Payroll Perspectives - Kelly Pora, Vasey RSL Care
Summary
Kelly Pora’s career has taken her from administration into payroll almost by accident, before building experience across retail, not-for-profit, housing and aged care and progressing into her current role as Payroll Manager at Vasey RSL Care.
Having joined Vasey RSL Care shortly after the implementation of Dayforce, Kelly shares what it takes to stabilise a new payroll system, why data and configuration matter so much, and why go-live should be considered the beginning of continuous improvement rather than the end of an implementation.
A recurring theme throughout the conversation is the human side of payroll. Kelly reflects on the emotion attached to pay, the importance of communication and trust, and the responsibility payroll teams carry when errors can have a very real impact on an employee’s life.
Kelly also discusses the changing expectations of payroll leaders, from growing compliance responsibilities and Payday Super to developing junior talent and ensuring payroll has a seat at the table when organisations make workforce, systems and compliance decisions.
More than pushing a button
Like many people working in payroll, Kelly Pora didn’t necessarily set out to build a career in it.
What began as part of an administration role has developed into a career spanning retail, charity, housing and aged care, including experience with complex payroll environments and major system change.
Now Payroll Manager at Vasey RSL Care, Kelly joined the organisation at a particularly interesting time — shortly after the implementation of Dayforce and as the business was moving out of its hypercare period.
For the first episode of Season 2 of Payroll Perspectives, Kelly joins Shawny Smith to discuss what she has learned from leading payroll through that transition, the increasing compliance and advisory expectations placed on payroll teams, developing the next generation of payroll talent, and why getting payroll right requires much more than technical expertise.
Episode transcript
Shawny: Hi Kelly. Thanks for joining me for Payroll Perspectives. We’re calling this Season 2, Episode 1, so it’s exciting to be back.
We usually start with a bit of a career introduction. You’re now Payroll Manager at Vasey RSL Care. Can you tell us about your career journey and what led you into payroll?
Kelly: Like a vast majority of payroll professionals, it wasn’t something I ever thought about or aspired to do. It’s essentially something I fell into.
I was Administration Manager at our local Harvey Norman for many years, and payroll formed part of that role. We had a managed payroll service, so I was essentially approving the pay runs and dealing with any issues that arose.
From there, I fell into a Payroll Officer role at a local charity in Ballarat. I was only there for a short period because the woman I replaced and I became quite good friends, and she eventually brought me across with her to Cotton On Group.
I worked there for three or four years in Geelong as part of a large retail payroll team. Obviously, Cotton On processes payroll all over the world, so it was really exciting and I learnt an enormous amount.
I then moved into the Melbourne payroll market and worked for another charity, Launch Housing. I started as a Senior Payroll Specialist managing BAU while my manager, who was the Finance Business Partner, undertook an implementation project.
I ended up absorbing her role when she became unwell and became the Finance Business Partner for the final 18 months of my time at Launch.
From there, I transitioned to Vasey RSL Care as Payroll Manager, where I’ve now been for around 10 months and I’m absolutely loving it.
Shawny: You’ve previously described what you’ve been doing there as almost a Dayforce “fixer-upper”.
You joined around the end of the implementation and hypercare period. What has that experience been like, and what has been the biggest lesson from embedding and improving the system?
Kelly: I came on board just as we were ending the hypercare period. The organisation had gone live with Dayforce around six months before I started.
It was a huge learning curve because I hadn’t used Dayforce before. I’d come from a different payroll product, and everybody within the organisation was still learning as well.
There had also been some turnover. I replaced a long-term Payroll Manager, while one of the key subject matter experts on the Dayforce project had moved on to another organisation.
So it was an interesting time to try to learn everything very quickly and work out what was happening.
Predominantly working across aged care and home care also means we have some quite complex awards and EBAs. There was a lot to understand in terms of what was right, what needed improvement and how the system had been configured.
The last six months in particular have really been about bedding down that knowledge, making sure the configuration is working and ensuring that we’re compliant.
It has definitely been busy.
Shawny: You’re running a fortnightly payroll for around 650 employees. What does your current team structure look like, and what are the biggest moving parts involved in getting payroll out the door?
Kelly: We operate with a small but highly capable team. Essentially there are two of us — my Payroll Officer, who is an absolute godsend, and myself.
The biggest moving parts are always data quality and timing.
We need to make sure rosters, timesheets, leave and variations are all accurate and approved before we begin the pay run.
