Payroll Conversations with Melisa V - What are unsung hero's ?

[00:00:00] I just want to say again, I think you guys like the discipline, the dedication that goes on with these podcasts. Your over a hundred episodes. It's almost unbelievable, right? You guys have family, will climb down, hobby, sports for kids, I'm sure.

[00:00:16] And you still find the time to dedicate it to the payroll industry. I think that's so impressive. It's admirable. Thank you very much. You guys are it. Thank you. Welcome to our podcast. It's about payroll. We're your host, Brian Escobar and Walter William Duncan the third.

[00:00:33] Whether you're new to the payroll game or a seasoned veteran, we have something for you. Welcome back folks. It's another episode of Its About Payroll. We're up to a hundred and fourteen episodes proudly. And before we have an amazing guest with us today.

[00:00:53] She's been on before, Melissa Vicioso. We're going to get into it. She's ready to go and has some great topics to talk about. But before that, we will get into pay news. And before that, what's up Walt? How you doing sir? I am good. Thank you man.

[00:01:10] You always do such a great job with the intros, man. I don't ever think I ever tell you that, but you do such a great job every time. Oh, thanks. Thank you for the consistency there, brother. Thank you, bro. I appreciate you.

[00:01:19] It wasn't always, wait hold on, it wasn't always, he's saying that because at one point I would just bobble things up and forget to even address them all. But still it wasn't a big deal, right? Well see, no, that was when we were doing things separately, right?

[00:01:35] We weren't, that's when you were doing the pay news updates yourself. Oh, that's right. That's when that happened. It wasn't always like that. I wasn't always by myself doing, yeah, that's right. That's right. But fair. But yeah, thank you for that.

[00:01:45] Hey, when you love what you do, we both, it took a hundred and fourteen episodes and more than that really because. I believe. Lost tapes. Lost tapes. Remember, we recorded for a few months before we even started posting. Yeah.

[00:01:59] So it's been a work in progress, folks, and we're so happy that you come along on this journey with us. And yeah, man, look, let's try to get, knock out these pay news updates before Melissa jumps on. All right, mine is short and sweet. Okay.

[00:02:15] Mine too, so it works. It's from the federalnews.com. The Department of Veterinary. The Department of Veterans Affairs. The Veterans Affairs have made a major change in the rules for veterans who left military service other than honorable discharges.

[00:02:31] So this opens up the possibility for health care coverage for those people who had been discharged with willful misconduct or even moral interpretude. With our date, basically that means that they f'd up, they did something bad to the

[00:02:44] military and they were either discharged or for anything else that wasn't a good discharge or honorable discharge. So that opens up the possibility for them. And I think that is a great thing because it's not punishing them.

[00:02:58] That was punishing them all because you didn't have an honorable discharge. You don't get medical coverage potentially. Oh, that's big. Yeah, that is huge. So what do you got, man? Oh, and thank you for your service by the way, because you are also a veteran.

[00:03:14] Mine's again short and sweet. New York governor tried to increase the NYC mobility tax after congestion pricing was rejected real quick. I was in New York a few weeks ago and my family, we were going into the cities, my

[00:03:29] little one's birthday so she wants to go into Manhattan and the American girl and all that stuff. And my family's, oh wait, they didn't do it yet but be careful because they're want to do congestion pricing and they're going to charge to get into the city.

[00:03:46] And New York goes through this conversation every few years where it gets so congested in Manhattan that they consider trying to create some friction about going into Manhattan and they want to, and it's only between certain streets, right?

[00:03:59] It's like below, above this street and below that street that they want to try to keep it less congested. But it was rejected. Congestion pricing was rejected and it's not going to happen right now. I can't say that it won't ever happen. Of course, I'm not the government.

[00:04:17] But at the same time, so the governor of New York right after that was rejected, she tried to say, well, oh, let's increase the payroll tax for the, so for anybody in, for any payroll professionals that have employees in New York, they may

[00:04:33] be familiar with the NYC payroll tax. And it's an additional tax, not it's state. They have state and that's the local. It's the local NYC. If you live in NYC, they additionally tax you on that.

[00:04:48] She wanted to increase that tax to make up for the lost revenue on this rejected congestion pricing, but that was also rejected. They were like, our lawmakers were like, yo, we just rejected this. You're just trying to shift the money somewhere else. No, rejected it as well.

[00:05:07] They were like, you tried it. Yeah. Good try, but not so fast payroll professionals that have employees in New York, you've been saved from some complaining really, cause workers would call them, my check is not done, my check went down. Yeah. Because your taxes went up.

[00:05:24] So you got saved on that. But yeah, man, talking about money and increases and decreases. This is specifically for payroll pros, right? It's for every worker, but payroll pros need to be aware that effective July one, a final rule that expands overtime projections from millions

[00:05:43] of nations, low paid salary workers is increasing the salary threshold required for exempt employees is being raised from 43,000 to 58,000. And it looks like it's as of January 20th, Jan 1 25. So they it's going in effective now, but I guess they're going to

[00:06:04] give you, give all of us a grace period to catch up and to make an adjustment. Cause it will impact planning. If you're a payroll pro, you need to go ahead and pull that report for

[00:06:15] your employers and show them who will be impacted at another column for the actual amount of impact so that your leaders could see what it's going to cost them to bring that up. And if you want to be even more thoughtful, you could think about

[00:06:31] average overtime, because the question becomes, do we move? Do we just raise everybody's salary or do we keep them? Do we reclassify them as hourly now, which would make them eligible for overtime. So there's going to be an impact there.

