Julie — On Her Passion for Payroll and Her Team

Julie is Sprout Solutions’ Head of Payroll Professional Services. On this Sprout’s Rockstar of the Month, she speaks about how she found herself in payroll and managing her team.

 

Seeking Education, Trying Sales, Finding Payroll

“I took up BS Clinical Psychology in college because I wanted to be a teacher. After I graduated, I went into my first job as an HR assistant and on weekends, I was taking my masters for psychology.

The company I worked for was in the HR and payroll industry. Though I worked in HR I would often join events and it was then the marketing manager in my office asked me to be a part of the sales and marketing team. She said she saw my potential to be a salesperson, so I ended up working two positions: in HR and sales. I took up all responsibilities that came with being in sales and beyond— I was handling implementation as well.  

After a few years of that, I was promoted to operations as a manager, which entailed the outsourcing services of the company and software implementations. This position is where I started learning about the accounting, financial and payroll side of the industry.”

The Turning Point

“There was a situation in my job that I really had to learn payroll in depth; one of the supervisors had made a mistake in the computations and ended up paying the wrong amount to one of our clients’ employees. During that time I was on vacation but I needed to step in and resolve the issue. It was then I realized I enjoyed payroll.

At that point, I had been doing payroll since 2010, so I decided it was time to take my knowledge and venture to a new environment. I enjoy the challenges of payroll, especially in the year-end, like annualization. It could be a repetitive task but every now and then you have to check new rulings or policies and that’s when it gets exciting. So when I was looking for new work, I searched within the payroll industry and that’s where I found Sprout and joined their payroll outsourcing team as head manager.”  

On Managing a Team

“I believe that my background in clinical psychology helped me prepare for the client-facing position of payroll outsourcing. It teaches you how to understand the human psyche so it helps me be a keen observer and patient listener when I communicate with clients as well as my employees.

On top of my educational background, I also learned a lot from my manager from my past job. When I started in sales, she taught me how to present myself to clients, most especially in negotiation. By urging me to try out sales from an HR position, she took me out of my comfort zone, and it was then I gained more confidence in myself and in handling a team.”

Managing Style

“I am very maternal… People often look to me for advice. So when I first took on a managerial role, it wasn’t hard for me to adjust to having people work under me.

I believe that my team is my responsibility, so it is in my instinct to take care of them. But that doesn’t mean that I baby them either: I always tell my team that I will not be the micromanaging type because I trust that they will do their jobs. I expect my team to manage themselves and they will only hear from me when they are not meeting my expectations. However, if they need help from me, they can always approach me.”

When building my team, I value willingness to learn over skills. One of my greatest peeves is someone with an attitude problem; I would much rather handle someone that doesn’t hold that much experience but is open to learning than someone with a higher skillset but refuses to new ideas.”

Outside of Payroll and Future Plans

“Outside of payroll, I enjoy crafting. I make accessories and do hand stamping whenever I’m free. These are the activities I like to do to de-stress.

I was recently thinking about enrolling myself for a masters degree. When I used to want to be a preschool teacher I took school psychology for masters, but now that I’ve found payroll I want to further my learning again.”

 

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source https://sprout.ph/blog/julie-rockstar-of-the-month/