little about systems, and some may remember struggling with, for example, what a mouse is and how to use it, and the tricks we used to teach them to get something to print. So, I had kind of a busy start. GPA: What came next for you? Zennie Sjölund: I had that product owner role for more than a decade, going out to sites to train. I also was involved in running payroll for clients that didn’t have the staffing for it, rather small firms. Then I changed to another payroll supplier, and after that, I started at a smaller payroll firm that ran payroll for clients and trained in payroll. From there, I went to work for a very large enterprise planning cloud software organization. I can say I’ve done almost everything you can do in payroll. I’ve had the opportunity to work with both small and big clients, as well as both public and private sector employers. One aspect of my work has been troubleshooting. Somebody may have been sick, and I needed to step in for them; there was a crash on their computer system, payroll needed to be redone,
or clients needed to find where there were errors. I was involved in all of that. I became more like a payroll investigator, and I enjoyed it. Then, around 2010, we started a small payroll organization in Sweden, volunteer-based. In my career by then, I had met payroll clerks around Sweden, and I realized how low the status of payroll was, and that was really something that bothered me. What’s not realized is that to be successful in payroll requires a rather broad area of expertise. In Sweden, especially, compensation and benefits, collective agreements, insurance, all roll into the payroll function. So, working with a larger accounting association, we started to craft qualification requirements to be a certified payroll consultant. A few years later, the payroll group became part of the larger Swedish accounting association, and that’s where I worked until recently. I set the certification up and did the exams. I helped write the code of conduct for payroll. I established something called “green pay” which is
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ISSUE 22 GLOBAL PAYROLL MAGAZINE
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