I wouldn’t quit. I would ask for more support and training and for the other employee to support you more next week.

Being given a task you are not competent for, were not trained properly for and without adequate supervision is an organisational failure not a personal one.

As long as you haven’t misrepresented your skills and experiences at interview I would sit tight and learn from this experience. Ask for more help.

Hi Lesley

You poor thing - what a start to a new job! As Keith so rightly says, it isn't your fault. I would never let a new person input payroll and send it without going through it with them in detail and checking their work. Even if they had done payroll before, let alone if they hadn't. Absolutely you need to ask for more help and for someone to do some spot checks for your peace of mind next week to make sure it doesn't happen again. Equally make sure you ask, ask, ask about anything that is a little different or you're not quite sure about when you're inputting - if they're good people, they won't mind at all. You can't possibly learn everything about payroll in one or two weeks. I'm still asking my boss five months into my new job about things I haven't come across before in this organisation.

Like you, I have no one checking what I submit for payroll (as no one else has any payroll knowledge here!) and I feel scared every month when I send the spreadsheet for processing and when payslips go out. That feeling does ease over time. I've had to ring employees and explain why our payroll bureau decided to take huge sums of money off them with no explanation and I was terrified that people would have a go at me, but actually they were really nice about it and grateful that I had told them about it before they saw their payslips and that I was trying to sort it out. It actually improved our team's reputation as they saw I was the sort of person who cared and would do whatever I could to fix a problem.

Is there anyway you could checking the coding the absence now so you don't spend the time worrying about it - I've always found it easier to address a problem head on rather than worry about it as then at least you can get on the road to moving past it, which is always a relief. Can you sit down with your colleague and say 'I found last week's payroll situation absolutely awful; how can we make it easier for all of us this week and make sure we get things right?' Then you'll have a plan for coping rather than dreading it.

And I know it doesn't seem like it now, but things will get easier as you learn more and that feeling of dread when you submit payroll will go away - I promise.

Let us know how you are getting on - we're rooting for you!

Jackie

Hi Lesley

I'm so sorry to hear about your first week, I wouldn't quit - stick it out for a bit longer at least and give yourself a chance. No one goes in to a new job knowing everything!

I remember my first payroll at a previous job having a cry in the loo because a couple of things had gone wrong, but it does get easier. Don't be afraid to ask for help from your colleague and would it be worth asking for some training on the system from the provider? That's what I did, spent a day training with an expert on the system asking them all my silly questions and really getting to know how everything worked.

I think like colleagues have said, there's always a worry when you're paying people but it does get easier!

HI Lesley
Don't quit. If you haven't worked in payroll before and only started its certainly not your fault. You should not have been left to complete on your own anyway so I think your line manager needs to take some of the responsibility.
In my last job I was responsible for payroll and my first one I completely forgot to pay someone and like you paid someone who was off as I didn't know they were off. Managers again presuming HR are psychic.
With the help of another colleague we managed to get it all sorted out but like you I felt awful at the time.
I was there over 4 years and even towards the end I would still make the odd mistake but I knew how to quickly correct with out getting myself in a tizzy. Believe me this time next year you will be laughing about it.
Take Care
T

Oh Lesley you poor thing! It's not your fault but you do need to push for support and training ahead of the next pay inout session!

If it takes you feel better I once worked for an airline and in my first month or so was responsible for the entire pilot community not being paid a single penny. Absolutely nada. (I wasn't really responsible, I'd asked the relevant HR Managers and got slightly duff information and what I'd sent across to the new payroll system supplier should absolutely have been checked and not relied on by a junior, new member of staff....I can see that now but I felt so awful for so long)

Hi Lesley, I totally sympathise, when I started in my first HR role as an assistant I took on the payroll also without any previous experience and made mistakes as well. I'm still alive though! That's not being flippant about your situation, however I hope you can see recovering from the situation is achievable. Adding to the good advice given already I personally feel it is not acceptable for one individual to input important information without someone checking the work. That's no reflection on you or your abilities but there does need to be a check and this is what happened to me. I was left to handle the payroll data without someone more senior checking the accuracy and this was in spite of the fact I was waiting for my line manager to be recruited. As colleagues have stated this is an organisational failure so going forward please ensure there is support for you to help you gain experience and confidence. :-)