There’s a huge emphasis on the quality of that information. Because everybody across the organisation is still relatively new to the system, that also means communicating with managers and making sure they’re approving and processing things correctly.
Ultimately, we need accurate information flowing through to payroll.
Even with automation, payroll is still very much about vigilance. A successful pay run is the result of dozens of small checks and doing those things consistently.
You need to make sure things are right from the base upwards.
Shawny: Payroll is interesting because there’s the finance, data and checking side, but there’s also such a significant customer service and people partnership component.
To be really good in payroll, you need both.
Kelly: Absolutely.
I’m very much of the view that you catch more flies with honey. Being an open and welcoming place for people to ask questions makes such a difference.
You get much more reciprocal movement when there’s a friendly face and an open door, and people aren’t scared of payroll or reluctant to engage with us.
At the end of the day, we’re all here for the same reason. We want people to be paid correctly, and we need everybody’s help to do that.
Sometimes we need to get out of our own way and make it easier for everybody.
Shawny: Humanising the payroll function and being known within the organisation makes those conversations easier too.
Payroll has people’s livelihoods in its hands. When something goes wrong, people can quite rightly become upset.
Kelly: Absolutely.
There’s that old saying about payroll: “All you do is push a button.”
Part of our role is helping people understand that it’s a lot more than that.
But from our side, we also need to understand that payroll is very emotional to people.
When something goes wrong, people can be upset — and rightfully so. None of us are doing this for free.
As payroll professionals, we have to understand that it isn’t a personal attack on us when an issue happens.
The communication needs to be there so everyone is thinking, “Okay, there’s an issue. What is it? How do we communicate it? How do we move forward? And how do we make sure it doesn’t happen again?”
At the same time, how do we ensure employees trust us and are confident in our ability to do our jobs?
At the end of the day, that’s what it’s about. People need confidence that they’re going to be paid correctly and on time.
Go-live isn't the finish line
Shawny: Going back to Dayforce, if somebody was about to embark on an implementation, what advice would you give them? And what does a successful outcome look like on the other side?
Kelly: Dayforce has been a significant undertaking for us, like any major system change would be.
The biggest lesson is the importance of understanding the business itself — the rules, the details and exactly what you need the system to do.
Payroll systems are extremely powerful, but they’re only as good as the information you put into them.
You need to qualify your data and your configuration before you even begin that process.
The other major lesson is that go-live isn’t the finish line.
It isn’t a case of working and working towards implementation, going live and suddenly being finished.
There’s a lot of continuous improvement that needs to happen afterwards.
Even after an extensive UAT process, where you’ve checked your configuration and tested and tested, there will still be things that sneak through or situations that don’t work exactly as anticipated.
Go-live is really the starting point for reviewing, stabilising and then building confidence across the organisation.
You don’t want to go live, lose employees’ trust in the system and then wonder what to do next.
You need to keep working at it.
Shawny: And payroll information, awards and EBAs don’t stay the same either. There are always changes coming through that need to be reviewed.
Kelly: Exactly. Things change very quickly, and sometimes even the interpretation of something can change.
Knowing when to ask for specialist help
Shawny: You’re working with a lean team, and you mentioned bringing in external consultants to provide support.
When you’re navigating a complex environment, how do you decide when it’s the right time to bring in external expertise?
Kelly: For us, it came down to identifying work that required specialist expertise where our internal team simply didn’t have the capacity.
Between payroll and IT, we could learn some of those things ourselves over an extended period, but we would be trying to weave that learning in and out of the BAU responsibilities of our roles.
You have to balance that against the cost of external consultants.
It might take me two weeks to figure something out while also doing everything else, whereas I could have a half-hour conversation with somebody who can say, “Do X, Y and Z and it will fix it,” or provide an updated report that solves the problem.
You have to consider capacity and return on investment.
Yes, external support costs money. But is it going to save you money in the long run?
There’s also the accuracy and speed of what specialists can provide.
Particularly with compliance, sometimes being able to resolve an issue quickly is extremely valuable.
Shawny: That speed is becoming increasingly important given the focus on payroll compliance.
Kelly: Definitely.
We’ve built a great relationship with the team we’ve brought in, and we’ve had some really good wins.
That also helps the executive team see the return on that investment because we’re ticking things off the list that have been sitting there simply because we haven’t had the capacity to get to them.
