Profession has changed since Gilles Champagne starting working in payroll
In the late 1970s Gilles Champagne worked for British Petroleum (BP) with no thoughts of a payroll career.
He had been working at the company for about five years, mostly in accounting, when the organization made the decision to move payroll from Montreal to Toronto.
“Payroll being payroll, 98 per cent female, most of the staff did not go,” he said, adding many women with young families decided not to make the move.
It meant the company had to pretty much completely re-staff its payroll department of about 30 people.
Champagne was in Sherbrooke, Que., at the time.
BP needed a supervisor and despite the fact that Champagne had never worked in payroll they asked him to make the move because he was bilingual.
“There was no one with French language understanding who was in any of the management jobs at the time at BP,” he said. “And so I got transferred from the Sherbrooke office in my accounting job into a payroll supervising position, knowing nothing about payroll.”
The company hired payroll staff in Toronto, shipped them to Montreal for three months for training and moved the operation to Toronto.
With a brand new staff and a new challenge ahead of him Champagne and his team were processing payroll for about 12,000 employees out of the new office.
“Talk about learning curves,” said Champagne.
At the time BP had two big refineries, one in Oakville, Ont. and one in Montreal and to further complicate matters BP was putting in a new payroll system at the time.
“The big thing then was that we managed to pay everyone and there were no big hurdles to have to overcome,” he said. “We were a small management team, there were three of us and a consultant that was in to implement the new payroll system, and we sort of muddled through.”
Back in the early 1980s the Montreal refinery location was on a weekly payroll.
“Everyone got paid in cash on Thursdays because Thursday was grocery night,” he said, adding that if a worker wasn’t on shift on Thursday, his wife would go to the refinery and pick up the envelope of cash.
“It was just an amazing set up,” he said. “At one point we said we just can’t do this. Those were interesting times.”
While Champagne was working in his new role in a new industry in Toronto, he realized he needed a better background in the legislation covering payroll. He didn’t know everything about payroll, but he knew compliance was of utmost importance and not following the rules could have major ramifications, he said.
“I had to latch on to something to educate myself because I had no formal training in this, I don’t know if there was any at the time, so that’s when I found the Canadian Payroll Association,” he said.
The CPA was founded in 1978 and Champagne started volunteering there in 1980. At the time, CPA was a “fledgling little organization” looking for volunteers to help get the association off the ground, said Champagne.
Champagne’s career would soon take him across the country, but he remained a volunteer with the CPA.
“I’ve been attached to CPA ever since,” he said. “I’ve found it’s been an absolutely amazing organization.”
When BP was sold to Petro-Canada, Champagne moved to Calgary to handle the national payroll. At the time, the company was making a lot of acquisitions and it meant a lot of travelling for Champagne, who went all over the country implementing a payroll system to bring all of the Petro-Canada staff into one system.
“I was based in Calgary but I was never in Calgary,” he said. “Because up until that point even the management at Petro-Canada didn’t know how many employees they had because they were on six different HR/payroll systems.”
Since leaving Petro-Canada in 1992, Champagne has worked contracts with the government on behalf of the CPA, he’s worked in other private organizations and spent some time managing the HR service centre and pay services for the City of Calgary.
Now, with more than three decades of payroll experience, Champagne is working out of Ottawa with his consulting company Mosaic Advisory Group.
Champagne was on the board of the CPA from 1989 to 1999.
Throughout his career he’s been honoured with many awards from the CPA, including the board of directors award in 1997 and 2003, the honourary member award in 2000, the Diana Ferguson Award in 2008 and a fellow of the CPA distinction in 2011.
His work with the CPA took him to South Africa in 1998, where payroll associations met with officials and payroll professionals in the country to give them ideas about setting up a payroll association.
Although payroll legislation is different in every province and country, the trip was helpful because payroll professionals the world over deal with many of the same things in their day-to-day operations, said Champagne.
“Core issues are pretty much universal.”
Champagne and the rest of the Canadian team shared the CPA’s best practices including how it maintained a good working relationship with the Canadian government.
The group took a working safari with the group of South African professionals who would become the executive of the country’s new payroll association.
“(We had) meetings for three days explaining to the four people… how things worked (for us) and what our failures were,” he said.
He cites the trip as one of the most rewarding things in his career.