[00:06:48] Cause and you got to estimate what that overtime is going to look like because a salaried employee doesn't track their hours traditionally. So you really have no insight on what, how much overtime they work. And most salaried employees do work overtime, right? That's true.

[00:07:05] Go ahead and finish this offer as well. And then we can get into a conversation with Melissa. Go ahead and stay there, Melissa. We just finished it up on our sponsor and then we get into it. All right.

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[00:07:42] Use the link in our show notes to start your 14 day free trial in the month of June to qualify for your first month free. You can go to time track go.com. That's W W T I M E T R A K.

[00:07:55] Go.com or you can call it 8 8 8 3 2 1 9 9 2 2. Let's go. Let's go. All right. And right on point, Melissa. Yeah. It's your soul joins us and how have you been? It's been so long. Good. I had to do a little recap to see when was the last time we

[00:08:17] talked and it was March, 2023. Wow. Over a year. April rather. Yeah. So I think it's been more than a year. I'm, I just want to say again, I think you guys like the discipline, the dedication that goes on with these podcasts, your over a hundred episodes.

[00:08:36] It's almost unbelievable, right? You guys have family, full time job hobby, sports for kids. I'm sure. And you still find the time to dedicate it to the payroll industry. I think that's so impressive. It's admirable. You guys are it. Thank you very much. We appreciate it. Yeah.

[00:08:53] Thank you. And we went to payroll pay con this past year for the first time. It was our first time ever going and we went on behalf of the podcast ourselves, we got ourselves there and what we is over.

[00:09:05] There was like over 2000 people there and a part of us was like, Oh my God, I wonder, Oh, it would be great if everybody knew who we were. They didn't. And that's fine. It just shows us like, Hey, where we need to grow.

[00:09:16] But all the leaders, all the who's who people there knew who we were. And we actually interviewed most of them. So that was like, wow. And they all same thing, Melissa, just, they were like, keep on doing it. You're doing a great thing for payroll.

[00:09:32] Keep up the good work. And that was like everything for us. That was all the validation we needed is just folks like you to say, yo, keep doing this. It's good. So thank you so much. And, but in that year, you made a lot of catch us up.

[00:09:47] What's going on? How you been? Yeah. A lot of moves like a location. I moved from Florida to New York, back to back up North, a lot of just job changing. And to be honest, just a lot of just different insights on payroll.

[00:10:02] I think the beauty of payroll one is you have the ability to change industries, change companies and still have that knowledge. Right. And I think it's, that's a very, it's an underrated skill or maybe opportunity to do right? Not every organization.

[00:10:20] You're allowed to bring your sales knowledge, right? You're selling a different product or it's a difference in maybe even culture. Right? Payroll is payroll, right? Everyone has to get paid. And I think, and I always tell people this, I'm like, my background is very

[00:10:36] colorful just in different industries, but I feel like this, my current industry is, or current company is very niche in the sense of just trying to be as innovative as possible. And I think that it's a challenge.

[00:10:52] It's the first time that I think that payroll for me is a little bit of a challenge and I think, and again, it's odd, right? Because it's not a technical challenge, more of what brings, what brought my topic, right? Payroll being an unsung hero of an organization.

[00:11:09] The first time in my 13 years of payroll that I have to prove the function, I have the importance and it dawned on me. I've been in the company for almost six months and it still hasn't hit. Wow. Wow. Wow. Okay. And it's rising.

[00:11:27] I talked to other people in the industry and a lot of my peers with more experience, less experience and they're even like, but I don't get it. And I'm like, you know what? It's at first, it was a little bit frustrating, but I think it's

[00:11:42] again, more of a challenge. I think, you know what? Everyone needs this in life, whether it's personal, professional. And I think it's just again, being that evangelist for payroll. Again, this is what you guys do day in, day out and on the podcast, right?

[00:11:56] You showcase how important payroll is, right? What skills that you can bring and it's not pressing a button. It's different facet. And I, this is my biggest challenge. Wow. Wow. Wow. Well, I'm excited to hear more about that. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:12:11] Hopefully we can reconnect a little bit more and hear about that challenge. And because I find that interesting, right? It's something that I think it bringing out the best in you, right? And bring it up. It's causing you to think in a different way.

[00:12:22] It's causing you to look at things from a different point of view, I would assume, right? And so that, that sounds very, it also sounds, it sounds daunting, but it also sounds very thrilling and want that, right? Yeah.

[00:12:35] I think it's, you know what it is for me, it's a part of education. I always pride myself in a continuous learner. I'm just big on that, right? Whether it's again, your own, it can be your own personal, right? It's time management. It's communicating effectively.

