Ellis Rees

Strategic Account Director at Automatic Data Processing Limited

When and why did you join the CIPP?

I actually joined a long time ago, in 1988. Part of the reason I joined was because I was one person working in a payroll team which had no contact with anyone else. It was the concept of keeping up to date with legislation other than looking at the Inland Revenue books that came through, as well as talking to other members and understanding some of the challenges that they had and developed some of the ideas back into what I was doing. As I say, I was pretty much on my own at the time with no one else I knew in the industry.

Which benefits of the CIPP membership appeal to you the most?

I think from my point, the magazine is useful for me to develop my ideas with my team and talking points as well as the support team. I use that quite a lot when I’m really stuck on questions that I can’t go to let’s say directly to HM Revenue & Customs, and I think that is pretty much it.

How has the CIPP membership helped you in your career?

It’s given me a professional qualification. I’m probably slightly unique in that I work directly in the payroll industry for a company that provides software so within my industry I can talk to people at peer to peer level and understand some of the challenges I’ve got. It’s also a recognition that if I need a payroll manager from another company they know as a standard that I have a fellow membership.

Tell us about a time when you or your department found benefit from the support of the CIPP

That’s quite easy: some of the challenges we get arise when we’re unsure on a position, so this is where the Advisory Service is invaluable to us. This is a good example of where we’ve used the services of the CIPP.

Tell us about the day that you realised that the CIPP membership was a real value to yourself

From my view it’s from the first day that I joined the CIPP. Because I have worked on my own in an industry where I had no contact with anyone else, being able to actually speak to somebody in the same industry and understand some of the challenges they’ve got, helped me through the complexities of payroll when I first joined the industry.

For someone who is thinking about joining as a member, what would your advice be to them about what they could gain?

It’s the expertise in the industry. It’s working with people who are like-minded and just any insight into what they are doing in terms of daily basis because not one payroll is the same as another – so although when we look at payrolls there are some basics, actually how people operate payrolls is very different – so that’s quite useful.