To celebrate National Payroll Week 2011, MidlandHR hosted its own version of the popular TV game show, Eggheads. Cunningly renamed ‘Payroll Egg-sperts’, the game put five of MidlandHR’s payroll experts to the test as customers sponsored a series of tough payroll questions in a bid to beat the experts. The game was adjudicated by Paul Willis, recently elected to the CIPP’s board of trustees, and hosted by Iain Moffat, MidlandHR’s services director.

During the game, the questions and results were posted in real-time on the MidlandHR twitter page, using the #NPW011 hashtag. With over 95% of the questions answered correctly, two of the particularly tricky questions did in fact successfully challenge MidlandHR’s egg-sperts, with John Griffiths, project manager at Flintshire County Council and Julie Proctor, payroll manager at International Power, both walking away with a prize of £50 Amazon vouchers.

The tables then turned on the audience, which split into five teams from different departments around the business. The final moments saw two teams held in a draw – the payroll outsourcing team and the product design and development team – when a lucky tie breaker question crowned the ‘Dev-heads’ as the winners.

“As a payroll and HR software and outsourcing services provider, it’s clear that National Payroll Week brings a much needed opportunity to celebrate hardworking payroll professionals whilst shining a light upon the industry itself,” comments Jenny McLoughlin, payroll manager in MidlandHR’s outsourcing services team. “To extend our payroll expertise, some members of our Payroll Egg-sperts – John Black, Neil Tonks and Bob Newsome – contribute to MidlandHR’s new specialist blog (www.midlandhr.co.uk/Information-Centre/Blog), sharing their industry expertise with the wider community. It is events like these which are imperative to building the profile of payroll as a skilled profession, and I am thrilled that MidlandHR used the opportunity to honour (and further challenge!) our own experts.”