[00:12:51] It's all of those things, right? And I think this is then when the tables have turned, like when now I'm the educator, right? And I'm teaching other people, right? How important this can be, right? And as simple as it sounds to say, yeah, you're paying people accurately

[00:13:07] and on time, it's more to that. There's more to it than just ensuring that the financial wellbeing of your entire organization is taken care of, even though that's in itself, is that it's worth it, right?

[00:13:22] So I feel like, so anyway, I guess it's, I've read a lot of articles about payroll being the unsung hero, but what it brings me back to my core is I worked for an organization once a couple of years ago, almost seven,

[00:13:35] eight years ago, and they had company awards and it would be very sales oriented. So a lot of it was like MVP. It was based on metrics of revenue, which makes it make sense. And, but it was part of a Christmas party.

[00:13:47] And I remember one year when they called my name for, and the title of the award was unsung hero. And in my head, I was just so shocked. I was like, this is wild. Right? I'm like, what is happening right now?

[00:14:00] I don't even, I almost felt you almost feel undeserving, right? Cause you're like, you have an organization of more than 500 people. Right? It's a handful of awards. And when I sat with it, I was like, you know what?

[00:14:14] This is when an organization is so in touch the behind the scenes that you didn't have, and it was a area where your leader had to send in like candidates or send in. Then they, I don't know if they voted on it.

[00:14:27] I don't know if it was just pen pick with what the, what information you got my leader provided. But, and I sat with it and I was like, you know what? This is how important payroll truly is. Right.

[00:14:39] When you're being called out right on during a company wide holiday, there are tons of other people that are bringing in million dollars of revenue. There's other people behind the scenes that are part of events or part of

[00:14:53] games or that are truly instrumental in the actual, on the revenue side. And here they are giving the head of payroll and some hero award. Congratulations on that. And so, I don't know, but still, you still, we, we are still unsung heroes because it's true.

[00:15:14] People underestimate it all the time. And since we talk, we started teaching with teaching payroll now. And in the like the fundamental course that I teach, that's how I started off something like we have to pay payroll is paying accurately.

[00:15:29] And I bridge off that such a simple statement is so complicated to achieve. And that's where that, that's where this journey begins. And I take you through, but I talk exactly about that. Yeah. We say it like, oh, not Shalana number one thing pay accurately,

[00:15:44] but that is a complex and it could be super complex depending on your situation, your company situation. Absolutely. Yeah. I love that. I love that. Wow. So Melissa, let me ask you a question. Um, how do you think, uh, the pandemic post pandemic has impacted us as

[00:16:05] payroll professionals? Cause I think it is to your point we've had even during the pandemic, it forced a lot of us to change how we do things in payroll, how we process. A lot of us had to go into hybrid or remote positions or type

[00:16:19] of work scenarios, right? How has that impacted you from a career standpoint? And can you speak to anything else? I know we had the PPP loans that were out there. Can you speak to any of that? No, so I think it changed it 1000% for the better.

[00:16:35] I think it truly showed organizations where the information comes from, right? Where the actual data is coming from. I think an example of that is during the PPP era and during that first year, I think it was, I think they launched it that summer.

[00:16:50] So I think it was like May or June of 2020. The company that I was with, I think we were on our third round of layoff and we were just trying to figure out how to get the capital.

[00:17:00] And when that PPP loan was advertised, it, the only questions that were on that application were payroll related. It was your 941s. What are your taxes? What fight? No, all of that was only payroll related. It wasn't the CFO getting involved. It wasn't the controller getting involved.

[00:17:19] It was truly payroll data. And you needed to be one of the first companies to even get that information to your bank in order to qualify. I remember the bank that we're using, I think it was a community bank.

[00:17:31] So it was, I think they had like 20 spots open. So it was, I remember working overnight with my chief legal officer and partially the controller just to get the data right, ensure that the backups were there and we were, I think if not the first, maybe the

[00:17:49] second company to actually submit our PPP loan. And I think that turning point that organizations looked at, you know what? How valuable is this? Right? We essentially floated or were provided funds for, I want to say it was the

[00:18:08] summer, I want to say it was till August was from May, June, July, August, five months, four to five months of having staff because we were afforded this. And that I think if that can't be quantified, if that's not a metric, I don't know what it is.

[00:18:26] I think that again was a turning point. And I thought in my head even further, I said, you know, what else can we do with this data? Right? We can also really bring to the table the true cost of an employee. Right? Overtime is trending up, right?

[00:18:39] Why is, why is attrition in this department going, you know what? Maybe it's the compensation. Let's meet with the comp guy or the comp girl and see, you know, what the salary levels look like.

[00:18:48] And I think the, we're the, again, we see the beginning to the end of an employee life cycle. Right? We, they come in, we see when they leave. And I think, and again, it's how staffed your team is as well. Right?

[00:19:04] I don't want to bring all the ideas out and someone's listening in and they're like, I'm a team of one. How do you, how do I find the time? Right? But I think again, loving your craft. Right?

