REWARD
50 years in payroll
Graham Lee, payroll manager, Cox & Co Payroll Solutions Ltd, shares his amazing experiences of working for 50 years in the payroll industry
L eaving school in 1973 at the age of 16, I didn’t know what type of job I wanted. I was a shy lad, not great at interviews, but I’d done well in my O levels and was fast with mental arithmetic. I soon found a position as a trainee accountant in the press industry, working at the Pitman Press in Bath. Like virtually everyone at that time, I didn’t choose to go into payroll, but fell into it when someone left at short notice. I decided working with figures and dealing with people was what I wanted to do. The manager left soon after, and I had to learn the job very quickly. Life in 1970’s payroll was a world away from where it is today. Calculators were still monstrously expensive, and they were massive! A 500-strong workforce recorded their hours on cards using clocking-in machines. We had to calculate and write in the hours on the card, along with their hourly rates. I remember being excited when the first employee had a rate of above £1.00! I also had to consult tax table A and write the current free pay on the cards. This information was used to calculate and generate the payslips on accounting machines (there were no computers at that time). Now the term ‘payslip’ may not be considered in everyday life. But, in the 1970’s, a payslip was literally its name – a slip. The pay dockets came out of machines on reels – great long thin pieces of paper, which were folded to show the employee’s name on one end and the net pay on the other. We would prepare a coinage report, which was phoned through to the bank with our cash requirements for
the week, and two people would make up and seal the packets. There were no statutory payments in payroll back then for sick pay or parental leave, and deductions were just tax and National Insurance stamps, which we had to order and keep in the safe, as they were effectively money. When someone left the business, they would literally ‘take their cards’ to their next employer, which is where the term comes from. Every quarter, we’d send the cards off to the Department for Health and Social Security for their records. During my 32 years at what became the Bath Press , I lived though some major social changes, including the infamous three-day week during the miners’ strike, which resulted in us only having electricity from Monday to Wednesday. You could work on Thursday and Friday but during daylight hours only and you couldn’t plug in the calculator. Another major change was the move away from cash to bank payments. The company brought in the local banks and building societies in the area to try and educate and persuade employees to ‘go digital’. Some employees resisted this for a long time, citing their legal right to ‘coin of the realm’. The computer age obviously transformed the efficiency and productivity of payroll. The first computers we used were mainframe monsters which occupied a whole room, using Kienzle software. New technology brought in Bacs payments, which involved data stored on giant reels of tape that had to be couriered to Edgware. This was soon replaced with telephone ‘dial up’, where
many a fraught evening was spent hoping the dial up connection wouldn’t cut out before the 9pm cut off time three days before pay day. Since leaving that job, I’ve had several payroll positions in differing sectors, including the food industry, accountants and a government department. In later years, I’ve been able to study, attend courses and gain qualifications, none of which were available in my early days. My last career change was in 2019, when I was delighted to get a job with Cox and Co., a bureau where payroll is the sole focus of the business. This proved to be an excellent decision, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed a new challenge. We work with a wide range of businesses in different sectors, all of whom have differing requirements and their own pay elements, benefits and pension schemes. This period also included the joys of lockdown and furlough pay, something none of us in payroll have experienced before! I’m obviously nearing the end of my working career but can honestly say that I’ve loved my 50 years in payroll. I’m delighted that young people now can and do choose it as a career, take an apprenticeship and have a widely respected qualification which can be used across all businesses. When I started, we were all coming to terms with computerisation, and now we’re all wondering about how artificial intelligence will affect our working lives. Whatever happens, people will still need to be paid. No doubt the payroll profession will adapt, and the future looks exciting. n
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward | October 2023 | Issue 94 32
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