Striking the right balance

When going through a difficult time, Sophia Baker asks herself the question, “is this within my control?”. She finds these simple words help her manage in the fast-paced, sometimes “relentless” world of payroll.

She has been head of payroll at Harrods since 2018 after rising through the industry. Baker has been working at the luxury brand since 2009, when she started as a payroll manager.

No stranger to luxury brands, she has worked at Ralph Lauren, a role in which she supervised one member of staff, before moving to payroll supervisor at Reliance Security Services Ltd. At Harrods, she has six members of the payroll team under her.

Constantly learning, she is deeply passionate about payroll and wants to share that excitement with her team by running deep dive sessions with them every two weeks on subjects like sick pay and pensions.

Having worked in the industry for nearly 25 years, Baker understands the importance of managing to keep a good work/life balance, gaining trust from colleagues, and recruiting to find a true “Harrodian”.

She tells Reward Strategy about juggling family life with doing her degree, how she keeps up to date with the payroll industry and the importance of making sure processes run smoothly to ensure errors don’t happen and staff are paid properly as households struggle through the cost-of-living crisis.

VB: What made you want to get into payroll?

SB: Quite frankly, nothing. I fell into it as a lot of people do. I’ve been in payroll for over 25 years. I just happened to apply for a role and started working at a recruitment company doing their weekly temp payroll and kept at it. I just fell in love with it.

VB: Is there still a divide between payroll and HR?

SB: Not really. Payroll has progressed so much from being a small department that maybe an accountant did on the side, or somebody in HR doing a bit of timesheet data entry. Back then there was a feeling that payroll just pushed a button, but our profession has grown so much in the way that we engage with the government and legislation and follow strict guidelines. There’s so much compliance and audits surrounding payroll. As we’ve grown, we still feel that we’re under that umbrella of finance and HR, but you don’t really see payroll people in the C-suite roles. However, when I started, did I see myself as head of payroll? The answer to that is ‘no’, because the head of payroll didn’t exist back then. Payroll is exploding, and I think furlough, holiday pay and constant changes to legislation has raised our profile.

VB: They’ve recently amalgamated the payroll and HR teams at Harrods. How have you been finding the transition? 

SB: This has been a recent change. Payroll had been within finance since before I joined, so it’s been quite a shift. But it’s had a really positive impact, our relationship has really improved since we moved over to HR.

VB: What is the best way to manage staff in the payroll world and how do you progress into management roles?

SB: It’s natural progression. I think it’s either in you or it’s not. At my last company, we had quite a lot of payrolls and, about 14,000 employees. So, it was very high volume, and even without realising, I was allocating and delegating, even though I shouldn’t have been. I got promoted to team leader and it just progressed from there. I’ve been in payroll a long time but doing my CIPP foundation degree in 2008 really helped my progress. When I was doing my degree, I had a four- year-old and an 18-month-old at home, and I thought if I don’t do it now, I’m never going to do it! It’s probably been one of the most challenging times for me personally, but I did it.

VB: How many members are on your team? 

SB: We’ve got six including myself. It’s quite a small team. I’m finding that more and more companies have got larger teams now, which is really positive for the payroll industry. But it’s always a challenge

VB: What’s a typical day for you?

SB: Lots of meetings. I have an assistant payroll manager, so he manages most of the operational side of Payroll. He is new in the role, so we have a lot of catch ups. I find it very difficult to break away from that operational side, but they are helping with this. I’m always passionate about payroll and I jam it into everybody that having ‘to do’ lists is a must, because it’s the only way you’re going to get through everything. I generally have meetings with other heads- of and managers and here’s normally a couple of project meetings thrown in. I use Microsoft Viva insights religiously; it is such a useful tool and puts focus time and learning time automatically into your diary. So that I can catch up on my reading or manage to listen to a couple of podcasts if I can.

VB: What podcasts are your favourite?

SB: Nick day’s JGA Payroll podcast is brilliant! He’s so passionate about payroll and he always had industry experts. I also listen to one called Women in Payroll, which I think is by GPA (Global payroll association) which always has some very inspirational women on.

VB: So, you keep up to date with everything that’s going on in the payroll world?