Thank you all for your comments - they've really helped!! I've been inputting hours everyday this week to get used to the system and I've been given a definitive list of codes to use too. Payslips go out tomorrow so I'm going to be scared of my own shadow all day incase something else comes to light. I'm going in early on Monday (we have to press the button by 10am which was part of the problem last week because I had to phone IT, first thing) - so aswell as owning up to my error, I feel I am taking steps so it doesn't happen again. It's difficult because our team work from different offices and I'm trying to learn a generalist role, using a new system from scratch. I've got loads of other stuff I need to learn - I've covered off absence, probation and processed a new starter this week but we are snowed under - I really want the job to work - my old role was just looking after onboarding in a call centre which I absolutely hated. I felt so happy leaving work early to go to college this week!! I'm learning recruitment next week - talk about learning curve!!....if I can just survive the next few weeks then hopefully things might just work out but I never want to feel like this again - I feel so stressed.

In reply to Lesley:

Lesley... welcome to the Community where you are among friends. 

Remember, you are not alone and there are always people who have 'been there before you' - in this case, Gemma and Callum spring to mind, so do have a read through these threads:

www2.cipd.co.uk/.../64210

http://www2.cipd.co.uk/community/discussion-forum/hr_strategy_and_function/f/38/t/68192

Thanks to everyone who has responded to support Lesley. Group hug.

I agreed to take on payroll about a year ago, but asked to be trained beforehand.

No, I was told, you don't get training. Ask the FM if you don't know what to do (it turned out the FM didn't really know what to do either and had mostly been making it up as he went along).

12 months down the line and I am *still* making mistakes every month (to be fair, the weekly payroll is pretty easy). But the crucial thing, I've found, is to be open to errors. Let people know that you're new to payroll and you might get things wrong, but you'll put them right.

One thing that's helped me a lot is that I send out payslips 24 hours before doing the bank run. This gives everyone a window to check the details and come back and ask questions if they don't like what they see.

My mistakes are far fewer than they used to be, but occasionally I still make a corker, like two months ago when I entered someone's overtime (70.5 hours!) but didn't notice that his overtime rate had been reset to zero, so he got nothing at all.

He was very understanding and I fixed it the following month.

In reply to Robey:

*Double like*.

Hi Lesley,

First off... do not quit! I completely empathise with you. I started my current job 18 months ago (my first HR role) and I was tasked with payroll as I'm stand alone. I only had a 2 week handover period, and with weekly and monthly paid staff, i got myself into such a state and stressed out, after my handover. I had completely forgotten to close off one weekly, and started the next and ended up overpaying all the employees (long story). However, after dealing with the issue and endless hours of re-inputting data etc, it all sorted itself out. The experience still scars me, especially when the auditors recently came in and queried certain payments from that pay period.

I would completely recommend asking for additional training with your payroll provider or from colleagues if they previously did payroll. It is a learning curve, and the fact that you have acknowledged it and want to fix it and and ensure it doesn't happen again, shows strength of character.

Looking back it was one of the things I hated about my job, but it's probably one of my pleasant tasks now, as I have developed ways to ensure i gather all the data necessary in a timely manner, to avoid getting stressed (don't get me wrong, pay day still feels me with dread) and double checking things, and if it takes me a bit more time than i try to allow myself sufficient time.

It will be ok, and as one of our colleagues have said, you will be able to laugh about it before long. My friends all want me to work in their payroll teams :-) god knows why??

Please don't be so hard on yourself Lesley.

Kind regards,

Adam

In reply to Adam Russell:

Well played, Adam.

Hello Lesley

I want to second a point made by Clare Marie: the system for managing payroll should include a checking stage. It doesn't necessarily have to be someone senior to you, but there should be a fresh pair of eyes to look through the payroll reports before the instruction goes to the bank to pay everyone. Sometimes someone from HR enters the changes and someone from Finance checks them, sometimes vice versa. Sometimes it might be another HR person, but this should be built into the system. I'm surprised your new employer's auditors haven't picked up on this.