Mark
Sherwood

WHO I HELP

Internal AAB Group teams. AAB Group Payroll clients.

HOW I HELP

Payroll. Global payroll. Payroll compliance. Process improvement, automation, and streamlining. Data access.

SECTORS/SUPPORT

All client sectors.

“I’M A NATURAL PROBLEM SOLVER; FINDING SOLUTIONS FOR MY CLIENTS IS A HUGE MOTIVATING FACTOR FOR ME.”

As a UK Payroll Transformation Consultant, Mark Sherwood’s key responsibility is driving and managing process improvements across the payroll service. This includes optimising systems, delivering automation opportunities, and ensuring compliance with UK payroll legislation.

Mark leads the projects to implement new payroll software to meet current and future requirements for both internal needs and external client requirements. Mark’s area of expertise necessitates embracing automation and artificial intelligence, whilst continually working alongside our professional, client-focused delivery teams.

With a role within our internal Payroll team, Mark’s main clients are the existing UK and Global Payroll teams. The improvements and system changes delivered by Mark and the wider Payroll team will benefit our entire client base in the UK and globally – from individual operators to large corporates.

OFFERING TAILORED SOLUTIONS

“Establishing credibility and understanding the client’s needs and challenges is an important first step in any relationship with a client. Identifying key objectives and offering the client solutions that accommodate the needs of both parties and demonstrating flexibility go a long way in establishing trust. While we are providing a service we work in partnership and our relationship extends to being part of the clients’ team.”

KNOWLEDGE & INTEGRITY

“Clients expect professionalism, sound legislative knowledge, related experience, integrity, and trust. There are often many ways to deliver solutions and I will always put our clients at the centre of our service and solutions.”

GIVING CLIENTS

“I am motivated by delivering service and solutions that offer real benefits to clients and colleagues. When we get it right, the client and our colleagues are able to spend more time on developing other areas of their business and achieving their goals.”

ALWAYS ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT

“Part of what I like about the payroll world is that there is always room for improvement. We have ever-changing legislation which certainly provides challenges in how best to implement change. It is empowering to deliver great outcomes and to share and learn with colleagues during what can be quite testing scenarios and the pressures of working within tight and immovable deadlines. There is never a dull moment in the payroll world and I’m constantly learning.”

UNUSUAL SOLUTIONS

“I like to explore many, and often unusual, solutions in comparison to the tried and tested route where this is possible. This is best achieved by pooling ideas and working collaboratively to draw on the experiences and ideas of colleagues across the AAB Group.

This makes AAB stand out from the crowd and provides a competitive edge which clients can benefit from. Being able to contribute on this basis is empowering and makes the job worthwhile.”

KEEPING UP TO DATE WITH TECHNOLOGY

“The payroll world is dependent on technology, and we must strive to keep pace with an ever-changing world where automation and artificial intelligence is coming to the fore. It is far from the ‘press of a button’ as some of the non-payroll community often see it, but when tech works well it can be seen as seamless.

Providing client/customer centric processes and easy to use technology minimises the time and effort spent on payroll as a critical business function. There will, however, always be the need for the human touch where empathy and pragmatism are needed in the handling of pay errors or client issues that a robot cannot offer. Or at least not yet. It is the combination of tech and people that deliver great outcomes, and keeping a balance of both is important in client facing service delivery.

The key is to keep up with the technology advances and being able to deliver client solutions by being flexible problem solvers.”

CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS

“Keeping up to date with ongoing changes to payroll legislation and employment law is an ongoing challenge. At AAB, and within IES, we have close working relationships with HMRC and tech providers to provide insight from our industry on how legislation impacts on the practicalities of payroll service delivery.

EMBRACING AI

“We must embrace AI. This eliminates human error, improves output quality, and releases resource from manual processes. Resource can be assigned to value add and quality control. We must also ensure the human touch is ever present and supplements our technology and automated solutions.

Establishing payroll as a career choice is really important as we move towards more automation and AI. This impacts the resource pool, and the availability of good payroll people is becoming more challenging. Payroll is a specialism and while tech can perform processes clients require knowledge, expertise, empathy, pragmatism, and flexibility a bot cannot provide.”

CHALLENGING THE NORM

“I am pleased to be in a business that challenges the norm, is prepared to disrupt, and invest in tech to improve our service offering. I expect to be busy and engaged on some exciting projects that make AAB the provider of choice. The fact we provide many business-critical services puts AAB in a strong position in the market demonstrated by the steady growth of new clients.”

COMMITTED TO DELIVERING FIRST-CLASS SERVICE

“Of all the AAB Group core values, ‘clients are our passion’ stands out for me as the most important, and it’s one of our main strengths. Without our clients, we’d have no business. AAB Group is unique in offering tailored services with a flexible approach and provides service in a way that is of mutual benefit to both the group and our clients. Being disruptive and thinking outside the box and the usual way of doing things is what sets us apart from the competition.

I am committed to, and motivated by, delivering first class service to our clients, and ensuring continuous improvement, so this value is definitely part of my personal ethos and approach to work.”

BEING PROACTIVE IN AVOIDING COMMON PITFALLS

“I’ve gained lots of experience in payroll across various sectors and in various capacities in outsourced, in-house, and consulting roles. I know how important it is to learn from mistakes and now I know how to avoid common and often unforeseen pitfalls, so I’m a good fit in my role to deliver process and system improvements across the payroll service.”

THE GREATEST COMPLIMENT FROM A CLIENT

“In a previous outsourced payroll role, a client said ‘You get it. You take the time to understand our needs and when errors and issues happen you are quick to take ownership, fix it, and get the fix in place.’

This sums me up pretty well as problem-solving is one of my strengths and, and finding solutions for my clients is a huge motivating factor for me.”

BOOSTING THE PROFILE OF PAYROLL AS A CAREER

“Besides the payroll is a ‘press of a button’ thinking, payroll is not a career of choice and many, including myself, landed in payroll by accident and never moved out again. I’d like to change this and encourage people to enter payroll as a career choice.

I’ve had a great career in payroll across many sectors and in various roles. It would be great to raise the profile of payroll and bring future generations into the profession as us older payrollers come to the end of our shelf life.

What we do is a critical business function that needs a steady pipeline of payrollers at entry level with a pathway to upward development. While we see more and more system automation and AI in the payroll world, we still need people with the skills and knowledge to understand and perform the basics in how payments and deductions are calculated. More so in our client facing roles where we need to demonstrate expertise and the ability to provide lay person explanations of often complex matters.”