“The South African Payroll Association is still out there, it’s still a viable organization and it does work with its federal government.”
He had been working at the company for about five years, mostly in accounting, when the organization made the decision to move payroll from Montreal to Toronto.
“Payroll being payroll, 98 per cent female, most of the staff did not go,” he said, adding many women with young families decided not to make the move.
It meant the company had to pretty much completely re-staff its payroll department of about 30 people.
Champagne was in Sherbrooke, Que., at the time.
BP needed a supervisor and despite the fact that Champagne had never worked in payroll they asked him to make the move because he was bilingual.
“There was no one with French language understanding who was in any of the management jobs at the time at BP,” he said. “And so I got transferred from the Sherbrooke office in my accounting job into a payroll supervising position, knowing nothing about payroll.”
The company hired payroll staff in Toronto, shipped them to Montreal for three months for training and moved the operation to Toronto.
With a brand new staff and a new challenge ahead of him Champagne and his team were processing payroll for about 12,000 employees out of the new office.
“Talk about learning curves,” said Champagne.
At the time BP had two big refineries, one in Oakville, Ont. and one in Montreal and to further complicate matters BP was putting in a new payroll system at the time.
“The big thing then was that we managed to pay everyone and there were no big hurdles to have to overcome,” he said. “We were a small management team, there were three of us and a consultant that was in to implement the new payroll system, and we sort of muddled through.”
Back in the early 1980s the Montreal refinery location was on a weekly payroll.
“Everyone got paid in cash on Thursdays because Thursday was grocery night,” he said, adding that if a worker wasn’t on shift on Thursday, his wife would go to the refinery and pick up the envelope of cash.
“It was just an amazing set up,” he said. “At one point we said we just can’t do this. Those were interesting times.”
While Champagne was working in his new role in a new industry in Toronto, he realized he needed a better background in the legislation covering payroll. He didn’t know everything about payroll, but he knew compliance was of utmost importance and not following the rules could have major ramifications, he said.
“I had to latch on to something to educate myself because I had no formal training in this, I don’t know if there was any at the time, so that’s when I found the Canadian Payroll Association,” he said.
The CPA was founded in 1978 and Champagne started volunteering there in 1980. At the time, CPA was a “fledgling little organization” looking for volunteers to help get the association off the ground, said Champagne.
Champagne’s career would soon take him across the country, but he remained a volunteer with the CPA.
“I’ve been attached to CPA ever since,” he said. “I’ve found it’s been an absolutely amazing organization.”
When BP was sold to Petro-Canada, Champagne moved to Calgary to handle the national payroll. At the time, the company was making a lot of acquisitions and it meant a lot of travelling for Champagne, who went all over the country implementing a payroll system to bring all of the Petro-Canada staff into one system.
“I was based in Calgary but I was never in Calgary,” he said. “Because up until that point even the management at Petro-Canada didn’t know how many employees they had because they were on six different HR/payroll systems.”
Since leaving Petro-Canada in 1992, Champagne has worked contracts with the government on behalf of the CPA, he’s worked in other private organizations and spent some time managing the HR service centre and pay services for the City of Calgary.
Now, with more than three decades of payroll experience, Champagne is working out of Ottawa with his consulting company Mosaic Advisory Group.
Champagne was on the board of the CPA from 1989 to 1999.
Throughout his career he’s been honoured with many awards from the CPA, including the board of directors award in 1997 and 2003, the honourary member award in 2000, the Diana Ferguson Award in 2008 and a fellow of the CPA distinction in 2011.
His work with the CPA took him to South Africa in 1998, where payroll associations met with officials and payroll professionals in the country to give them ideas about setting up a payroll association.
Although payroll legislation is different in every province and country, the trip was helpful because payroll professionals the world over deal with many of the same things in their day-to-day operations, said Champagne.
“Core issues are pretty much universal.”
Champagne and the rest of the Canadian team shared the CPA’s best practices including how it maintained a good working relationship with the Canadian government.
The group took a working safari with the group of South African professionals who would become the executive of the country’s new payroll association.
“(We had) meetings for three days explaining to the four people… how things worked (for us) and what our failures were,” he said.
He cites the trip as one of the most rewarding things in his career.
“The South African Payroll Association is still out there, it’s still a viable organization and it does work with its federal government.”
