Payroll Normal Is Not Normal

Recently I attended a payroll conference and had the opportunity to chat with other professionals from all sorts of companies and institutions. One of them, a payroll manager in charge of a team supporting a large region, said they had recently consulted their doctor because their fingertips were getting cold. They feared it might be an early sign of vascular issues. (I hope they will forgive me for sharing this story online.)

The doctor’s advice? Get a new job. By that, they meant leave the payroll industry altogether.

That got me thinking: is that normal? Or, more exactly, is that “payroll normal”?

Somehow virtually every payroll professional I’ve ever met has experienced it: the short turnaround times, the late data, the software failures, the vendors pulling stunts no sci-fi writer would dare put in print, the late nights, the working on public holidays, the coming back from vacation for a day or two to finish payroll, the taking your laptop with you on vacation…

For years, like so many others in the profession, I accepted it as normal. And like for so many of us, my health and my family paid the price for this belief.

It wasn’t until I joined Martina Leahy’s team that it started to dawn on me: high stress and long hours are not a fatality in payroll. We actually have a tremendous number of tools to set things up in a way that works for everyone. There’s a complete methodology for doing so. More than that, a different philosophy is possible: everyone in the organisation plays a role in making sure they get paid correctly.

The Payroll team doesn’t have to carry the world on their shoulders. More specifically, a stakeholder is — and this is a real definition from the dictionary — “a party with a vested interest in the success of an undertaking.” Not someone who dumps their mess on your desk Friday at 4:55pm and strolls out the door feeling smug.

Getting to this point had taken years of stakeholder education in that organisation. And the learning curve started from scratch with every new country we entered and began supporting with our methodology and philosophy. But the point is: it worked.

Changing our methodology is a big step in the right direction. But it’s only half the journey. The other half is changing our philosophy. And it starts with us: we need to change the way we see ourselves first if we want any chance of changing our stakeholders.

So, my dear fellow payroller, ask yourself the question Hermione once asked Harry:

“Don’t you think you’ve got a bit of a saving people thing?”

Maybe it’s time to stop trying to save everyone and start building a payroll culture where everyone plays their part.