REWARD
Payroll: the career and me
Brian Sparling ChFCIPPdip, global payroll director, World Fuel Services, shares his experience of ‘falling’ into the wonderful world of payroll
P eople who know me know how passionate I am about all things payroll. When discussing my career, the question that’s always asked is, “How did you get into payroll?” For most people working in payroll this is the million-dollar question, and for around 99.9% of people the answer would probably be that they fell into it. While this may be true, everyone working in payroll has chosen to remain there. At school, I dreamt of a career in law, probably inspired by LA Law rather than Rumpole of the Bailey (for those younger than me – probably most readers – ask your parents / grandparents if you don’t get my cultural references). Academically, my strong point was maths, getting good grades throughout school. University was next for me, with a choice of several different options for a degree in maths or law – some part of me still hankered after the glory of Californian law practice! I chose to study law and enjoyed the course and found the best part of it was Revenue and Tax Law, a course intrinsically linked with my love of numbers. I graduated four years later in 1995, with a degree and ready to start practising in whatever field of law would have me in Scotland – the move to sunnier climes could wait. Sadly, at this time, obtaining a two-year traineeship to complete my qualifications was more difficult than I had thought. I needed to do something to start paying back my student debts, so was offered a position at a local property development business. Developing new skills I became a jack of all trades, dealing with administrative items, working with planning authorities and liaising with housebuilding
businesses until the fateful day occurred and the person who ‘did the wages’ left, and I was asked, “Could you just take over the wages until we get someone new in?” That new person never started, and I found myself really enjoying the challenges which running the payroll for a business brought. “Everyone working in payroll has chosen to remain there” Sadly, redundancy loomed, and I found myself in my first full-time job solely in payroll as payroll assistant for the National Galleries of Scotland. I don’t think that I will ever work again in such beautiful surroundings as the Dean Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. I began to learn so much about payroll from my manager and through getting involved in Local Government Pension Scheme rules and building new processes and procedures. I moved onto a payroll administrator role at BSkyB, which gave me the opportunity to work on much larger and more complex payrolls and begin to learn new skills, working on shadow payrolls and processing payrolls in China, Russia and other global locations. The payroll manager at BSkyB was keen to ensure anyone working in the team could pursue opportunities for payroll qualifications and it was at this time that I became involved with the CIPP or, as it was then, the IPPM (Institute of Payroll and Pensions Management). I studied for the Diploma in Payroll Management over three years and was delighted to obtain a pass. I began to realise how important it
was to feel supported, not only internally, but by an external body keen to showcase and highlight the great work payroll professionals carry out. I really began to embrace the thought of payroll as a career and the potential opportunities I could have. Any thoughts of practising law in a fast-paced glamourous LA practice were now beginning to fade. I moved to a manufacturing business for two years, gaining supervisory experience, building on the learning from the Diploma on running a team as well as new systems implementation. This was a totally different environment from where I had worked in the past and it was where I found myself subject to my most hated phrase in payroll (or anywhere else) … “Oh, we’ve always done it that way!” Taking the lead I then rejoined BSkyB in a more senior role running a part of an operational payroll team responsible for around 20,000 employees. I became more involved with HM Revenue and Customs and other payroll stakeholder agencies and began to see how the work done by payroll impacts on a wider scale and can help drive the economies of entire countries. I was appointed as payroll manager at BSkyB, leading the entire team and becoming primarily responsible for the project to outsource the payroll processing to a third-party provider. This was a difficult project to lead, mainly down to the eventual impact on the payroll team as, unfortunately, with the change in model, most of the payroll jobs were lost. This was a time when I recognised the importance of working with a great team, and just how professional and dedicated payroll people can be, as I don’t think the project would have been
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward | June 2024 | Issue 101 40
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