A love of learning and teaching have helped Kimberley Fiume advance from being an eager student to a mentor to others
"You can never have too much knowledge," says Kimberley Fiume, director of compliance/client services at the consulting firm LeadingEdge Payroll Group.
Fiume’s interest in learning has propelled her career from "working in the trenches" processing payrolls to advising clients on compliance and best practice issues.
When Fiume began working in 1981, she had her sights set on a career in accounting. She found a job with a major stock brokerage firm in Toronto and began working in the finance department, as well as taking accounting courses in the evening.
About three months into the job, she saw a posting at work for a position in the company’s payroll department.
"I thought, ‘Well, you know, it never hurts to apply and you have no payroll experience but maybe they will take you in and train you.’ And, luckily, I got that job," she says.
"I got to transfer into payroll from finance and that’s sort of when I guess my decision was made for me that I really didn’t want to be an accountant."
Fiume says she learned a lot in that job and another payroll position that she took with a different stock brokerage firm.
"I had two great mentors in both positions," she says, adding that she is grateful for the opportunity that her first payroll job gave her.
"I hate to use the phrase, but that’s what it was at the time, the pay master, who I considered my mentor. She taught me everything I know. Where it was beneficial to me at the time, although I didn’t necessarily think so, was the stock brokerage firms were across Canada as well as being global. So, I didn’t begin my payroll career in a limited single province. I was multijurisdictional and global from the get-go," Fiume says.
"When you begin working in that multijurisdictional environment and have to do research from ground zero, that has helped me immensely because I have had to be able to understand and learn where to go to get all of that research and info."
Fiume’s interest in acquiring knowledge and helping others eventually led her to the Carswell Payroll Consulting Group in 1992, where she worked first as a payroll consultant, teaching payroll courses and providing hotline support for Carswell’s payroll manual subscribers, and then as the manager of the group.
Fiume left Carswell in 1996 to join the Canadian Payroll Association (CPA) as manager of its payroll information line. She stayed with the association for three years before leaving to join LeadingEdge almost 15 years ago.
In addition to working with clients on compliance issues and best practices, Fiume writes a newsletter for LeadingEdge and provides corporate payroll training to clients in Canada, the United States and other countries.
Over the years she has worked in payroll, Fiume says she has seen a lot of changes, both legislatively and technologically.
"From an actual payroll processing perspective, technology has made the lives of payroll professionals easier and more streamlined but, you know, I can feel the little hairs standing up on the back of my neck because I’m thinking of somebody saying, ‘Well, all you have to do is push a button to get us paid.’ So while it’s true that the process itself, even going back to my days in payroll, has been greatly enhanced by technology, the continuous change in legislation and as a result, having the programs that you use for payroll having to be changed on a fairly regular basis, that side of it makes it more complex."
She says it is vital that payroll professionals seek out opportunities to learn more and stay on top of legislative changes by "developing a routine to keep yourself constantly updated," not limiting that to any one organization or third party or publishing house, spreading the knowledge out as much as possible and getting and pulling information from as many avenues as you can.
Fiume’s interest in payroll is not limited to regular work hours. She has been a member of the CPA for many years and is involved in many association activities, including the Federal Government Relations Advisory Council, which meets regularly with federal government officials.
She also took part in the CPA’s task force on the ROE guide, where she worked with other payroll professionals and Service Canada to develop a guide that would better explain how to complete the Record of Employment.
Fiume says that of all of her work with the CPA, one committee in particular stands out. "The committee that I am probably the most proud of my involvement in would be the CPA’s Readability," Fiume says.
"From working with the Canada Revenue Agency, as well as Service Canada, taking those — what I used to call my payroll Bible — guides and bringing them to the point where they are fairly easy to understand now, and I think that people are getting it right and they know the rules. Those guides, themselves, have certainly come a long, long way."
Besides working with government bodies to improve payroll information, Fiume has long loved teaching others about payroll.
Not only has she trained payroll practitioners for Carswell and LeadingEdge and presented education sessions at CPA conferences, Fiume taught payroll at Durham College in the evenings for about four years.
"I took a group of individuals through level 1, level 2 and level 3 (payroll courses). We struck a friendship amongst all of us," she says, adding the bond they developed has lasted many years.
"We sometimes will get together every quarter. And, you know, they still run their payroll scenarios by me and ask for feedback. And we all regularly keep in touch on email, so that’s been really beneficial."
Fiume says the former students have also told her how much she has influenced their decision to remain in payroll, adding, "That really hits home with me and the fact that I can share my knowledge with others is probably the most gratifying."
Fiume says she loves her job and the opportunity it gives her to meet new people and to help them deliver their payroll smoothly. "I like to get the message out there because it’s far easier to pay people correctly than have to fix problems after the fact," she says.
"In my current role, (I like) the challenge of helping employers understand how to pay their employees accurately and on time and getting it right. Let’s face it, we all appreciate a paycheque and making sure that it’s right for me is really important."