[00:19:16] It's being that passionate about it to know where you can fit in. And I think that's important. Right? I think when you really use it as leverage and you really understand the importance, even if the organization doesn't give you that, doesn't

[00:19:30] highlight your function or doesn't recognize you, right? I think that's everyone's kind of internal battle in payroll. Right? It's everyone says that it's a thankless job. It's the what? But I always flip it. I think I say this in almost every interview and almost every new higher

[00:19:46] orientation with a payroll team is I look at every payroll as an accomplishment. That's right. Every. That's right. And like that, get me through. Right? You have a weekly payroll. Guess what you have 52 or 53. Yup. Operating you say I won. You know what I'm saying?

[00:20:08] And to me, if that's the bottom line, you did win. And I think that's what keeps you going until payroll is recognized as a function or as a department that holds enough importance, you have to keep that morale going.

[00:20:25] And I think everybody again in payroll and whether it's two years, whether it's 10 years that you've been in payroll, you constantly have that battle. So I think back to your point, I go back to your question. During the pandemic, I think it forced organizations to say we really

[00:20:42] we need to have this payroll data clean. We need to have a little. We need to have a digestible for at any point in time, right? When we need payroll insights, when we need payroll analytics, we can pull it and we could understand the true cost, right?

[00:20:58] We can understand what the breakdown of that line item on the P and L. Yup. Like how important. Yup. And I, and I, I love it. So I want to, I made a few notes here to add to it.

[00:21:10] If you are that single payroll person and you don't have the time, things like this could help you make the case for either an additional hire, whatever have you some resource or part-time or whatever that additional resource that you might need. So that's one thing, right?

[00:21:27] Don't beat yourself up because Hey, that's a business case. And then you're right. It, the PPP, I was also involved in the PPP loan for my organization. And I think it was through that, that I coined the phrase data hygiene because the data hire what was there?

[00:21:44] What do and folks were like, oh my gosh, I love that data hygiene. Yeah. Because if it's not clean, you're not going to have good payroll data. So garbage, garbage out garbage and garbage out. And like Anita Latink said in her book, payroll information starts

[00:21:59] as soon as an HR change or addition has been made. So it flows down and that's the data hygiene of it all. That's the ecosystem of that data is doing that. And again, with that PPP loan project, like I, we started to not just I,

[00:22:17] we all started to look everybody involved in that started to, and that was the CFO, the controller, the COO, the CEO, it exposed payroll in a very different light. Oh my gosh. And we started to look at wages incrementally because the other part

[00:22:33] of that PPP loan is you didn't have to pay it back if you used it appropriately and one of those appropriate ways to use it was giving employees more wages or wages period. And so we tracked the incremental increase through the pandemic and

[00:22:52] there's probably still tracking it now because they want to make sure that they're on point and that's how the loans were justified is if you can show that you've used this to increase wages, not promotion, not

[00:23:05] this like it was a certain definitive way and we had to build something custom by the way, the track was custom and we built the custom. And I was part of that as well. It was just a whole, I love it because it really exposed that it

[00:23:20] really put a shining light on payroll. Wow. Oh wow. You guys are, you have a wealth of information. Exactly. Good stuff. I think it's at the end of the day, I think in companies, obviously we are looking at your product, whether it's a service, whether

[00:23:39] it's a physical product and that's understandable, right? It's a business, it's always a business decision, right? It's a business justification, but I feel payroll can always have a seat at the table for lack of better words, right?

[00:23:52] Or just at the end of the day, be part of that goal, right? Be part of your company pillar, be part of your mission statement. And it's again, it's not always frontline, right? You sign up for payroll, it's behind the scenes, right?

[00:24:04] It's you're not always customer facing unless obviously there's an issue or something like that, but for the most part you're right. But it understanding your value, you're not starting an organization saying, okay, how can the company make me feel valued?

[00:24:19] It's I know my value, I know I'm confident in the service I'm providing and this is how I'm going to communicate it. And I think sometimes payroll professionals get lost in that, right? I think they get lost because they focus on the errors, right?

[00:24:35] They focus on all of the defects because that's the only time Oregon is leadership or managers or whatever the case may be actually calling you out. I think that's an area you can really bring ROI, right? You can bring ROI in HR utilization, right?

[00:24:52] That's data you can bring. You know what you're spending extra dollars, but guess what? We have 99.9% utilization for employees. So employees are checking for their pay. They all are looking at their time card. So that is form of ROI, right? It's not this, right?

[00:25:10] If companies have COEs or if they have self-service or if they have a shared service team that really does do metrics for log metrics for employee inquiries, right? It's setting up how-to articles, right? It's setting up searchable items on their intranet that decreases those calls. Yes. Yeah. Right.

[00:25:34] It's that partnership. Yes. And I think there are so many areas that only payroll professionals can really dictate, right? Someone could look at a system and say, all right, let's screenshot this. Let's screenshot that. But you don't really know the pulse of what a person is asking, right?

[00:25:49] They're not experts, right? That's why we're the smeeze, right? We're the subject matter experts to say, well, actually they're not going to ask about Medicare. They're going to ask about social security. How far are they in the year where they're going to max out, right?

[00:26:02] When will their net pay change because they have a life event coming up? Or that specific where then you know how to frame the knowledge article to say, this is 2024's new limit. The 2025 new limits is this.

