How National Payroll Week celebrated the payroll career

Payroll often goes unnoticed as it is expected to always be accurate and on time, and every one of us is touched by the work of a payroll professional at least at some point in our working life. There is rarely a knock at payroll’s door to express appreciation – whether from employees, the employer or the legislator. However, in the 2023-24 tax year alone, the industry collected more than £400 billion for the government through the Pay As You Earn system. 

And that just shows the resilient nature of payroll professionals! We get things done and done well. We make an impact, and a tangible one; we are at the heart of every organisation, but we often do things silently.

Silent heroes

National Payroll Week, which ran from 2-6 September 2024, provided a great opportunity to shine a light on all those silent heroes who enable everyone’s lives and livelihoods. It was a chance to highlight the complexities of the job and just how rewarding a payroll career can be as payroll plays a critical role in ensuring the financial wellbeing of employees and the operational efficiency of businesses. 

And who best to do all of this, if not payroll professionals themselves?

The career journey of a payroll professional is never linear, with those now well established in the industry having started in finance or HR before finding payroll. We often hear the proverbial “we fell into payroll”, however falling sounds accidental and unintentional. I believe it is more accurate to say that many payroll professionals steered into payroll and never left. We then, perhaps, need to re-frame that narrative, I personally started in finance and once I had a peek through the door I knew that payroll was for me. I then intentionally chose to pursue a career in this amazing industry. I’ve never looked back and, having been in the industry for more than 20 years, I feel proud of my journey so far and look forward to many more successful years working alongside so many talented people.

Transformational change

There is never a dull day in payroll and with all the technological advancements we have seen in recent years, with solutions which are constantly evolving, payroll is going through a transformational change. However, outside the industry, there is little understanding of the role of the payroll professional; how many of us have been asked, “What will you do all day when artificial intelligence (AI) takes over your job?” 

AI, automation and cloud-based payroll solutions will make our processes more efficient and accurate, but this will not replace the payroll professional – in fact, quite the opposite. It will free up our time to business partner and focus on more strategic tasks such as enhancing the employee experience, leveraging technology to offer insight into labour costs, engagement and turnover rates and other key business performance metrics. 

This is repositioning payroll as a key business function and is enabling payroll professionals to contribute more significantly to the business strategy and key decision-making. Data acts as the main enabler here and, with the ever-expanding importance of data privacy and security, payroll is acquiring additional responsibilities and will act as a gatekeeper to the sensitive employee information to ensure businesses comply with the relevant legislation such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

While on the subject of compliance, in the UK alone there are more than 170 of pieces of legislation which impact payroll. Some practitioners are responsible for payroll across multiple countries, and this significantly increases the complexity of the compliance landscape. Payroll professionals constantly keep up to date with all legislative changes, they interpret and translate them in line with their business requirements and design processes and controls to ensure total compliance.

Driving decisions and investment

In addition to compliance, payroll is emerging as a key player in the employee wellbeing space, often with a focus on financial wellbeing, but who best to support employees through financial education if not the payroll professional? 

As workplace demographics are shifting, more dynamically nowadays and with the five generations actively in the workforce – traditionalists, baby boomers, Gen X, millennials, and Gen Z – wellbeing can look vastly different, and it can be challenging for employers to maintain a good balance between variety, cost, effectiveness and efficiency of their wellbeing package. And this is where our seasoned and multi-skilled payroll professional comes in to provide guidance and advice but more importantly, data! Data is crucial to most financial decisions and, as an industry, we hold the golden key to the employee data chest. 

But we are, a lot of the time, our own worst enemy. We do all this silently, keeping our heads down and ensuring the wheels are turning, hardly articulating our contribution to our organisations and, more importantly, without pursuing recognition.

After all, as the saying goes, “out of sight, out of mind”!

And this is where events such as National Payroll Week can create the platform needed for everyone to step up, speak up, flex our payroll muscles and showcase our significant contributions to employees, to businesses and to the economy overall.

National Payroll Week is also an opportunity to articulate to businesses that continuous investment into our payroll teams is not an employee benefit, but a business critical and essential investment which directly contributes to the overall success of the organisation.