Exclusive RS interview: Hospitality paying off

There’s no question that the hospitality industry has suffered greatly at the hands of the Coronavirus pandemic, where hotels were forced to close their doors to the public for several months at a time. But, as we approach the latter stages of the crisis, there seems to be a bright, glowing light at the end of the tunnel.

And one business who has faced these challenges is PPHE Hotel Group. The international hospitality real estate company – which boasts a £1.7bn portfolio of hotels, campsites and resorts across the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Germany, Hungary and Croatia – has a payroll team that’s left constantly on its toes.

To share what this means for the team, Ana Laiu (AL), head of payroll at PPHE Hotel Group, spoke with Jade Burke (JB), deputy editor of Reward Strategy. In a recent video call, the payroll professional revealed why she is proud to work for the hotel group - because it truly puts its people first, as well as how her accountancy qualification has assisted her career.

You can also find out why Laiu thinks the hospitality sector is so dynamic and engaging when it comes to payroll and what PPHE’s wellbeing programme means for its staff.

JB: What made you choose a career in the payroll industry?

AL: “I started my career as an accountant. And much the same as many other professionals, I found myself in payroll one day due to the need of my employer at the time. I then found that I gravitated towards payroll more than accountancy and I decided to specialise in this area. Over the years, I went on to gain the highest qualification available.

"I enjoy working with people and I want to make a difference wherever possible, and I found that I could achieve both in payroll more than in an accountancy role. My accountancy qualification turned out to be an additional asset. Having this skill has been hugely beneficial in my payroll career; being able to analyse payroll costs, understand the wider application of payroll within the business revenues and expenses has been beneficial. Like a lot of my peers, I ended up in payroll as opposed to choosing payroll as a profession.”

JB: Would you say payroll is now becoming a more prominent career option?

AL: “When I started my career, just over 20 years ago, payroll was a much smaller department with a lot less key responsibilities. But over the last 20 years, it has grown significantly. It’s more visible now as a chosen career rather than something small that you do on the side of your main job. I think there’s definitely huge differences now where young people are more conscious of what payroll actually is, whereas before it was an addition to your accountant role.”

JB: Can you describe your role at PPHE?

AL: “I’m responsible for the group’s payroll strategy across the UK, Netherlands, and more recently, we’ve expanded into Italy. I ensure my department objectives and direction are aligned to those of the group to ensure we optimally support the business in pursuing its vision and values.

“We’ve had the pandemic that introduced the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) – there were a lot of changes in legislation there – so we needed to ensure that the business remained compliant above all. In addition, myself and my department support our people strategy, and we work closely with the people and culture department on initiatives such as benefit offering, introduction of new policies, any related changes to current policies, any annual pay reviews of minimum pay increases, and so on.

“I work very closely with our finance department to ensure payroll and pension cost is optimised, that it’s allocated and analysed correctly in accordance to our group financial policy and annual budgets. We also provide operational support to our operational team to ensure that employee pay data is correctly entered into the system, because this does translate into pay at the end of the pay period.”

JB: How do other sectors you’ve worked in compare to your current role?

AL: “Hospitality is a very vibrant sector, and I can really see people’s passion in their various roles and for me, it is the best industry I’ve worked in so far. Although other sectors I have worked in have had larger budgets available for things such as benefit packages or offering higher salaries, hospitality compensates with the amazing culture.

“In other sectors I’ve worked in, payroll tends to be quite static with pay not varying from month-to-month hugely but in hospitality, as we operate 24/7, payroll is very dynamic with various elements impacting it every week, and it keeps me and my teams very busy. It’s definitely a very engaging industry to work in as a payroll professional, and I will try to stay within the industry as much as possible because I do really enjoy working with different people.”

JB: PPHE received the Best Employer Award at the Cateys 2021 – what did this mean for you and the business?

AL: “Personally, to me, this did not come as a surprise. It was just a confirmation of what I already knew about PPHE. I’ve now been part of the group for seven years; PPHE is a fantastic employer and I can openly say that with a hand on my heart. They have proved this during the Coronavirus pandemic, that they truly are an employer of choice as the group has gone the extra mile to ensure its employees were safe.