[00:26:15] If you reach blah, blah, blah, you can see this sample paste up, right? And I think it's all of these things that you as a payroll professional, it's common knowledge for you, right? It's something that at every end or every start of the year, you know, right?

[00:26:29] But each employee doesn't know, right? That new customer service agent or your new CMO that just started or whoever, right? At any level, right? You can always educate. And I think that's how we can transform payroll, right? Yes, not across center. It's not just back office operations, right?

[00:26:50] It's truly educating financial literacy. Yes. And I think that's our life. I love it. She is preaching the day, man. I love it. She's getting there. I knew it was going to be a good episode. Melissa always delivers. Okay. Again, some comments here. What does COE mean?

[00:27:06] You said COE. Center of excellence. I love it. All right. So usually large enterprise organizations, they'll have center of excellences or HR, right? And then part of that HR, usually a sub-department of that would be payroll or sometimes center of excellence is have payroll function.

[00:27:25] And what happens is whatever system you use at service now, it's GR or whatever the case may be, it'll get queued to that function. So it doesn't, it's not necessarily even a payroll professional that's answering it, it's just a customer service person with payroll experience. Okay. Got it.

[00:27:43] And then I love how you say payroll led to other things, right? And one of those things that I think folks discount is communication, employee communication, right? So I remember at one of my organizations, one organization I was at, we were

[00:27:58] trying to figure out how, look, they got the payroll system, ADP workforce now and the homepage. This is, and a lot of them now, you can communicate to your employee through these landing pages. But what we realized was nobody was going to the page. Oh, right.

[00:28:16] If you have the app, the ADP app, all they want to see is what they got paid and you can see that from the app. You don't have to go to the landing page. So what we realized was forcing folks to clock in through the ADP

[00:28:30] workforce now integrating the time and attendance, forced them to go to the landing, it absolutely increased engagement and sign up. It didn't solve a hundred percent because communication is tough to per employees, you've restricted it in some sense, but it exponentially

[00:28:47] grew the engagement just because most of our workforce was hourly. They had to go onto the landing page to clock in and that's what increased it and that now we were able to say, Hey, it's on the landing page when you clock in, it's on here, it's there.

[00:29:03] Now we were able to speak to that and point them to that. It can absolutely solve communication issues that you might have and also AI building like you were saying with the articles, right? Now payroll is part of training AI. I love it. Great. Now amongst other things.

[00:29:21] I think again, would payroll some, and it makes sense because you're usually an individual contributor. You're usually one function. And I think what, at least for myself, I'll speak for myself, when you're in payroll, you think you can just solve the problem on your own.

[00:29:35] It's very, it's sometimes you're dealing with confidential information. You're dealing with very, a limited scope of people can see the information. Right? So you almost have the mind of not real collaboration, right? If you contribute to your point, if you're contributing to engagement or

[00:29:52] utilization first for HR system or payroll system, and it doesn't reach the a hundred percent or the 95% or whatever that, that whatever your goal is, then it's not good. But that's not what you should think. Right? That's when it's a collaboration.

[00:30:08] That's when it's, they're doing your part, right? Payroll isn't in charge of change management with pay only, right? You're working with HRBPs. You're working frontline managers. You're working with all of these other teams. And I think sometimes as payroll professionals, you get lost in that. Right?

[00:30:26] Because you're used solving a problem from start to end, right? Always. So I think that you have to change that mindset as well. Right? You truly can be collaborative. It doesn't always have to be numbers. It can be again, change management.

[00:30:40] If you're changing at least a pay frequency, right? That's not us on their own. Right? Huge for hourly populations for each, not even the facet. I've been in organizations where hourly employees, they understand it's the salary, it's the C-suite or it's the salary. That's the SVPs.

[00:30:59] They're the ones that they're like, wait a second. Yeah. Right. That pay look lower. I don't get it. He sends out this memo with on the internet. It's a note on, it's a memo on your last piece of those are the crimes, the population that aren't reading.

[00:31:13] There's so much, I think that gets lost in what payroll can contribute to. Yeah, absolutely. Another topic I talk about a lot in the class is like that. Don't be afraid to be collaborative because that allows you to stretch

[00:31:28] and learn about other things and not just, Oh, I'm just, I just do payroll. No, you can learn about finance. Maybe you want to grow into that area. Maybe you want it to go into HR. Walt just executed a pay frequency last summer.

[00:31:40] Was it last summer or two summers ago now? It was, it was last summer. Oh, okay. And he had to collaborate with the whole COO. I write you, you were in ops, you're in finance. You're talking to everybody at that point to execute that.

[00:31:53] So it, I love it. Yeah. They love it. And that, that kind of cover up your purse. Yeah. The ROI payroll and personnel, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think, yeah, I think at the end of the day, it's getting confidence back in payroll.

[00:32:07] I think that's what's missing piece sometimes. And again, I feel like a lot of employees or payroll team, they look for that from leadership, right? They look from, and it's natural, right? I think that's a natural kind of way to think, right?

[00:32:22] If you're constantly getting recognition, you're doing a good job. Yeah. Right. For sure. You have to look inward, right? Or look to your network. Yeah. Right. A handful of payroll employee professionals that I reach out to when I'm stuck with something, right?

