What is your role within RG?
I am a Senior Manager in charge of the payroll department here at RG. I oversee a wonderful team of 4 providing a complete payroll and auto enrolment service for businesses countrywide.
Tell me about your career to date…
I’ve worked in payroll for 30 years, starting as a Trainee Payroll Clerk with Findus (yes, the fish finger people). I then moved to Elmwood Sensors and then to Ringtons where my role in both positions was as the sole payroller. I started working for RG in May 2006. Back then I was the only person in payroll with a portfolio of 60 payroll clients. Since then, with the introduction of RTI (real time information) and Auto Enrolment, payroll has become far more complicated and I now manage a team of 4 with 200+ payroll clients.
What does your current role involve?
As you would expect of a Payroll Manager, my role involves dealing with a range of clients, handling their payroll and pension enquiries on a daily basis, whilst overseeing my team to ensure we are delivering the very best client service we possibly can.
No two days are the same. I process and review payrolls, make bank payments on our clients’ behalf, set up pension schemes for our clients and advise on a range of payroll related matters including pro rata calculations, salary sacrifice deductions and so on. I also regularly provide training and support to my team to ensure as a department, we are focused and knowledgeable in all things payroll! I love this part of my role because it is enjoyable to watch my team develop their own careers and to be passing on my years of experience.
As is always the case with payroll, we work to tight deadlines and have to work quickly and efficiently to meet our clients’ needs.
My three most notable achievements to date would be…
- Learning to snowboard at the age of 40 and, with my husband, setting up a snowboard/ski club, organising trips for between 30 and 60 people, so others can also catch the bug!
- Being promoted to senior management level at RG.
- This one’s a bit cheesy. A long happy marriage with over 26 years of wedded bliss.
Tell us about your day so far…
5.35am: out of bed and off to the gym.
8.05am: arrive at the office, check and respond to emails, check the payroll diary to see what has to be completed before the end of the day.
9.00am: quick chat with the team to make sure all is well and they know what they’re doing for the day.
9.10am: reviewing payrolls that were processed by the team in previous days.
11.00am: do furlough, flexi furlough and holiday top up calculations for a payroll that has just come in.
11.30am: onboarding a new payroll client, liaising with their previous payroll provider, setting them up on the payroll software and requesting the relevant authorisations from HMRC and their pension provider.
13.00pm: start processing one of our larger payrolls, this takes me to the end of the day and will continue tomorrow.
17.20pm: nice early finish and a little treat, I’m off to get my nails done. ?
What do you enjoy outside of work?
I’m a regular at Model Health gym in Newcastle and I love to eat out. At weekends we try to get away as often as possible in our beloved California campervan and our summer holidays are always in the camper, usually somewhere in Europe. Northern Spain and South West France are our favourite destinations. Winter holidays are dedicated to snowboarding and we aim to get 3 trips away each year.
And finally, leave us with one interesting fact about yourself…
Not very interesting but an insight into how dippy I can be at times. I once took a block of butter to work instead of my packed lunch. You can imagine my disappointment and embarrassment when I opened the Tupperware pot at lunchtime.