I’d love to sit down and look at that work all day, but there are more pressing things.
People need to get paid.
The benefit of consultants is also that ebb and flow. It isn’t necessarily a fixed FTE.
We might need an hour this week and two days next week. You can flex the support based on what the business actually needs.
Leading payroll through pressure
Shawny: Managing a team through change and pressure is a real test of leadership.
How do you keep morale up and keep people focused when things are stretched?
Kelly: For me, it comes down to communication, support and perspective.
Payroll can be extremely high pressure, and people need to feel that they aren’t carrying that weight alone.
I’m very open with my team about priorities, and also with the wider teams we work with, whether that’s People and Culture or Finance.
Everybody needs to understand the challenges and our actual priorities so we can make sure the work the business needs from us gets done while still keeping payroll moving.
I also make sure we celebrate the wins, even the small ones.
When you’re in the thick of change, it’s easy to forget how much progress you’ve actually made.
We try to reflect on that.
I also want to create an environment where questions are welcomed and people feel safe asking them.
We flag issues early and we have a bit of a mantra that everything is fixable.
If there’s an issue, we talk about it. We work out what happened, how we fix it and what we can do to stop it happening again.
We’re a chatty bunch — even though there are only two of us — and we love a laugh.
But we’re also very open when something goes wrong.
Shawny: You mentioned learning from the managers you’ve worked with throughout your career too.
Kelly: Absolutely.
We’ve all worked with managers where there are things you draw from and think, “When I become a manager, that’s something I’d like to emulate.”
Then, on the other side, there are things you think, “I absolutely wouldn’t do that.”
A lot of leadership is drawing inspiration from the people around you, understanding what kind of manager you’d like to be and hopefully reflecting positively for somebody else.
The emotional weight of payroll
Shawny: There’s so much responsibility in payroll leadership, and we’re seeing people burn out because they feel like they have the world on their shoulders.
They’re being asked to do and give so much. Leaders need to help their teams find some balance.
Kelly: Exactly.
I think a large majority of people who work within payroll are ultra-empathetic.
We understand that it isn’t always as simple as saying, “We can’t get that done; we’ll do it next time.”
That could mean the difference between somebody being able to feed their family or not.
You can’t necessarily say, “You were five minutes late, so now you don’t get paid.”
There are millions of those little decisions and questions you make every day.
The challenge is finding that balance between being there for everybody while not taking all of it on personally.
You still need to be able to go home and break away from it.
Preparing for Payday Super
Shawny: Payday Super is coming.
It feels like something we’ve been talking about forever. How would you compare the changes ahead with what payroll teams went through with STP?
Kelly: It’s definitely a significant shift, but in many ways it builds on the foundations created through STP.
There’ll be more transparency and more frequency, with much more real-time reporting.
Historically, super has been a quarterly process for many organisations, or monthly for us.
Moving to payments aligned with payday is going to require tighter alignment between payroll, finance and cash flow.
There’ll need to be more communication between payroll and finance to make sure the cash flow is there.
For us, I think it’s less about technical complexity because we already have many of those processes embedded.
I feel our organisation is well geared for the change.
I think businesses that handled STP well will generally be well placed because those processes are already there. They’ll need to pivot and make sure the data is ready.
We’re all in the same boat.
I’ve been to countless meetings, breakfasts and discussions where people are talking about it.
Yes, everybody is worried to an extent, but the goalposts aren’t changing.
They’re not moving them.
We’ve just got to be ready to run.
Why payroll needs a seat at the table
Shawny: Compliance obligations around wage theft have shifted significantly in recent years.
How has that level of accountability changed, and where do you see the biggest pressure points?
Kelly: The accountability on payroll teams has increased dramatically.
There’s now a very clear expectation that organisations proactively ensure compliance rather than simply reacting when something goes wrong.
The biggest pressure points are things like award interpretation and rostering practices — making sure everything is being configured correctly from the start.
Even small errors can compound over time.
Payroll teams are now expected to be both operational and analytical.
We’re running the pay while also identifying risks, auditing data in real time and providing advice to the business when we don’t believe something is right.
It’s a lot.
It reinforces why payroll needs a seat at the table when decisions are being made around workforce management, systems and compliance.
Payroll shouldn’t simply come in afterwards to fix it.
Creating the next generation of payroll talent
Shawny: Something I’ve been talking about for the last three to five years is how we bring new people into payroll.
