Team entry example

Pay Awards 2008 entry form: Public Sector Payroll Team of the Year

Details of team being nominated:

Number of payrolls managed: 6 internal and 5 external

Size of payrolls: There are a total of9,000 employees and pensioners together with 2,500 approx on the direct labour workforce. At times there can be up to 500 temporary workers employed.

Any other details: Five local schools have decided to allow the council to operate their payrolls

Tina Short also supports the responsibilities of Rahila’s role, as well as dealing with payments to Council Members.

Rahila has an oversight role of the payrolls and is also in charge of reward and benefits policies. She has been payroll and reward manager since joining the Council in that role three years ago. The rest of the team have been with the Council for around five years each, with both Tim and Tina starting as payroll assistant and being promoted as part of a team restructure last year.

All team members either have formal payroll qualifications or are currently studying to that end.

A restructure of the team last year has created a team with more individual responsibility. The promotion of two assistants to payroll officers with separate responsibilities has encouraged innovation at that level, so that although strategic direction comes from the manager all of the team can help drive change.

Total reward:

New software introduced this year allowed the team to introduce an annual reward statement which outlines all rewards received by Council employees, from pay to benefits to bonuses etc. While the previous software had a reward module the team had to do a lot of work to ensure it fitted the elements it wanted to include and that the data in question was available.

In most cases the data was already in the system, but different payrolls had different benefits and where employees moved payrolls it was necessary to ensure the annual reward statement reflected the change. As part of the process the payroll team undertook a month long data cleansing exercise, with one person from the team working on the data every day.

A rotation system ensured that everyone spent the same amount of time on the exercise, while tight record keeping ensured that it didn’t matter that different people worked on the project every day.

Queries received after the first reward statement was issued showed the quality of the exercise, as most questions related to understanding and brought up few data problems. Only 4% of the 226 queries received from the Council’s 10,500 employees (excluding the temporary workers) were generated as a result of an issue with the data.

Pay communication programme:

The reward statement was a big part of the communication plan, but the pay communication programme is also helping employees to understand their pay. The payroll team has created a series of documents for the intranet which explain how pay changes in certain circumstances, for example maternity pay and statutory sick pay.

They have also created a number of sample payslips for the online payslip tool. All sections of the payslip have been explained – all you have to do is hover over a certain section and a pop-up will explain that element of the payslip.

The team has also created an online query tool, so that when someone opens their payslip online if they think something is wrong they can highlight the error on the payslip and submit the query securely via email to a special email box. All queries are answered within three days, although figures show that most employees receive an answer within 24 hours, unless it is the day of the monthly payroll run.

All these services have been promoted at a series of workshops the payroll team has held, with everyone at the Council being offered the opportunity to attend a workshop in the last six months. So far, more than 4,500 people have attended a pay workshop. The payroll team now holds quarterly coffee mornings at which people can come and ask questions about pay and their payslips.

Large Council implemented new HR and payroll integrated software a year ago now. The payroll team played a big part in the implementation project with HR and payroll taking it in turns to lead project meetings and providing a project manager from each team.

With an implementation period of four months the two teams both managed to introduce new processes or procedures to take advantage of the new software. Both teams identified improvements that could be made to the processes of both their own and those of the other team.

Payroll identified improvements to the starter and leaver process, allowing them to get better data more quickly. Both starter and leaver forms were moved online, with data already in the system automatically populating the form. HR and the line manager are alerted of any gaps through an automatically generated email.

Once all sections are populated the information is automatically fed through to the payroll system, where it is then checked by one of the payroll assistants and activated for payment.

This has saved time all round and ensured that starter and leaver payments are always paid on time and with a much higher accuracy level of 99%, compared to 92% previously. 

An endorsement from a senior manager/director (other than the person making the nomination):
[max of 500 words]

Name of line manager: Paul Cannel
Job title: HR Director
Email address: pcannel@largecouncil.test

Endorsement:

I am writing to you in my capacity as line manager of Rahila Tensome, payroll and benefits manager at Large Council. Rahila manages the eight members of the payroll team which pays approximately 12,000 people every month.

Rahila joined when the payroll team was moved to sit within the HR department. Previously it had been part of finance when there was only a payroll manager and three assistants. Following a strategic review it was decided that payroll and benefits should be managed by one person, who would have overall responsibility for the reward package. A push was also made to attract external payrolls as a way of utilising and capitalising on existing payroll capacity.  

In her first year and a half with the Council Rahila spent her time improving general processes and drawing up her strategic plan for improving the payroll and reward functions. Since then she has undertaken a restructure of the payroll team to improve its functionality and ensure it can react to the needs of the Council quicker.

The biggest innovation from the team has been the work done on communicating pay and reward to employees. With the many payments the Council could potentially have to pay each month (30 at the last count) there is sometimes confusion as to what employees are entitled to and how their pay breaks down.

As well as embarking on a communication programme, the payroll team has also introduced an annual reward statement for all employees. This meets the Council’s aim of incentivising employees to achieve the best results possible.

The level of support that the payroll team now gives to HR and the management team is having a big impact on what we can all achieve. Staff turnover is down, saving on recruitment costs. In part this is down the hard work of the payroll team in communicating the rewards available for working for Large Council.