A closer look at three payroll professionals coping with deadlines, technology and legislation
Karen ArnoldM
Pay and benefits specialist
Ministry of Government Services, Orillia, Ont.
At her previous company, Karen Arnold knew the names of all the employees and their children. For seven years at the small manufacturing company in Orillia, Ont., she was the only person handling the payroll of about 125 workers, along with a variety of other HR tasks — recruitment, interviews, orientation, training, benefits and terminations.
Her present place of employment is considerably different — Arnold is one of 30 pay and benefits specialists working for the Ministry of Government Services. There are about 76,000 employees in Ontario, though she says her location handles the payroll of about 13,000. But having been there three months, she says it’s a welcome move.
“I like working with professionals here, who are really interested in payroll, so everybody’s on the same wavelength. Instead of being the only person who knows about employment standards and things like this, I have resources I can go to.”
Just recently, the Ministry moved to a specialist model, with nine stations handling different payroll tasks for several ministries. For example, one team looks after hires and rehires, appointment status changes, employee movement and pay-rate changes. Arnold is part of a three-member team responsible for payroll processing, payment adjustments and communications.
“I look after time sheets and all communication between areas and forward it to the specialist looking after that department,” she says. “It allows the specialist to have the time to work on her area. In that way I’m learning, too, because it comes back to me and I have to address the concerns of my clients.”
Arnold works with CorePay — a payroll management system — and PeopleSoft software. There are two types of employees, “positive paid” through time sheets so hours are keyed in and “exception paid” who are paid a specific amount each week.
“They say the learning curve is one to two years,” says Arnold, but that’s because the government often introduces new business processes, so it’s important to stay on top of the changes.
Particularly challenging are the five collective agreements she should know, along with all the acronyms.
“Somebody will rattle off what they want help with and you have to go back to scratch to find out what they’re asking,” she says. “This is my first experience with unions and there are five of them, though we really only deal with three in this Ministry.”
Along with her Certified Payroll Manager designation, Arnold has a business accounting designation. She began her career in that field but when she studied HR as part of her certification, it held a certain appeal.
“It was interesting working with people instead of numbers, so I moved more into HR,” she says.
“I’ve always had a real interest and excitement with payroll and to be working with people who feel the same way is exciting in that regard. Everyday I learn something new.”
Michael Lu
Payroll administrator
Mountain Equipment Co-op, Vancouver
Michael Lu originally studied instructional drafting but “stumbled” into the payroll field a few years ago and decided to stay. He’s now a payroll administrator at Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC) in Vancouver, helping with the compensation of about 1,500 full- and part-time employees at the not-for-profit retailer’s locations in six provinces.
“I really enjoy myself in this profession. I enjoy the people aspect as well as dealing with internal and external people, and the mathematical aspect of it,” he says.
Before joining MEC, he worked at a completely different kind of employer, Chemetics, a company that deals with paper, oil, gas and energy. He was there three years but was keen to move to MEC because of the company’s passion for the outdoors and what it stands for, he says.
Lu joined the company about one year ago and his position is tied to finance and administration, working with another payroll administrator and a payroll supervisor.
“We’re set up with accounting because it’s strategically more about working with the costs. Because we’re not-for-profit, we manage our margin and not our sales,” he says.
Everything is done in-house and MEC has used Infinium software, a Massachusetts-based system, since 1996, though Lu says the company is looking into other options.
“It has its good parts and its painful parts,” he says. “We work within four systems — accounting, payroll, time and attendance and HR. So it’s sometimes (a challenge) being able to get the systems to jive with each other, there’s a lot of manual work involved.”
MEC uses Kronos’ electronic time sheets and labour and time management system. So Lu does payroll input and audits, along with reporting, tax payments and the management system. Every MEC store has an administrative assistant, who sends in the time sheets, and swipe cards are used in-store.
Payroll also does a lot of analysis in terms of costs and reports, says Lu, with summaries provided to store managers so they can compare expenses to budgets.
Being an environmental employer, MEC is always looking to reduce its carbon footprint and new technology could help, says Lu. The company prints pay stubs on recycled paper but as for electronic pay stubs, security can be an issue, he says.
And while the company is expanding considerably and has grown about 30 to 40 per cent in the last five years, it still appreciates the efforts of employees, says Lu, citing a recent company trip to Bowen Island for kayaking.
Sandra Niehaus
Vice-president HR
Inwest Group, Vancouver
Inwest Group is involved in real estate development in hotels, golf and country clubs, malls and shopping centres, along with drug royalties and music royalties. Its payroll is equally varied, with full-time, year-round employees, hourly employees and seasonal salaried employees.
But payroll is not that difficult, says Sandra Niehaus, vice-president of HR. Maybe that’s thanks to her 15 years of experience, which include six years at Inwest and three years at Coast Mountain Bus Company where she was a wage supervisor with 13 staff, responsible for the payroll of about 3,500 drivers and mechanics.
She joined Inwest as manager of payroll before moving on to manager of payroll and HR and more recently to her current position. She has seen the company almost triple in size, from about 220 employees to 630.
Niehaus handles payroll, benefits and HR across Canada and the United States, as Inwest has properties in Washington and New York, and she oversees four payroll administrators. Her duties include overseeing the payroll systems and operations, reviewing the Vancouver office’s final payroll submissions, hiring staff, system processes, best practices and reviewing system upgrades.
Inwest has been using ADP’s Pay Specialist for payroll and HR for five years. Time sheets are manually entered into the system and recently the company took on the HR module, to keep track of more information for things such as raise dates, she says.
Inwest doesn’t use ADP’s time labour system because seasonal hourly staff can be varied, so team leaders submit time sheets that are verified for accuracy and compliance with payroll standards, and then entered by a payroll administrator.
“Sometimes for payroll it takes a bit to learn because we’re going back to the manual processes but that all feeds into the computer environment, so it’s good for them to learn the backwards intake of it all,” she says.
“I like to bring in new people who’ve just started their payroll certification to give them a chance to gain that exposure as well as put those practical skills into use.”
The biggest challenge is having people within a company understand that timely communication is needed for payroll and HR to do their jobs.
“There could be a termination done but we don’t know it’s happened until somebody tells us,” says Niehaus, so the potential is there for a worker to continue to be paid after being terminated, a “scary” notion, she says.
Also demanding is the need to stay current on legislation, particularly in the U.S. as each state has its own laws.
And of course the hours of the job can be hard, she says, with little time for vacation, but there are many positive aspects.
“You get to be in on everything, so you get that people aspect, you get to deal with money, you get to know the ins and outs of the organization, as well as be involved in positive changes and ideas within the organization, and being part of that company growth as well,” she says.
“Payroll and HR is what I am, it’s what I love to do, so I’m definitely going to be staying in this field until retirement.”