[00:32:37] And it again, it's not disclosing confidential information. It's literally just saying concepts. Yep. Yeah. This is how I'm dealing with it. It hasn't worked. I tried A, B and C. Not working. Help me. Right. It's raising your hand.

[00:32:50] And I think that again, back to my initial sentiment, that's why podcasts like this, that's why the work that you guys are doing is so important. Right? Because it connects, it breaks down that wall, right? That some people think I'm in payroll.

[00:33:05] I can't talk about it, but you guys break that wall down. You know what? I saw an episode and you know what this person was talking about? Maybe if I add them on LinkedIn or maybe if I met them and maybe they'll

[00:33:15] reach out and give me some insight or point me in the right direction. And I think that's what the, this end of the function needs, the industry needs. It's missing that. Absolutely. Thank you. Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:33:27] And look, they may not admit it, but we, we, we, we're responsible for all the other payroll podcasts that exist right now, cause it was like Nick Day. Oh, but yeah, yeah. Our Laurel reminded she's a pay talk was out and I was like, yeah,

[00:33:42] but you guys only do once a month. Right? We connected with payroll org, a professional over there and rightfully so kind of putting pay talk on it. But again, pay talk is once a month.

[00:33:53] And Nick Day was on his day, but Nick Day, we all have our own need, our own flavor and now there's a bunch of them. And thank God, because when we rightfully, cause when we first started, we were like, there's no content out here. There's no payroll content.

[00:34:07] And that's why we were, and it's still, there's still only two authors now that have written payroll books that are not textbooks, right? Yeah. Anita Latangue and Bart van der Storm, both from the Netherlands, by the way, which he reminded us in when he was on.

[00:34:26] So there's still opportunity. There's still a ton of opportunity to fill gaps for content in the payroll world, I'm here for it and welcome everybody else that joined us. But again, waiting for you guys on the trailblazers. Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. And shoot you too.

[00:34:43] Cause I remember your episode at the time was like spiked in rate in our rating, right? And we had people just like, cause you just, you bring this different angle and a new perspective on things and folks were loving it.

[00:34:57] And I think, I think, I don't want to say the first female, but one of the first females that we had on, I remember my daughter at the time, she was like, Oh, I love that you have these payroll, these female leaders.

[00:35:09] And I love it since my, I was like, Oh cool. I didn't even think about it that way at that time. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if I ever told you that. Just like looking at just different perspective, different guests.

[00:35:18] Mentioned and hear your daughter probably not even payroll in the payroll industry from an outsider looking in. Yeah. And she's look at what you guys are doing. You're high, like female leaders. And you're like, Oh, yeah, we did. Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, I love it. I love it.

[00:35:34] Ooh, let's do, are we ready to go into this or that? We started, yeah. I love the last one. So has something else you want to say. That's it. I'm, I think I covered all my points. We started this game, this or that. And you can eat.

[00:35:48] Are you familiar with drink champs? I am like quick time with slime, right? This is, okay. You pick either both neither it's, it is absolutely inspired by that because I'm a drink champ fan and, um, and then we have another segment

[00:36:03] that we do at the end called safe talk. We usually let the guests drop off if they don't want to talk about it. But if you don't mind joining us for that, stay on for that too. All right. Do you want to start off the this or that?

[00:36:14] Well, there's three and then you can finish it off. So this or that Pan de Coco or Lumpia. Of course Lumpia. Filipino of course I have to go with the home team. Science or math. Well, I want to go with math.

[00:36:35] I was a big stat person in college and I feel yeah, that's what kind of beyond if broke me in. You're a little bit. No, that's the main well doing is right. And the last one I have is music or podcast while driving.

[00:36:53] Oh, I want to say podcast. I actually, I commute, I take the train to work and I'm a big podcaster. I've been for many years, which is what, why I was so impressed or so shocked when you guys came out. I'm like perfect. Yeah.

[00:37:07] Something related that I could listen to all my community. Love it. Um, I'm going to change it up a little bit of wall here. Cabin in the woods or beach house. Oh, beach house 1000%. No doubt. Gotcha. Uh, Marvel or DC. I'm not a big either. That's fine.

[00:37:29] There you go. That's fine. And do you prefer, um, this one I like as paper or digital. Do you hand, you like handwriting things still or did you, everything must be typed. I'm digital though. I'm big, I'm a big one, one note.

[00:37:48] I'm big on that being my kind of record of meeting minutes and to do list. I'm a big outlook to do list person. I think it's slowly, you slowly have to incorporate that because paper gets lost. It's easy.

[00:38:02] I don't know if you guys use Slack at work, but Slack has this new thing of recap thing. So what it does is it'll recap all of your Slack messages. So if you Slack yourself, you can now summarize.

[00:38:16] So say you, for you, for instance, while you changed pay frequency last year and you just put it, put that into Slack into a group, say your whole payroll team, you can recap all of your messages. So it'll say August, 2023 we changed from weekly to biweekly.

[00:38:33] These were the topics that were discussed. These were the questions. And I feel like as technology, we are moving with technology. It's even payroll deadlines. If you use out to do list or if you use outlook notifications, you can just share it with your group, right?

