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Payroll beginner - training and advice?

Gemma

Hi all,

I recently took on a new role as HR Manager (UK) for a tech sector employer with 100+ employees in the UK and a HQ in NL. Although there was no mention of payroll in the job description, and even at offer stage, it became clear when I took on the role that I was expected to take on payroll responsibilities for the UK.

We have two payrolls, one for 2 staff and one for everyone else.  Prior to this role, I've never operated Payroll before and was clear at interview that I had no Payroll experience.  I have taken over from an HR Director who had Payroll experience and ran the Payroll through an outsourced bureau for a few months.  

The main duties are putting together a big salary spreadsheet with all the starters, leavers, overtime, commission, and any changes and then checking the reports which are returned from the bureau.  We don't have an HR database so I have to use a range of different documents and data to ensure the data I am inputting is correct. I also have to check my own work when the reports are returned from the bureau and forward on reports to various other people such as our Finance team and pension provider.  On a personal level, I find this to be a very time-consuming task (it takes me about a day a month to do the processing and about another day or so a month to check the files and deal with any queries out of 20 available days) with the attention to detail it needs a really poor fit for my skills.  Additionally, I have a major concern about the risks inherent in allowing an essentially untrained person to carry out an important task with no checks and balances in place.

I have a couple of questions I'd appreciate an objective view on from you, my lovely Community colleagues:

1.  Is this normal or am I making a fuss over nothing?

2. Is there some training I could do which would help me in this task?

3.  How typical is it for a small employer with an HR team of 0.8 and a Finance team of 6 to delegate this task to HR?

4. Is there any other advice you can offer me to help me feel less stressed about this task?  Every month I have an absolute horror that I will make a mistake.  The first month I did it, I had a horrendous night's sleep as I was so worried about it.  I have made a few minor errors and I am constantly discovering new aspects to Payroll that I knew nothing about.

Thanks for your time in reading this post and please be gentle, this is probably the first time in my HR career I have taken on a new task which has made me feel so vulnerable and inexperienced!

Kind regards,

Gemma

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  • Gemma

    Congrats on the new job !

    My first remark is that whilst payoll principles are simple, their detailed application can be extremely complex, because data comes from various sources, is used by different people (internally and externally) for different reasons, and must be subjected to serious checks and balances to ensure that the possibility for fraud is eliminated as much as possible. It is somethings that has a direct and sometimes massive impact on people's lives when mistakes are made. If HR can't get payroll and admin right, then no credibility will be possible in other areas. You are right to see the serious side of it. 

    If all your staff are on similar and simple conditions, then it's likely that the payroll activity can go smoothly, and once you have got over your steep initial learning curve it could become an "autopilot" activity - except of course for when laws change to impact payroll processing  (auto-enrolment for example).

    Having had payroll responsibilities during company startup for the UK, France and outlying offices in Germany, Holland, Belgium and Spain I can sympathise with you - it can be daunting.

    Practical suggestions?

    1. Get on a training course as soon as possible. I believe the CIPP provides a good two day introductory course for nephytes. See here 
    2. Make sure you understand what is happening inside the "black box" of the payroll system. You can go some way to achieving this by manually calculating a few payslips. 
    3. Ensure that someone else is trained  - firstly to provide checks and controls on your work, and secondly as cover for your holidays, sickness etc. A shared problem is a problem halved
    4. Be firm with access to your time when the payroll input and output days arrive - padlocks on the door and "go away" signs are not a luxury. This type of work calls for sustained concentration, and you must get the support of your management to keep your door closed on these days. 
    5. Make use of your payroll bureau as much as possible, and ask them for contacts in companies with similar situations to your own - you can draw on a wealth of experience of other people who are using the same service and same tool...
    6. Once you've grasped what information is available in your payroll system, put your HR and management hat on to think about how it could be analysed and used to support the business in a broader sense. Too often payroll is a seen as chore with no useful business outputs - make use of the data. This approach shouldn't be on the top of the priority list now, but you should be sure to put it there in a year or so.

    Good luck with the new challenge

Reply

  • Gemma

    Congrats on the new job !

    My first remark is that whilst payoll principles are simple, their detailed application can be extremely complex, because data comes from various sources, is used by different people (internally and externally) for different reasons, and must be subjected to serious checks and balances to ensure that the possibility for fraud is eliminated as much as possible. It is somethings that has a direct and sometimes massive impact on people's lives when mistakes are made. If HR can't get payroll and admin right, then no credibility will be possible in other areas. You are right to see the serious side of it. 

    If all your staff are on similar and simple conditions, then it's likely that the payroll activity can go smoothly, and once you have got over your steep initial learning curve it could become an "autopilot" activity - except of course for when laws change to impact payroll processing  (auto-enrolment for example).

    Having had payroll responsibilities during company startup for the UK, France and outlying offices in Germany, Holland, Belgium and Spain I can sympathise with you - it can be daunting.

    Practical suggestions?

    1. Get on a training course as soon as possible. I believe the CIPP provides a good two day introductory course for nephytes. See here 
    2. Make sure you understand what is happening inside the "black box" of the payroll system. You can go some way to achieving this by manually calculating a few payslips. 
    3. Ensure that someone else is trained  - firstly to provide checks and controls on your work, and secondly as cover for your holidays, sickness etc. A shared problem is a problem halved
    4. Be firm with access to your time when the payroll input and output days arrive - padlocks on the door and "go away" signs are not a luxury. This type of work calls for sustained concentration, and you must get the support of your management to keep your door closed on these days. 
    5. Make use of your payroll bureau as much as possible, and ask them for contacts in companies with similar situations to your own - you can draw on a wealth of experience of other people who are using the same service and same tool...
    6. Once you've grasped what information is available in your payroll system, put your HR and management hat on to think about how it could be analysed and used to support the business in a broader sense. Too often payroll is a seen as chore with no useful business outputs - make use of the data. This approach shouldn't be on the top of the priority list now, but you should be sure to put it there in a year or so.

    Good luck with the new challenge

Children
  • in reply to Ray
    Hi Ray,
    Thanks for your advice and your congratulations. The rest of the role is going well, if hectic, but this is one area where I feel very uncomfortable.

    I think part of my frustration stems from the knowledge that 3 of those 6 Finance colleagues have run a Payroll before so I cannot understand the sense of giving it to me rather than one of them from a risk perspective. It was the current Finance Director who gave me three hours of "training" but does not seem interested in volunteering herself or her team to undertake any checking. I also feel that as I have managed to muddle my way through it for the last few months, everyone is assuming I am competent whereas every time a colleague comes with a query I realise further depths to my ignorance.

    I do have the advantage that everyone has the motivation of being paid, so working from home one day a month has been totally accepted by colleagues.

    Thanks again for your suggestions and support.

    Gemma