When Karen joined DHU Healthcare as Head of Payroll and Pensions, she brought with her decades of experience in payroll across both the public and private sectors.
“I’ve been working in payroll since 1988,” Karen says with a smile. “I fell into it by chancereally, and I’ve stayed ever since.”
Karen’s career began in local government, working for county and city councils before progressing through several payroll management roles. More recently, she worked in the healthcare sector with a large organisation delivering social care services across England, NI, Scotland and Wales.
“In my last role we had over 15,000 employees and ran 44 different payrolls across the month,” she explains. “So I’m used to the complexity that can come with managing payroll at scale.”
Although DHU has a smaller workforce, Karen says the organisation still has its own unique complexity.
“We have just over 3,200 colleagues and three payrolls each month, but there are lots of moving parts and different services involved. I’m still getting my head around everything - but that’s part of the challenge I enjoy.”
Karen says the opportunity to work for DHU particularly appealed because of its connection to patient care and the wider NHS system.
“My parents both used NHS 111 when they were alive, and we had DHU doctors come out to my mum several times. So when I saw the role here, it really resonated with me. It made me realise how everything joins together, someone makes a call for help and there’s a whole network of people behind the scenes making sure support is there when it’s needed.”
While payroll may not be a patient-facing role, Karen believes it still plays an important part in supporting frontline services.
“Our job is to make sure colleagues are paid accurately and on time so they can focus on delivering care,” she says. “If someone is worried about whether they’ve been paid correctly, that’s an added stress they don’t need.”
Since joining DHU, Karen has been spending time getting to know the organisation and meeting colleagues across different teams.
“Everyone has been incredibly supportive,” she says. “My team has been fantastic and I’ve been meeting lots of people across the organisation to understand how everything fits together.”
Looking ahead, Karen is keen to build on existing processes and explore ways to make the payroll function even more efficient.
“The role is ultimately about teamwork and collaboration. Payroll touches so many different parts of the organisation,” she says. “When everything works well together, it helps make sure colleagues across DHU can focus on what they do best, delivering care and support to patients.”