Payroll Professionals: the capstone human resource in an organisation

by with No Comment Latest Payroll NewsLeadersMotivationMotivationalPayroll Administratorspayroll professionals

 

Do you desire to be known as the ultimate payroll professional?

Do you wish to be the ultimate ‘go to’ person in the payroll department? Similarly, do you dream of being that ‘one particular person’ within your organisation, that is truly indispensable to the running of the business?

This is possible and it ought to be an achievable reality too.

Payroll professionals need to boldly step up to the plate. The payroll professional is an essential component within the smooth-running operations of most enterprises. Long gone are the days where the payroll clerk merely occupies desk-space, punching numbers (whilst apologising for getting in the way of the other business functions).

The time has arrived for the payroll professional to be recognised! All too often, in the past, the payroll clerk was only ever noticed when mistakes were made. But not anymore! The payroll professional is the much-needed capstone human resource within many types of organisations.

3 building-blocks: relevance, indispensability & being pro-active

The primary building-blocks of any payroll department comprises its relevance, its indispensability and its ability to be pro-active when business challenges arise. Without these building-blocks, the modern payroll department will not survive the contemporary era of automation and process-driven payroll operations.

Relevance

In everything you do—as a proud payroll professional—strive always to make your contribution relevant. Be sure to have accurate, correct facts and figures at your fingertips. Be ready to highlight the relevant challenges being faced (and how to possibly address these challenges):

  • Alert management to increasing overtime spends, particularly if it is leaning towards becoming a trend.
  • Raise an early white flag when you sense that labour-turnover rates are starting to look problematic.
  • Sound the alarm bells when new legislation stands to impact an organisation and its employees.

In order to make a relevant contribution, line-management oftentimes inadvertently forgets that the payroll department requires a wealth of rich meaningful information. The payroll professional should never have to repeatedly beg for information from other departments within the organisation. To be relevant, you need information — make sure you get the relevant information, on time, all the time.

Indispensability (your absolute necessity) to the organisation

Work towards gaining a thorough personal understanding of the human resource production line, right from the very beginning through ‘til the very end — from preliminary planning phases, to recruitment processes, …right through ‘til possible termination phase. This fosters and entrenches your indispensability to the organisation.

Importantly, don’t settle for only knowing how to operate your payroll software, but strive to master your use and understanding thereof. Once you’ve mastered this, you naturally become the central resource (information-hub) which others will feel drawn towards. For example, make it your primary speciality to know exactly how to set up a new employee record, …how to create an interview appointment, …or, how to issue the query for that complex management report.

Remember this: the line-management function prefers to manage. Intricacies and details of the payroll system is not their forté or interest — it’s yours, the payroll professional. Make sure that your indispensability comes from your special expertise.

Be Pro-active

The ability to be a pro-active payroll professional takes nothing more than a little well-considered thought and the ability to think ahead (i.e. planning).

Some common-sense examples include, the setting up of regular (and ad-hoc) meetings, …provide feedback on changes, …‘walk the floor” and/or engage others via e-mail, …start your own departmental Facebook Page, …use instant messaging to communicate with your employees (nowadays a standard built-in function with many payroll software packages).

Pro-actively build relationships with your various customers. Be sure they know what you expect from them. Remind them of what you consider to be your definition of outstanding service delivered to them.

Pro-active payroll professionals:

  • Expect to see the consequences of today’s actions, materialising sometime in the near or distant future.
  • Are expected to prepare management reports before being asked to prepare them (an automated feature which payroll software is easily able to do).
  • have forward-looking, forward-thinking minds, particularly when it comes to planning for public holidays and unexpected work stoppages.
  • Always think about next month (and next year) while processing the current payroll.
  • Are always anticipating the unexpected to happen — if the unexpected does indeed happen, it’s bound to be at the worst time. The pro-active payroll professional knows this.
  • Always double-checks their outputs/work — …“always reconcile and balance” is their trusted motto.

The payroll professional truly is (and always ought to be) the capstone human resource within the organisation.

 

Bottom line: The payroll professional actively works towards wanting everybody in the organisation to confidently say, “To be sure, let’s ask our payroll professionals first”.

Why Real Leaders Don't Set Out To Become Leaders

by with No Comment Leaders

Imagine asking a bright and charming 12-year-old, “So what do you want to be when you grow up?”

And imagine that she responds, “In charge.”

“In charge? In charge of what?”

“I dunno. Whatever. As long as I’m in command.”

 

In a sense, that’s just who the modern leadership-industrial complex is catering to—to ambitious people who crave influence and authority, but who may not have any meaningful use for that influence and authority. In a sense, it’s a multi-billion dollar industry ($60 billion annually, by some estimates) that’s focused on egging on narcissists to be even more narcissistic.

But here the paradox of leadership: As management legend Warren Bennis has observed, most people who become good leaders don’t set out to become leaders. They simply set out to become themselves,in an authentic manner. And they deploy every means at their disposal toward that end. If others find that your personal form of self-expression is compelling to them, they will follow … and now you can call yourself a leader.

In other words, Bennis believed that leaders became leaders not by studying management processes, but just by giving themselves permission to do what they believed in and were passionate about.

Of course, if you do what you really believe in, you may well end up shunning leadership and management. You may choose to remain a teacher in the classroom than the hapless administrator tilting at windmills.

I’d add a qualification to Bennis’ point: If you do have a specific direction in which you really want to take people, you have a chance to become a leader. It’s one thing if you passionately want to take the local school district in a particular direction and you’re willing to make every effort to get others to join you in the effort. But it’s another thing if you just like the idea of being in charge or having a bigger paycheck or more “prestige.”

Most managers fall into that latter category, don’t they?

But if you fall into that latter category, you tend to be surprised by the resistance and hostility that  attend your every moment. And you find that managing people is like trying to get a flock of ducklings to stand still.

Perhaps leading is like being a parent. It involves infinite headaches and sacrifices and lost sleep and diaper-changing. Only the person who truly loves the cause can survive the trauma and find it all worthwhile.

But the person who just wants the glory will at worst get eaten alive and at best just become ineffective and bitter.

There should be no shame in recognizing that you can make a greater contribution to society without a business card that reads, “Leader” or “Manager” or “Person in Charge of Getting Stubborn and Resistant Human Beings to move in the Same Direction Without Whining.”

 

The Difference Between Leadership and Greatness

It’s time to demystify some concepts of our management era, by pointing out two simple truths:

1. We all rightly admire great people and aspire to be one. But not every great person is a leader, and not every leader is a great person. Greatness is defined in many ways. Leadership is defined in far narrower ways.

2. If fewer people succumbed to the siren song of leadership—to the prestige, the paycheck, the perks—the overall level of leadership in our society would instantly rise, because many people with the wrong motives would be cleared out of the executive suites.

I base this view on years of watching (and advising and serving) top-level presidents and CEOs and senior executives of major organizations—some who succeeded at epic levels and some who didn’t. I base it on my own up-and-down experiences in management and leadership (albeit at a lower level than the head of a large organization). And I base it on years of working alongside influential leadership theorists who had to test which theories work in practice.

Greatness and leadership both require overcoming failures and obstacles and setbacks. But in the case of the leader, those failures tend to be particularlypublic. And there are often significant groups of people—followers, donors, the media, and rivals—who are willing to pounce on any weakness they perceive in you. That’s some tough brew—certainly not for everyone.

Not every mountain need be clumb, as they say. Just because leadership and management represent an imposing challenge doesn’t mean they should be your challenge. There’s greater honor and happiness in finding your own true path than in getting on a path that others (and perhaps your inner ego) try to sell to you.