Richard Rousseau started with the Canadian Payroll Association in the late 1980s
Recently a man approached Richard Rousseau and told him that a talk Rousseau had made to his undergraduate class had made him consider starting a career in payroll.
The man now works as the head of payroll for a big company in Quebec, said Rousseau, vice-president of sales and industry relations for payroll software provider DLGL.
The man said he never would have thought about payroll as a career path but “he loves what he’s doing right now,” said Rousseau, who, after years in the payroll industry, counts this encounter among his most shining moments.
Inspiring people to take up a career in payroll is one of the things Rousseau does in his volunteer role with the Canadian Payroll Associa- tion (CPA).
He started out at the association working with the Quebec regional committee.
“It was enjoyable, honestly, because after every event when you have a feeling of accomplishment as a team that’s an excellent reward,” he said. “You feel very good that you have done something.”
Rousseau was part of the CPA’s board for eight years. During that time, he took on executive board positions, starting as secretary and later taking on the roles of vice-chair and chairman.
When his time with the board was up, he continued work with the association, taking on a
role of promoting the CPA within Quebec, with an emphasis on building relationships with the government and the province’s colleges.
That he has taken on such big roles with the CPA over the past 20-plus years may be a bit of a surprise when Rousseau’s career beginnings are considered.
In the early 1980s, Rousseau was selling computers, working as a major account executive for a large company, meeting big quotas and serving many customers.
“I quickly realized the power of software compared to the computer market that was in transition at that time,” he said.
In 1987 he decided to join DLGL.
Changing companies and industries was a culture shock. So was joining a small company where the objective was not to be the biggest in the market but to be the best in the market, said Rousseau.
“My role was to do marketing,” he said. “I was not hired as a payroll expert, which I am still not today, but to market the product.”
He went from an indus- try where quotas were king and he was dealing with many customers each day to a company where there were no quotas and he was focused on getting one or two customers per year.
Through his new role at DLGL, he attended his first CPA conference in 1989.
“When I attended my first CPA conference.... what surprised me at the time was the friendship among all the people attending the conference,” he said, adding he had been to many computer trade shows and had never seen the camaraderie he saw when he walked into his first payroll conference.
“For the first time, I was seeing something completely different,” he said. “Where there was a lot of atmosphere, friendship among the people and everyone was talking about the same thing: Payroll.”
It’s the nature of the business that payroll professionals get along so well, he said. Payroll professionals often experience similar issues at work and they want to talk about them, he said. But they also enjoy the social aspect of the conference, he said. “They have fun getting together.”
Through his current role with the CPA, Rousseau and the rest of the Quebec team spend a lot of time working with the province’s government. This work started when QPIP was first introduced and continues today.
The committee helps the government realize what impacts new legislation will have on payroll systems and the daily life of a payroll professional.
Often when new regulations are introduced the impact they will have
on payroll systems and payroll professionals is not fully considered, said Rousseau.
“So every time there is a new regulation we scrutinize what they’re doing.”
Recently the committee has worked to set up meetings that take place every six months with relevant government offices in the province, including Revenu Québec and the labour relations department.
The hope is these meetings will be ongoing and get key officials together at the same table to discuss what is going on in the payroll industry.
“Because our membership is asking us questions and we have to make sure that these questions are transmitted to the proper departments, so that’s our objective.”
For Rousseau, one of the biggest changes in the industry over the years is the increase in complexity when dealing with payroll. There is more legislation, more deductions and more for payroll professionals to do.
“It’s more complex,” he said. “Today there’s so many deductions that you have to consider depending on the province where you are working. Just in Quebec, it’s more complex than ever when you consider the deductions are not the same as the federal (deductions).”
The complexities of payroll in Quebec is something professionals who process pay for employees in the province are well aware of.
“There’s two payroll systems in Canada, there’s Quebec and there’s Ottawa,” he said, laughing.
And in the future, he doesn’t see a decrease in complexity.
“I think it’s going to be more complex,” he said.
After so many years working in the industry, Rousseau still says he does not consider himself an expert in the field.
“I’m not a payroll expert, I consider myself as a facilitator within the CPA,” he said.
