Unsung heroes of payroll – Payroll Bureau Team

In the continuation of our unsung heroes of payroll blog series, we caught up with our Payroll Bureau Managers, Lynn Gaunt and Jill Walmsley to find out how our Managed Payroll service is rising to the demand of COVID-19.

Could you break down your roles and give a brief explanation of what your departments do?

I'm Lynn Gaunt and I'm the Bureau Payroll Manager for our Leeds office, which processes around 31,000 payslips each month and I'm Jill Walmsley the Payroll Team Manager for our Stockton bureau which manages around 1,500 client payrolls.

Jill: “Each of our departments is somewhat different as we manage separate client bases, but essentially we run the payroll for our clients, send the Bacs payments and manage the payslip distribution.”

How have your departments risen to the challenge of COVID-19?

Lynn: When the pandemic started, both sites had to quickly gather all their equipment and set up at home while simultaneously working with clients to manage the newly introduced furlough and Job Retention Scheme requirements.

As so much has changed in such a short amount of time, the teams have been working a lot of extra hours to ensure customers were compliant with new payroll processes.

Looking back now the teams were fantastic, everyone adapted so efficiently to ensure there wasn't a drop in our service even with the added workload.

Also, this all coincided with Payroll Year End which is notoriously an incredibly busy period for us, but the team pulled together and handled it all fantastically.

What's been great as well is that quite a few customers have taken the time to write to us, thanking the team for their service which has been a huge morale boost for us all. 

Has your department taken any proactive measures to support customers?

Jill: We’re about to start a survey each month where we reach out to each client, asking them their thoughts on our service to gain feedback and continually improve our offering.

As we're an outsourcing solution, we rarely hear from our clients but by using this survey we can build a greater relationship with them.

This proactive approach of reaching out to customers will enable us to meet the demand of COVID-19 far better than if we were purely reactive as we’ll have a much better understanding of what customers actually need.

Do you have any advice for customers moving forward?

Lynn: My advice as always is if you have any queries, give our team a call.

We're always here to help and it's often far easier to speak to the team rather than send multiple emails.

Also, check out our support hub that’s packed full of resources to help you and your business adapt to the ‘next normal’.

If you're interested in improving efficiencies within your bureau then take a look at our range of payroll bureau software.

To see our last unsung heroes blog with our Professional Services team, click here.