Most people historically fell into the industry, but increasingly people are consciously choosing payroll as a career.
The problem is there are still relatively few genuine entry-level positions.
How are we going to create the next generation of payroll professionals?
Kelly: It’s really difficult.
Even a lot of junior-style roles are asking for experience, and you have to ask: how are people supposed to get that experience?
I’m a big advocate for creating junior roles.
Even if someone starts as a Payroll Administrator doing basic tasks, they can learn the company and learn payroll from the ground up.
It’s also important from a disaster-planning perspective.
I’ve worked in organisations where things have gone very wrong and suddenly an entire team is unavailable because different personal circumstances happen to coincide.
You need knowledge across the business.
Obviously, everybody wants someone who can hit the ground running, but unless people are given the base knowledge, how can they do that?
We need to give people the skills they need to succeed.
That means more junior roles and more administration roles that people can progress through.
We need to set people up to win.
Shawny: Employers also often have enormous lists of “must-haves”.
They want payroll experience, industry experience, experience in a particular system, someone in a particular location and all within a particular salary range.
Sometimes giving someone something to learn can actually help with retention too.
Kelly: Absolutely.
We’re currently pushing for more cross-training within our teams for exactly that reason.
Because I accidentally fell into payroll, I’d also love to see more people who are actively interested in the industry coming into it from the beginning.
There are so many barriers at the moment — different systems, different awards and different industries.
Some employers are looking for ultra-specific qualities, and I think they can do themselves a disservice.
The most important thing for me is fit.
You can teach just about anything.
The person needs to fit within the team and the culture of the business.
There are already processes you can teach.
If somebody wants to learn and they fit the culture, that’s an amazing starting point.
What payroll leadership actually involves
Shawny: For somebody earlier in their payroll career who wants to move into leadership, what would you tell them about what the job actually involves compared with what they might expect?
Kelly: From the outside looking in, I think some people see management as a lot of talking and a lot of meetings.
And there are definitely meetings!
But leadership to me is doing what you say you’re going to do, saying what you mean and going the extra mile for the people you work with.
It’s making sure everybody is set up to succeed.
It’s going to bat for people when they’re drowning in work or need help troubleshooting something.
There are so many balls you’re juggling.
It’s about time management, being responsible for other people’s work and sanity, making sure expectations are aligned and constantly prioritising and reprioritising.
Sometimes you might reprioritise 15 times in one day depending on what comes in.
There’s never a dull moment.
Leadership is also about being visible and open to conversations.
For me, it’s about creating relationships across the business so I have people I can go to when I’m snowed under, and they also know they can come to me and I’ll chip in and help.
There isn’t really a “that’s not in my job description” mentality.
With payroll, there are so many things that fall in and out of your remit.
You roll with the punches and deal with whatever crops up next.
Shawny: I think sometimes people expect that moving into leadership will give them more control, more decision-making power and more time for analytical and strategic work.
Some of that is true, but there are also a lot of tough conversations, stakeholder management and advocating for your team.
The higher you go, particularly in a large organisation, the more people-focused the role can become.
Kelly: Exactly.
There are so many different avenues within payroll now, and you need to reflect on what you actually enjoy.
If you’re somebody who loves getting your sleeves up, processing and being involved in everything, you may enjoy a smaller environment where you can get your hands dirty.
If you want to move towards people management, you may enjoy being a Payroll Manager or Head of Payroll within a larger team where you have people working autonomously.
If you love the nitty-gritty and figuring out what’s going on behind the scenes, an analyst or compliance role might suit you.
There are so many options.
You’re really only limited by what you want to do and what you feel will make you happy.
Just go for it.
Shawny: And moving into management isn’t necessarily the only way to progress financially either. Senior analysts and specialists can build fantastic careers.
It’s about understanding your skill set and what you’re actually driven by.
Kelly: Absolutely.
Most of us started by processing, and there may come a point where you decide you’re done with that and want to focus on something else.
You’ve got compliance, analyst roles, management roles and different pathways.
It’s about finding where your skills are best aligned and what’s going to make you happy.
We work a lot.
You need to be relatively happy in your job.
Shawny: I think that’s a great place to finish.
Kelly, thank you so much for joining me for the first episode of Season 2 of Payroll Perspectives.
There’s so much value in what you’ve shared.
Kelly: Thanks so much for the opportunity. It’s been great fun.
