News
Pay Awards 09: A night of celebration
06 May 2009
OK, so it’s not often that you see the words ‘payroll’ and ‘glamour’ in the same sentence. There is, though, at least one night of the year when all of that changes. Each November the annual Pay Awards inject champagne and sparkle into the profession when it celebrates the achievements of the nation’s payrollers. And as the 15th anniversary of the Pay Awards approaches what better time to look at how far the highlight of the industry’s calendar has come?
Initially known as the Gee Payroll Awards the move towards celebrating payroll success began in 1995. The then-editor of Pay Magazine, owned at the time by Gee Publishing, was Chris Fitzgerald whose launch of the awards helped give momentum to raising the profile of the payroll profession.
Since then the Awards has come a long way. Each November the winners are announced and the categories have been designed to celebrate success at every level. Categories include Payroll Student and Payroll Professional of the Year, though to Payroll Manager and Integrated HR and Payroll Team of the Year and awards for Best Reward Programme and Best Absence Management. More than that, the night culminates with the Strathearn Award for Lifetime Achievement, a win that’s become highly prestigious.
Paul Tew is a freelance adviser and author on payroll issues and he’s has been a Pay Awards judge. Here’s his view: ‘What I like about the awards is that they highlight everyone’s contribution to payroll. It makes everyone feel a part of the awards. It’s also good that the awards highlight more specialist roles too, so that when people come along on the night they learn about these schemes. It brings people together. There’s such a mix of people and you’ll find techie people talking to those who deal with soft skills and get a real picture of how the entire industry is put together. It even gives the public and private sectors a chance to mix, which is great because it is not often that there is crossover between the two.’
The bigger picture
It’s just as interesting to look at the bigger picture. As the payroll industry has changed over the years, so have the awards, in an effort to reflect growing sectors and trends. Not only have categories evolved and developed, so has the judging process. Adrian Hobbs is the technical editor of Pay Magazine, as well as an awards judge and recalls how times have changed.
‘My involvement started in 1998 when I was helping judge software providers and outsourcers. They would come in and give us a presentation, something that would take up to three days. Then we decided to move onto a scoring system and that took judging times down to one or two days. Luckily, though, we have now refined things even further, with the judges seeing all the entrants’ work before the panel even meets. As a result the judges meeting takes around a day now. Just like the payroll industry, we’ve streamlined things over the years.’
Yet what do the awards mean to the winners? Look back through the hall of fame and the categories are sprinkled with the great and the good of the payroll industry and for many of them their award marked a personal or career watershed. Alan Wigley is one of those winners. In 2001, the co-founder of Global Payroll Solutions won Payroll Manager of the Year and he admits that his award immediately opened important doors.
‘After winning I was asked to join the board of the Institute of Payroll Professionals (IPP) and following that I became chair of the IPP for two years,’ he says. ‘I was also headhunted two months after the awards and that was also as a direct result of my win. The person who had previously won the awards was leaving his job and he suggested to his employers that they contact me as a replacement. They did and I moved from a UK role to a European one, a natural progression but I can thank the awards for it.’
Lifetime achievement award
There’s no doubt, though, that the star in the awards firmament is the Strathearn Award for Lifetime Achievement. The award, named after Jean Strathearn, the payroll manager for the Newcastle & North Tyneside Health Authority who died in a car accident in 1997, recognises payrollers who have made an outstanding contribution to the wider industry, as Jean did. And the list of winners is nothing short of illustrious.
Kate Upcraft is one such name. She has not only judged the awards, but is also co-founder of TAKeUP payroll mentoring, has been head of Policy and Research at the IPP and runs a business lecturing and writing about pay and employment issues. She won in 2005.
‘When I went to the stage to collect my award I wondered whether being recognised for a lifetime’s achievement meant that my career was over,’ Upcraft jokes. ‘It was such a shock to win. I had no inkling that I had been nominated and the nominee remains a mystery to me. It certainly made a difference to my career though. I had just disappeared from the IPP but it gave me a chance to show the industry that I had started my own business instead.’
And it’s not just industry insiders who get recognised either. Phil Nilson can tell you that. He’s employer strategy manager in the business customer unit at HM Revenue & Customs, although he describes himself as ‘really nothing to do with payroll’. He won the Strathearn in 2007.
‘I was proud and astounded when I won,’ he explains. ‘I had already won an award as Civil Servant of the Year in 1999 but assumed that the Strathearn wasn’t for outsiders.
‘I won it for working and consulting with payrollers over the last 10 years to help them improve their services. The prestige the award carries with it is great and it motivates me and shows that my message – that HMRC and payrollers are partners, not enemies – is getting through.’
Nilson believes that over the years payrollers have worked hard on the government’s behalf and have borne the brunt of many of the sector’s changes. He lists new legislation, student loans, technology and pensions as just a few of the things payrollers have had to contend with over the last 15 years.
Linda Pullan, head of the Payroll Alliance and winner of the Strathearn in 2008 agrees. She says, ‘In the last 10 years alone we have had 35 changes in employment law and in the last five years the payroll industry has moved to electronic communications with HMRC. The industry has had to embrace new technology and processes and it’s an example of how the sector is constantly changing. It’s a different place to what it was when the Pay Awards began in 1995.’
Pullan agrees, though, that the Pay Awards have managed to keep up with the changing times and that the celebration of achievements remains key in a challenging economic climate.
‘You don’t work in this industry to get recognition,’ Pullan says, ‘but it is still nice to know that fellow professionals value your work. Payroll is a profession, and such an important part of any organisation, and its biggest cost. It is vital that the profession and the people who work within the industry, particularly the payroll managers and their staff, get the recognition they deserve. The Pay Awards are one way of doing that.’