“We’ve conducted huge communication programmes for our employees, such as what furlough means for them, what does every change and every step of the process mean for them in terms of their pay and when they are and are not required to come to work. The group has done a huge amount of work and they’ve put in place resources to ensure that we retain as many people as possible.

“From a professional perspective, I’m proud to say that I work for an organisation that puts their people first and recognises the importance of employee wellbeing.”

JB: What initiatives at the group do you believe helped to achieve this?

AL: “I think without a doubt the biggest influencing factor here was the group strategy during the pandemic, that has been a major factor as the business had a strong focus on employee wellbeing and protection during the pandemic. Being a key stakeholder within the business and being the head of payroll, I was involved in all the early and ongoing strategic meetings during the pandemic.”

JB: A key programme you offer is to learn and grow – why is employee development so vital to the company?

AL: “It is crucial to the business that employees are fully engaged and trained to enable them to provide the best quality of service. As a group, we want to ensure that our employees achieve their maximum potential in their employment with PPHE and this forms the basis of the learn and grow programme.

“The basis of the programme is to ensure that although different levels of training apply to different departments, there is a common goal and vision within the learn and grow programme that we all achieve the common objective together, in full awareness of how we impact each other’s operation.

“For payroll, it’s important that we train our teams in cybersecurity to make sure that we keep our employees’ data protected and safe. It’s important that they are aware of the operational policies and how they affect the business because that will have an impact on how we gather our payroll data, how that’s inputted into our systems, who are the owners of this data, how this filters through our systems, and how this translates into pay and affects our processes on a day-to-day basis.”

JB: Have you found that this benefit has helped to attract and retain staff?

AL: “Absolutely. Through the learn and grow programme employees appear to be more engaged and we have seen our employee satisfaction scores increase during 2021, despite the challenges that were brought on by the pandemic.

“Employees said that they felt that by having a clear and documented development plan, which they can access any time through their online account, it empowers them to better plan their careers and supports them in identifying what areas they need to focus on to achieve their future goals, as well as how the business and their managers are supporting the achievement of these.”

JB: Has your internal programme Medallia helped to boost employee wellbeing?

AL: “We have done research internally and found that if an employee is trained appropriately for their role and is confident in fulfilling their daily tasks, they are more likely to be engaged and feel content and confident in the workplace. They are more likely to want to go the extra mile, which in hospitality is a hugely valuable attribute, plus they are more likely to be recognised personally by guests for their service and be awarded internally for this recognition.

“We have a programme called Medallia where guests can go in person and recognise members of the team that they were impressed by, and they are rewarded internally for such recognition by guests.

"This is a massive contribution to employees’ mental health and wellbeing, which has an impact on their life outside of work as well. Because we all know, if you feel you are valued and your employer acknowledges that and the guests acknowledge that too, you are more likely to feel happier and contribute to the achievement of the organisation.”

JB: How has payroll’s role in wellbeing changed in the time you’ve been working in the industry?

AL: “Wellbeing in the workplace is a relatively new concept and focus for employers and it is great to see it picking up pace and translating into policies in so many organisations. Traditionally, wellbeing has been seen as an area that falls into the realms of HR, but I have seen payroll teams getting involved more and more as, when it comes to benefits, an assessment must be carried out to evaluate the potential tax and National Insurance liability for the employee and cost for the employer.

“Payroll’s role has evolved further, with a focus on supporting the financial wellbeing strategy covering things such as equal and fair pay, financial education and early access to earned pay. I feel this is a positive development for the payroll industry as the data we hold and process can provide valuable insights to the organisation to enable them to implement such strategies effectively.”

JB: What else is PPHE doing to tackle employee wellbeing?

AL: “Employee wellbeing is a huge focus now for all businesses, and especially for PPHE. We recently appointed an employee relations manager, which will act as a pivotal resource to enable efficient and effective communication between the business and the employees. With this, we aim to ensure that the business continues to stay in tune with the workforce and each and every employee is supported optimally and their voices are heard.

“In addition to this, we are working at full speed to design and implement an innovative benefits package that is relevant to the current climate. Because as we’ve seen, the pandemic has shifted the mindset of all of us and as an employer we recognise that the current climate really dictates that whatever benefits package we offer, it takes into account the current needs of our employees.”