[00:38:49] You can share, I have a payroll calendar, outlook, payroll, outlook, calendar, whatever the is maybe. And I just share that calendar instead of sharing individual deadlines. Right. Yeah. So you're saving it with your HRBPs or safe sharing it with whoever else.

[00:39:05] And I think it's just trying to effectively use your time. I love this. Yeah, you're right. There's still some folks organizations still doing time and attendance on paper. And I was like, it's smaller shops, but I'm like, Oh, Whoa, it's unnecessary

[00:39:21] because it doesn't matter how small you are there's some time and attendance things that are free. So there's no excuse for that. It's for smaller organizations. Yep. Right. You're like less than you can use this for free for maybe sometimes indefinitely.

[00:39:37] Like paper, what at the end of the day, you're going to have to scan it. Yes. Right. You need the record. So now you're doing double or maybe even triple the work because now you're scanning it, you're transcribing it, you're putting it

[00:39:49] in an Excel, calc time sheet or whatever you're doing. So instead of that, just again, utilize a system or when I worked at my very first job, there was a technician that actually built a time and attendance system. Based on the CBA rules. He was a technician.

[00:40:07] He was an aircraft technician. Oh my God. He wasn't a tech guy per se, but he knew the rules and he built it. That's great. That's how like again, utilizing your staff, right? You don't need until you vocalize or you really look at the talent. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

[00:40:24] That's good. Oh wait, I just wanted to say government. I wish because I was like white. I got so recently, I lost two pieces of mail from the government. And of course I can get it again and that, but I got mad at myself

[00:40:37] because I was like, dang, I should have scanned this in immediately. And then the other part is like government move to digital. Why are you mailing me this? Just email it. You don't give me a pick option. Yes. Why are you doing this still?

[00:40:50] But any who all right. Got to keep those posts up on there. Yeah. So our safe talk segment of this, and then we try to be a little bit more, I don't know, less political, less PC with this segment, just a real talk. Yeah.

[00:41:06] And it's do you feel that payroll pros take enough pride in themselves and their role? So I'll go first and you can think about it. Do I feel that payroll pros take enough pride in themselves and their roles? I think we do. I think we do.

[00:41:23] I think payroll going to payroll org, you'll see that. I think a lot of folks do right. Um, but there are probably some that don't enough and should, and this ties into that unsung hero thing, right?

[00:41:38] Cause it's, you know, if you feel like you're not being recognized and all that, you know, could give you like, you're not even then, you know, could get you down and be like, and then you're not even recognize yourself. Right. We got to be our own advocates sometimes.

[00:41:52] Um, what do you think? Well, for me, I absolutely agree with what you just articulated there. I think that for the most part, especially now and for a lot of us, yes, we do take pride in ourselves and our contributions as payroll

[00:42:08] professionals, but maybe, you know, a couple of years ago, maybe some of us didn't until we realized the gravity of the importance of what we do. Right. When you come to that place that almost, I don't want to say a folk in the world. I don't know.

[00:42:21] That's the right statement, but when you come to that place and you're like, okay, I can either go this way and stay with status quo or I can just further my career and realize how impactful you've been.

[00:42:32] I think some, a lot of us come to that place in life, in our careers where we can have that pride and take that pride in ourselves. And then some of us were okay being a steady Eddie.

[00:42:44] I'm going to be a payroll processor the rest of my life. All right. And I'm cool with that. So yeah, you're right, man. You're absolutely right. Brian. Yeah. I agree with both of your sentiments. I think to your point, Brian, I think there's a little bit of imposter

[00:42:59] syndrome sometimes, right? When not necessarily again around payroll, other payroll professionals or even HR, I think wholly right in an, in the organization, because I think times when I was able to talk, talk in during a new hire

[00:43:15] orientation or do a lunch and learn or something like that, you've been, you're a little like shell shocked, right? Cause you're like, wait, should I be doing that? Yeah. And then you have to rethink, right?

[00:43:28] And then you have to say, yeah, you know what people care about their money. Right. Goodness cares about their number one or number two highest expense. Right. At year after year, that's never going to go away. Right. And you, to your point, be your own advocate.

[00:43:42] You have to then build up your own confidence. And again, this is why networking is important, right? Having again, your key people or, and again, it doesn't be personal. It could just be strictly professional. Right. I think that's a big part of it because there's also a

[00:43:58] level of knowledge transfer, right? Among payroll professionals. Right. And then in turn you get the confidence of saying, you know what, that is important. That's something that I could bring to the organization, my organization. And then you raise your hand.

[00:44:12] So I think confidence among, again, so you guys, when you guys went to PayCon, you'll see like-minded people. You're inspired. You, the motivational talks, of course, 1000%. I saw a lot of clips and I was like, you know what? I have to make it out there.

[00:44:26] I think that's important to just be around, right? You have to surround yourself, right? That age old saying, right? You are who your friends are, right? You are who you surround yourself with. That's important. Right. But I think it's important to recharge there.

[00:44:40] It's important to get that confidence back. But the second part of that is bringing it back to the organization, right? It's bringing it back. And I worked for an organization, short story, one year, and it was more sherm than it was pay or where it was AP then.

