Ahead of the Autumn Update 2019, Ian Davis, head of payroll, at Direct Line Group takes part in a 60 second interview.
Davis will be speaking at the conference, taking place on December 5th at the Hilton London Bankside.
Reward Strategy (RS): How did you enter the world of payroll?
Ian Davis (ID): “Like a lot of payroll people I fell into it accidentally in the early 90s – a far cry from my ambition of being a sports broadcaster!
“My career has been very rewarding so far working in the postal, food and insurance industries - being responsible for employee populations between 12,000 and 180,000.”
RS: What do you think has been the most visible change to the pay and HR professions in the last year?
ID: “I think automation is definitely on the rise, whether this is in robotics or just making better use of modern payroll and HR systems available.”
RS: What do you think are, currently and will be, the biggest trials facing payroll professionals?
ID: “I think, once again, we are facing some really big challenges on legislative change. IR35, National Minimum Wage and holiday pay are three topics that are all bubbling up around the same time, which means our profession need to be spreading themselves quite thinly across a number of key business projects.”
RS: What is going to be the biggest area of investment for your payroll function in the next 12 months?
ID: “It goes back to one of my earlier answers around automation. We are trying to get our systems to take care of as much of our manual processing as possible, to enable my team to focus on more value add activities.”
RS: Without giving too much away, what two things will delegates learn from your session?
ID: “Firstly, that payrolling benefits is not something to be scared of and secondly, how to effectively communicate with employees on upcoming changes.”
RS: What other sessions are you looking forward to at this year’s Autumn Update?
ID: “I think the agenda looks really good, but I’m particularly looking forward to the session on Segmentation of Rewards to ensure we understand the changing demographics in business and what they really want from a reward scheme.”
The Rewards, sponsored by Cintra HR & Payroll Services, take place the evening of the Autumn Update. New categories for the awards have been launched, find out more here.
The third release of discounted tickets are available until September 13th, so if you’d like to book a place at the conference, please speak to Jamie Thomas, from our delegates team, by calling 020 7940 4832 or email. Or, take a look at the event website here.
If you are interested in speaking opportunities or sponsorship, please speak to Ben Miller, commercial director, by calling 020 7940 4803 or email. Or, take a look at the media pack here.