JB: Are there any new financial wellbeing trends you anticipate cropping up in the next six months?

AL: “I think from a wider business perspective, anything that would enable a better synergy between personal and work life would be a great hit for any organisation. In terms of more specifically payroll applicable, managing paid time off for employees to pursue personal ambitions, such as charity work, engaging with their local communities and supporting family members.

"Specifically for payroll teams, really enabling and making remote work a normal working practice, because we know that with the appropriate data safeguards and cybersecurity processes in place, we can work from anywhere.

"We have seen during the pandemic that that reduces stress on the employee, when they don’t have to commute, as it better enables employees to manage their personal life. For example, I’ve seen overall engagement within my team, of them being able to choose to work remotely and when to come into the office, add value to their job role.”

JB: The number of staff on payroll continues to increase – do you think this will plateau in 2022?

AL: “I feel that they will, and that they potentially will be forced to plateau. We have seen Brexit and the pandemic jointly affect the availability of workers across all sectors, even more so for hospitality. I feel that businesses generally, even more in hospitality, will have to become more creative. On one hand, with their initiatives on attraction and retention, but also on adapting their business models to ensure operational performance is achieved with a reduced number of available workers.

“I think numbers will plateau to some degree, because there will be less availability of workers and we have seen a lot of people move sectors, retraining and moving jobs. But I think this will plateau because whereas before Brexit, especially with the free movement between the EU countries, I think we’ve seen a lot more movement of workers whereas now that pool of workers is restricted and it will stabilise in 2022.”

JB: Do you think that more alignment is needed between payroll and HR?

AL: “From my perspective, and from my experience, HR departments and payroll have always worked in close cooperation, as these two departments are interdependent. They can’t function without each other. But there is always room for improvement. We just need to become more creative in terms of thinking how we can complement each other.

"Within PPHE we are looking at introducing an innovative benefits package. And the efforts within this project are having to absolutely be joined between HR and payroll in close cooperation.

“HR needs to bring in its knowledge and expertise in terms of total reward benefits packages, but payroll plays a vital role, because without assessing the cost implication of any benefit package, to the employer and also to the employees, the benefits package, however aspirational and innovative, without a close and realistic cost assessment, the value of such a package is reduced. It needs to be cost effective to the business.

"For example, we need to make sure that we pay the correct tax and social security contributions on any benefits offered according to the legislation. So yes, absolutely I think we do need to work more in alignment.”

JB: Should payroll take the lead on things such as financial wellbeing and rewards?

AL: “I’m a strong advocate that payroll should be a department in its own and it should cover pay and reward, because pay and reward is generally related to money and figures. But when it comes to employee wellbeing, I think we need to go back to that cooperation and synergy with HR, to make sure that we do work together closely to ensure that we apply our skill sets jointly to financial wellbeing.

"Whether payroll can do this independently, I think not. I think we can take leadership and put together proposals and effectively cost any potential benefit package and the financial wellbeing initiatives. But I feel that they need to work closely with HR and finance departments.”

JB: What’s next for you at PPHE?

AL: “I think really adapting to the new normal. As we all know, during the pandemic, we’ve been very reactive. We’ve had to wait and see what changes are coming and we had to apply best interpretation of the available legislation. So, what I’m really looking forward to is to go back to strategising a bit more rather than to be process-orientated and reactive. I’m quite keen on seeing the back of the pandemic where I can focus my payroll strategy on recovery and growth.

“PPHE is in a strong position financially, and there are several development opportunities in the pipeline across various countries. I mentioned earlier that the business has recently purchased a hotel in Italy, so I need to make sure that I am up-to-speed with the Italian payroll legislation.

“Going forward, it’s at everybody’s forefront in payroll how we can manipulate and analyse the data we have to support the business to introduce cost savings and efficiencies. Within PPHE we have identified that there’s only so far you can go with employee benefits packages, engagement programmes and development opportunities to attract talent. We need to be creative and think, do we need to restructure our operational processes, do we need different business operating models that we will be able to service with the reduced workforce?

"From my perspective, in payroll, I have access to all this data that I can analyse, and I can then present to the business to enable them to make very complex business decisions.”