We’re proud to announce that Ascend Payroll has been named a Partner Champion for the ICB Future Skills Challenge.
Every year, payroll software does more of the heavy lifting. Compliance checks, calculations and reconciliations keep getting faster and more automated, which frees up time. What that time gets spent on is a question worth taking seriously.
The automation can’t replace
The Future Skills Challenge is built around answering exactly that. Run by the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers, it’s a free programme designed to build the human skills that sit alongside technical ability, things like communication, judgement, problem-solving and professional confidence.
It isn’t a course, and there’s no test at the end. Each month has a theme and a menu of real-world activities that participants can complete in their own time, whether that’s five minutes or five hours. Along the way, people build a short record of their own growth, one they can genuinely use on their CV or in an interview.
As much as software is an integral part of what we deliver as a managed payroll service, software can’t sit across the table from a worried client and talk them through their options. It can’t spot the question nobody thought to ask.
Human judgement is what sets a great payroll service apart, and it is this kind of judgement that sets a payroll team apart. That’s the kind
of judgement this challenge is designed to build.
What being a Partner Champion means
As a Partner Champion, our role is straightforward. We’re supporting the challenge across our team and our network, sharing the monthly themes, encouraging our people to take part, and celebrating what they learn along the way.
For our payroll staff, that means activities that fit around the work they’re already doing, building confidence and initiative rather than adding to the workload. For us as a business, it’s a chance to back an initiative that takes the future of our profession seriously.
We’re proud to support a programme that’s helping shape what “future ready” really looks like for our industry, and we’re looking forward to sharing our team’s progress as the challenge unfolds.
