You rush to get the salads on the table. Where are all the forks? How will
the guests eat? To keep people happy, caterers must get food on the table
on time. It is essentially the same for payroll officers.
"It's a lot like cooking for a thousand people," says Brad Fuchs. He's
a payroll officer in Berkeley, California. "You have to get everyone's paycheck
ready all at one time. You can't serve something late, or people won't be
happy."
Sound stressful? Most payroll officers will tell you that doing payroll
isn't a low-key job.
"You always wonder how time can go by so quickly," says Fuchs. "You have
to get everything ready to feed into the computer, and you can be really pressed
for time."
Sharon Conboy, a payroll officer, agrees that the work is stressful. "There
are tight time constraints," she says. "It might be Friday afternoon and people
want their paychecks. Then you hear at the last minute that 60 new employees
need to be set up. You have to work under real pressure to get the work done."
In a perfect world, people work, hand in their time sheets and are paid
on time. When that doesn't happen, workers go to the payroll office. "We handle
things that are life-and-death matters to these people," says Fuchs. "If something
goes wrong, they still need their paycheck."
And things do go wrong. "We've had triple the amount of checks coming off
the computer. People get overpaid. People get underpaid. They call and say
that nothing has arrived for them," says Fuchs.
What do you tell people who need their money? "You really have to be able
to communicate with people," says Conboy. "They can be in tears, not knowing
how they are going to feed their family. You have to tell them how you will
work through the problem, and then find out what has happened."
Fuchs enjoys trying to trace lost paychecks. "It's like trying to solve
a mystery," he says. In the university salary department, Fuchs says that
he is the last stop in trying to figure out what happened. "I'm the tail-end
of the whip."
Fuchs begins by checking to see if the money is still in the personnel
department, or if it got put on the wrong desk. "We even have to figure out
if someone has already been paid," he says. "That happens. With direct deposit
some people don't realize that the money went in, and maybe has already been
taken out again."
Sometimes the mistake is a human error. Sometimes things go awry in the
computer system. "If the system goes down when we're trying to do payroll,
we can be in a lot of trouble," says Fuchs.
When a paycheck is missing, employees can be upset and angry. Learning
to deal with these people can be a difficult part of the job.
Fuchs says payroll officers have to remember the importance of their work.
"You have to deal with the fact that so much is riding on what you do. People
need to be paid correctly. If they aren't, they can get very upset."
A hardworking employee may not have received her paycheck. She needs it
to pay the bills, and to buy groceries for her children. She won't let this
matter slide. The employee will march right over to the payroll department
and demand an explanation. "The least you can do is pay me on time!" she shouts.
"In fact, that's all of what I do," says Fuchs, reiterating that payroll
officers have to keep in mind that their job is to serve the other employees.
Although some people who visit the payroll department are upset or angry,
most are pleasant to deal with. "I really enjoy the people contact," says
Conboy. "In most cases, we are giving people a reward, so they aren't unhappy
to talk to you or to hear from you."
Fuchs says he also enjoys human interaction on the job. Some accounting
jobs can involve many calculations, and little communication with others.
"I like working with numbers but I also like people," he says. "With payroll,
you get both."
Fuchs estimates that he spends as much as 20 percent of his time working
with others, rather than punching in numbers. "It's your job to help people,
and I like that," he says. "It's something that is so important to them."
People who are only interested in numbers should look in other areas. "If
you want pure accounting, this isn't for you," says Fuchs. "You've got to
want to help people."