[00:44:58] And one thing that we left from there was bringing back, showcasing a deck. And that was the ROI, right? They'll pay for the sherm. They'll pay for your ticket out there. They'll pay all expenses paid, but you now have to bring back to the organization like that. What?

[00:45:15] From that. Yes, I like that. Three days. It was a three, I think it was Vegas then what it was big at that the year that we went and it was like, okay, so now we don't have an issue right investing in our employees and investing in functions

[00:45:28] that we know the organization needs to improve in, but now what can you now educate whether it's the HR team, whether it's C suite, whether whoever it is, right? Well, how, why is this important?

[00:45:40] And then we're off where they weren't like, Oh, we need to know how to save money. No, it was just knowledge, right? What's on the. Right. What other organizations are doing that maybe can lead to saving money and cost effectiveness, but what if it's just automation, right?

[00:45:55] What if it does how to save more paper? What you know, it's what if it's how I learned how now to, I think then it was system utilization. So it was employee engagement. The HR system. How can we.

[00:46:08] That if it's, if an app is not available, are we spamming them with emails is that efficient, right? No. You know, actually what we're doing now is we use Fuze then, right? We will send a blast. You will create a payroll channel.

[00:46:21] We'll do this and don't, and that's what you're bringing back to the organization. So I, again, to your point, I think payroll professionals are confident. I think to be honest, maybe top three traits you need to be successful. It's pretty right.

[00:46:40] We sell it's integrity, it's reliability and three, I think is interchangeable with I w with that aspect of confidence or even. Dependability that, or maybe even, I don't, I think Xabi is later down on the line because you can learn that, but I think ultimately

[00:46:58] those three are key things for you to be successful. I love that. Nice. I love that. You got to build around that concept right there. Please do. Yeah. I love that. And that's a ability to have in the deck.

[00:47:11] Hey, yeah, I'll send you to this conference that you want to learn that. Cause I hate when they do them in Vegas. There's a, there's something I want to do in Vegas with payroll org, but

[00:47:20] look at me telling my wife, Oh, I got to go to Vegas for the week. Yeah. Okay. So now I got up, now I got to bring, we got to plan a vacation around that cause, but any who, yes, but any who, but like that's good

[00:47:31] for an organization cause it's weird. I'm sending you to Vegas for what? Nah, come on. So now if you do this and it's okay. Yeah, you can go, but you got to bring a deck back.

[00:47:40] You got to build a deck as a result of that on what you learned and what, not only what you learned connected to the organization, what applies? What did you learn that applies that could actually help us here? That's awesome. That's awesome.

[00:47:54] It doesn't even, I mean, it can, but it's there are other facets of it. Right? Sometimes there are speakers that aren't payroll related. Oh yeah. It doesn't have to be no, but something, but what did they do?

[00:48:05] What was that big class that we were trying to take, but it was full when you got there. Has something to do with, I think, uh, probably like mental health or something like that. Yeah, it was not, it was not payroll. It was mental health things.

[00:48:18] They were talking about that being, and now with that class was packed, walk, couldn't even get a seat. I couldn't. And look, so you could bring that back to the, you could even maybe ask the speaker, Hey, you know what?

[00:48:28] If you're part of a big organization and maybe they're looking for speakers or maybe that maybe you're doing a mock site and someone is, and you're the CHRO or CPL or whoever you report to is looking for someone, a speaker. For your team, right?

[00:48:41] You're like, God, I just saw this. They're definitely worth the money. This is these are, this is what I got from it. I really feel like the organization can benefit from that. And it's anything, but I think again, it goes back to the point of, I

[00:48:55] think payroll, all payroll professionals, you have this underlying trade or whatever the case may be of being resourceful. Yep. Yes. I think it's just a common theme all the time, right? It's how you can use this one payroll register to extract all the information that you need.

[00:49:14] Whether it's how many it's for FP and A for head count for it's understanding how overtime looks for finance. It's all of these things from this one report, one report, and you couldn't manipulate the data and how you could ensure that what the next

[00:49:28] payroll funding is like, it's all of these things and that's being a key to being resourceful. Absolutely. Yes. Love it. Thank you so much. Yeah. Always a great, we got like, we know we talk about staying in

[00:49:41] touch, having you on more where we've got to be with love for you to make it happen. Let's do it. And yeah, thanks for joining us today. Thanks for sharing. Thanks for coming on. We love it.

[00:49:54] Thank you so much, Melissa, for joining us and until the next time, hopefully we make it sooner than a year and a half, even though time just flies by, right, it's so quick, but try to be more, maybe we could have you on quarterly or something.

[00:50:07] That'd be cool. That'd be really cool. It'd be recurring. So cool. Be good and stay in touch and until the next time. Thank you so much. Thanks. Before we sign off here are a couple of quick things.

[00:50:26] Don't forget to follow it's about payroll on LinkedIn and it's about your paycheck on Facebook and TikTok. Thank you for being part of our payroll community and thank you for being a part of this journey with us until the next time, keep learning, keep growing.

[00:50:42] And most importantly, keep going.