SB: Yes, Nick Day does a great Friday wrap up email of all the important news affecting payroll. I am also part of a payroll leaders WhatsApp group. There’s some really interesting views and its payroll leaders throughout the UK so quite a lot of important payroll people on that group. It’s good to see other people’s views and methods on payroll.

VB: How do you keep your team up to date? 

SB: With payroll, there’s just so much to it. It’s so complex. It’s not structured to the point that every day I know exactly what I’m doing. I think depending on where we are in the month, if we’re coming up to payroll transmission, I need to be available to support the team. I do the deep dive sessions every two weeks with my team, where I try and pass on as much knowledge that’s in my head to the team so that they can learn and grow. Today, we’re doing a deep dive on sick pay. Just to go over the rules, the system implications, the complexities. As you can imagine with 5,500 employees, there is a lot of absence, so we’ll talk about how we can manage the volume of data and things like that. We have a different subject each week, last week, we talked about pension thresholds. We always try and discuss any changes to legislation but there are so many things that can impact a person’s pay.

VB: What’s the culture like at Harrods?

SB: It’s a very engaging place to work and I think you see very quickly upon joining if you are a true "Harrodian", as we call it or not. When you work for Harrods, you end up with a true passion for the brand. It’s not always about liking shopping; it’s about loving the brand that you work for.

VB: How have you found recruiting for payroll?

SB: I think it’s been quite hard recruiting for payroll, we have struggled quite a lot, especially since furlough, to get the right team in place and understand what the expectations are for this team, so it’s taken me a good couple of years to get a really solid team. And fingers crossed it’s where we need it to be right now. We are fully staffed for the first time in a few years, which is a great feeling.

VB: Do you run payroll for Harrods all over the UK?

SB: Yes, we run the payroll for all Harrods Groups, which includes the Harrods store. We also process the payroll for Harrods Aviation, Harrods International (all our stores at the airports) Harrods Estates and our newest concept of H Beauty. We now have five H Beauty stores, across the UK.

VB: What damage can payroll errors have on trust from employees?

SB: We have five values at Harrods, but our biggest value we need to abide by in payroll is trust. It’s gaining that trust from those colleagues so when they open their payslip, they trust that the information on that is what they are contractually due to receive and that they trust our expertise on subjects such as tax and national insurance. If they have a query about their tax code, for example,they trust that we know what we’re talking about. If we make a mistake, we lose that trust, and we lose that confidence that the colleagues have in us. The cost-of-living crisis may not have affected Harrods, but it has affected our colleagues and that is always in the forefront for us. It’s making sure if somebody’s worked overtime, they’re going to get paid for their overtime. If somebody’s earned commission, they get paid their commission because that’s what they’ve earned. It does a lot of damage if you get it wrong.

VB: Should payroll professionals be embracing tech more?

SB: Oh, yes. 100%. I do know people in the payroll world that are very old fashioned, who have maybe been in the industry a long time and don’t like change, don’t trust computers, but we should be moving forward. We should be using the latest technologies to allow us to concentrate on the areas that we’re skilled in.

VB: Is there a bit of a glass ceiling with payroll/ is there a path for payroll professionals to be CFO’s?

SB: I do believe that that will eventually happen in the future. I don’t think we’re quite there yet. We’ve got a lot of professionals that have been doing this role for a long time which is great. We are not just payroll that sit under HR or Finance, we are separate team and that is slowly progressing within the industry. I’m starting to see a lot more women coming through the ranks as well, which is amazing.

VB: How do we rebrand payroll to attract younger generation?

SB: I think the only way we’re going to combat that is apprenticeships. I am hoping to get a payroll apprenticeship role in my team in the near future. I was part payroll apprenticeships that are on offer, which is currently Payroll Administrator and Assistant Payroll Manager. This was all put together by Ian Holloway, who has done such a fantastic job with it all.

VB: What is the best advice you’ve ever received?

SB: I always ask myself “is this within your control?”, “can you change the outcome?” If the answer is no, don’t sweat it! Because you can get so involved in the small stuff. You’ve got to stay on track. If it is within your control, do something about it. Get it done. Don’t procrastinate. Put it to do list. I think that’s good advice for everybody.