Published June 3, 2025

At Chime, we are committed to helping payroll professionals have a seat at the table, which is why we launched the 30x30 movement to elevate 30 Chief Payroll Officers by 2030. But you don’t have to wait until 2030 to start having an impact and be recognized. That can begin today!

We recently hosted a webinar with April Smith who shared some of her secrets to being promoted to VP of Pay & Benefit Management at Senior Lifestyle. One of the questions we didn’t have time to cover was:

“What are 3 practical steps I can take right now to make a bigger impact?” - Karen

We thought it was such a great question that we wrote this blog to answer it. In no particular order, here are 3 things you can do now.

1. Keep your C-Suite regularly informed

Payroll professionals work behind the scenes, so their contributions tend to go unnoticed. If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? While you’re contemplating that eternal mystery, consider that only 13% of 30x30 members say their CEOs know how hard their job is. While there may be many causes of this problem, there is just one solution - you! The  best way for senior management to be aware of payroll’s strategic impact is through your ongoing communications.

Manage it like a process and develop a cadence. How often do you want to email senior executives about key initiatives? When should you share success stories? How often should you meet? Your communications don’t need to be boastful or overly impressive - just informative. Don’t forget to mention the landmines you’ve avoided through your compliance excellence. Those are most likely to be the areas that your CEO knows nothing about and will appreciate the most.

And it doesn’t just have to be about your or your team. It could be success stories about other departments working with payroll. It could even be external developments relevant to the business. April even signed her CEO up to email distributions on payroll industry news. Be creative!

2. Identify a data trend

If data is the new gold then payroll is sitting on a gold mine. The thing about actual gold mines is you have to sift through a lot of rocks to get the good stuff. 2,000 pounds could yield just one gram of gold. Fortunately, payroll data mining is a lot easier and you can do it all from your desktop. And the data nuggets are worth more than gold when it comes to delivering value to the business. Here a few examples:

• Overtime costs - Over the last twelve months, what has been the pattern of overtime costs? How do they compare to the prior twelve months? Are they concentrated in certain locations? Among certain people? Ask enough questions like this and you’ll eventually spot one or more interesting trends you can share with Operations or HR.
• Absenteeism - Now you can ask some of the same questions about absenteeism. Chances are you’ll find some correlation with the overtime trends. Absenteeism is one of the biggest productivity killers so any insights you can bring to the table will be valued.
• Other ideas - depending on your role, you could also look at retention & turnover, benefits adoption & costs, onboarding, total labor costs and even financial wellness. At Chime, we’re working with employers to give them free tools to not only deliver financial wellness to their employees but also measure the results in real-time.

3. Propose a solution to a problem

April shared this on the webinar and her wisdom is worth repeating: your CEO wants solutions, not just problems. Of course, this doesn’t mean you should just disregard all the problems you encounter. Quite the opposite - when you identify a problem that could impact the organization, then you should by all means raise it up the flagpole, especially if no one else is aware of it. But before you do so, do your research. How could the problem be solved? Is it a quick fix or does it require an investment of personnel or resources? If there are multiple solutions, do they have different costs and benefits? What does the ROI look like? Present the facts and your recommendation. If it impacts another department, then don’t forget to collaborate. You’ll have the benefit of their input and their appreciation.

If you’re doing these 3 steps already, then congratulations - you’re well on your way! If not, then here’s your opportunity to make a bigger impact now. Of course, these steps work best in tandem. The more you’re in communication with your senior management (Step 1), the more they’ll be willing to look at your data trends (Step 2) and the more interested they’ll be in your solutions to problems they didn’t even know existed (Step 3).

Do you have any tips on how to drive impact within your organization ?  Feel free to share them in our 30x30 Facebook community!