18 April 2021
Cliff Vidgeon BA(Hons) CMA ACG ChFCIPP, CIPP director and Institute secretary, recalls the way we were when starting his career
I used to think that when it came to memory the brain acted like a sieve, retaining the larger meaningful chunks, and losing forever the bulk of life experiences. More recently I have refined that thinking due to a few instances where my recollection has been triggered by an array of disparate senses and encounters like the smell of brass polish, a chance meeting and, most recently, having to think about writing an article about my early days at work. Recall is not straightforward and writing this piece has rekindled some random recollections of a period that I might not otherwise have thought about for some time, if at all.
First days Having attended ten schools and exiting with hardly a qualification to my name, it would be fair to describe my education as having been a bit chaotic. I hadn’t a clue what I wanted to do when I left my last school, so I fired off a short letter in the direction of my local Council asking if I could be considered for employment. I was invited to an interview at which I was asked if I had any maths qualifications and, being honest, my response was “no” adding that even basic arithmetic was a bit of a challenge. A few days later, I was offered a role in a payroll office and employed by the Birmingham Education Department. I was particularly attracted to being part of the education service because it occurred to me that the consumer experience gained from my excessive school count might have given me something of an advantage. I was wrong.
If I could be transported back to that time, I am sure I would be immediately struck by the overwhelming presence and strong smell of pipe and cigarette smoke in nearly every office. My first boss, Bill, was an inveterate pipe smoker and he shared a smallish office with a fellow pipe enthusiast and his deputy, a cigarette aficionado. When I entered their office on day one of my work adventure, it was like entering a tenebrous cave encasing multi-layers of murky smog. Bill was great and easy to talk to, but he had been quick to recognise my lack of suitability for payroll work and he told me so. However, he persevered with me, I suspect as something of a challenge.
...a tenebrous cave encasing multi-layers of murky smog.
Politics One of my first tasks was distributing incoming post. This involved date stamping it all and sorting into piles ready for delivery to the various teams and offices. I wasn’t at all prepared for office politics and I had to learn fast. On one of my post rounds, whilst delivering to one of the smaller offices, I was asked if I could close a window. It seemed an easy enough task and trying to be helpful I took it on with a cheery smile. As I moved toward the open window, “You can leave that window alone” bellowed out from behind an adjacent desk. Retreat seemed a reasonable tactic and I hopped it as quickly as I could. I was later advised that ‘window wars’ had been raging for some years, the protagonists being a health fanatic and a chain-smoker who shared an office and were locked in perpetual combat.
Shortly after I started work the Equal Pay Act 1970 found its way onto the statute book, although it didn’t come into force until December 1975. It is hard to convey the societal attitudes of that period and it was a time of change. I can remember an older colleague telling me that he left his trade union because of its support of equal pay. In explaining this to me he pointed to a large heavy box occupying a space on the floor in front of his desk. It was full of spare continuous computer paper. I was hoping that he wasn’t going to ask me to move it, but instead he asked me to show him ’a woman that can pick up that box?’. I didn’t take the challenge seriously. He apparently vehemently disagreed with equal pay and the box was somehow central to his beliefs. In all the time that I was there the box remained firmly rooted to the same part of the floor. Notably, some months after our conversation, the individual concerned injured his back and, if I had placed less value on my front teeth, I would have asked him if he intended to volunteer for a pay cut now that the box moving was no longer part of his skill set.
Work issues The main thrust of our activity involved paying staff employed in schools and it seemed to involve a disproportionate amount of time and resource being devoted to dealing with absences caused by sickness. Schools and colleges in the city were required to submit a paper absence return every week. Every day of absence was manually transcribed on to an absence record and each month we tried to assess the amount of state sickness benefit that each absentee was entitled to receive. (This was prior to the advent of statutory sick pay.) Sickness benefit was claimed by the individual directly from the Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS) and, to prevent staff being better off by going sick (and to save money), the sickness benefit received was deducted from salary. Just to make the process even more labour intensive, we would write and ask the employee concerned for evidence of the rate of sickness benefit receivable (form BS12 as I recall, issued by the DHSS to each recipient). For each full week of absence an employee was excused a National Insurance contribution and instead entitled to a credit from the DHSS. This too required a payroll adjustment.
Perhaps the most momentous event that had to be dealt with in my early payroll days was the conversion to decimal currency from pounds, shillings and pence or ‘£sd’ (abbreviated from the latin librae, solidi and denarii). It makes me feel quite old to note that this year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the conversion which took place on 15 February 1971. In the lead up to ‘D-day’ we issued payslips in dual currency, with all payments and deductions in £sd and the decimal equivalent in brackets. This was reversed in the months that followed with £sd finding itself relegated to the bracket. In more recent years I thought that a similar process would need to take place if we were to convert to the Euro. Another example of my being genned and ready for something that never happened.
The mid 1970s also saw the end of the National Insurance (NI) stamp and fixed rate contributions. Everyone had a NI card and an adhesive stamp was to be applied for each week for which a contribution was paid. As a large employer we were let off messing about with gummy stamps and instead submitted a proportion of mainly blank cards to the DHSS each quarter. (Based on the NI number suffix, ‘A’ suffix cards were returned after March, ‘B’ after June, and so on.) The only information we marked on cards was a ‘C’ for a credit for a full week of sickness absence or start date or date of leaving. The cards were then subjected to quite a rigorous reconciliation process.
...the important role that kindness and consideration can play...
Equipment Essential equipment in those days included carbon paper (yes, I am pre-photocopier), blotting paper (great for soaking up coffee spillages), a book of tables that helped you divide numbers by twelve (there were also other so called ‘ready-reckoners’) and an eraser. Perhaps the most interesting piece of serious kit that was in common use was the comptometer. It looked a little like a typewriter with numbered keys arranged in rows on a slightly inclined plane. Learning to use these wonderful objects and becoming a comptometer operator took considerable training. They were used for a range of calculations, often the addition of large columns of figures. If a comptometer operator checked and rubber stamped your work, you knew that it was the ultimate seal of approval.
The introduction of LED desk calculators led to an interesting debate. There were two schools of thought – those who regarded them as a supplement to efficiency and accuracy and those who thought that they would attract the ‘wrong sort’ to payroll offices (people who couldn’t add up). One of my more literary colleagues described them as “weeds of progress flowering in the ancient beds of culture”. I saw them as vital devices that might help me hold on to my job.
People We were quite a mix of characters with a largish contingent who had served in the armed forces during the second world war. They instilled a mixture of quiet discipline and comradeship to the way things were done. It was not until many years later that I came to appreciate and respect the commitment that many of my older colleagues devoted to the development of their younger colleagues. Bill spent much time and effort guiding me toward some meaningful qualifications and gave me the odd push when he thought I needed it. He also took pity on me and, in his kind and diplomatic way, moved me away from payroll (which, in all honesty, I not was not great at) towards an involvement in pensions administration. He was probably one of the most thoughtful people that I have ever worked with and we stayed friends throughout retirement. From him I learned so much about managing people and the important role that kindness and consideration can play in our organisations.
Featured in the May 2021 issue of Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward. Correct at time of publication.