocated for preparation and testing, and this directly contributed to the failure of the implementation and ultimately destroyed their reputation as an employer and the trust between them and their employees. This is also true for other big brands such as Asda and Next who have hit the news in recent years, their failed implementations publicised for all to see. It is easy to get blinded by the data or carried away with the thought of saving millions of pounds, however, we must remember who is at the heart of it all:
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