A New Level of Payroll Professionalism: Prism Awardees Embrace Strategic Change, Empathy

Clockwise from l-r: Amanda Kassler, CPP, Otsuka America, Inc.; Erin Rafferty, CPP, G&A Partners; Samantha Raffield, CPP, Harris Health; and Wendy Nehring, CPP, Blain Supply, Inc.

Cover photo by Active Motion Media.

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The payroll industry exists in an environment of continuous improvement. New technologies have significantly modernized processes, allowing payroll teams to focus more on the strategic and less on the mundane. Change, that constant companion, has enabled payroll professionals to become strategic leaders who not only have a seat at the table but are a reassuring presence to the employees they serve.

The 2025 Prism Award recipients represent this new level of payroll professionalism that embraces change while demonstrating empathy for employees and an expertise that is unsurpassed. The following payroll and shared services departments earned a Prism Award for best practices in the following categories:

• • Overall—Harris Health, Bellaire, Texas
• • Technology—The George Washington University, Ashburn, Virginia
• • Processes—Blain Supply, Inc., Janesville, Wisconsin
• • Management—G&A Partners, Houston, Texas
• • Shared Services—Otsuka America, Inc., San Francisco, California

The 2025 Prism Award recipients demonstrated exceptional leadership and teamwork to positively impact their organizations and employees. Here are their amazing stories.

Harris Health—Overall

Harris Health, formerly known as the Harris County Hospital District, has more than 13,000 employees working in 50 locations. Harris Health serves a population of nearly 5 million residents in Harris County, Texas, which includes the cities of Baytown, Houston, Humble, Katy, and Pasadena.

“We lead by example among payroll professionals,” said Samantha Raffield, CPP, Director of Payroll Services for Harris Health. “Our team holds influential roles in PayrollOrg’s Strategic Payroll Leadership Task Force (SPLTF) Health Care Subcommittee. We also presented at the Texas Payroll Conference in September, underscoring our commitment to advancing the field and sharing our stories.”

In 2022, Harris Health was emerging from the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic while still experiencing the difficulties of processing payroll on the system’s 20-year-old legacy system. The system had become unsustainable and was routinely unable to support the scale or complexity of the hospital district’s operations.

“We were always behind on version controls and system patches, often upgrading only when it was vendor-mandated,” Raffield recalled. “Implementation was essential because automating and optimizing processes on aging technology would have been significantly more costly and unsustainable in the long-term. A full re-implementation offered a more cost-effective path forward, delivering stronger ROI while positioning the organization for scalable growth and modernization.”

Some of the payroll department’s top accomplishments resulting from the implementation included:

• Ensured Compliance—Automated time tracking, via the new attestation module and Workforce Auditor, significantly reduces risks of costly fines, penalties, and back wage claims by eliminating manual process issues like timecard shaving and padding
• Increased Efficiency—Self-service tools and automation streamline processes, substantially reducing manual timecard edits, lag delays, and administrative burden
• Enhanced Fatigue Management—The system improved staff well-being and safety through better workload balancing and meal/rest break adherence, gradually addressing past issues where 42% of staff missed lunches, 25% lacked sleep periods, and 60% faced excessive workloads
• Created Greater Visibility—Managers now have real-time, dynamic overtime monitoring tools across all departments allowing for proactive cost containment schedule changes

  Meanwhile, the difficulties payroll frequently encountered with the legacy system made implementing a cloud-based system even more critical to ensure compliance and to streamline and improve payroll processes…

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The George Washington University—Technology

Universities face unique payroll challenges, particularly because a significant portion of the workforce is made up of student employees who often hold multiple jobs across various departments or are foreign students attending university on a visa. Even in prestigious universities like The George Washington University, located in the nation’s capital where big changes are constantly the norm, managing timekeeping for a student workforce of more than 26,000 can be a real pain point.

Then, of course, there are another 15,000 staff members at the university that include administrative personnel, faculty, medical residents, and researchers at seven locations in 37 states and in 11 countries.

“With a dedicated team of 11 payroll professionals, we manage an in-house payroll across multiple states and pay frequencies,” said Glenna Bennett, CPP, Director of Payroll Services at The George Washington University.

In November 2023, the university embarked on a transformative journey to upgrade a legacy system that was in place for nearly 20 years. Prior to the implementation, it was difficult to view and manage multiple positions within the system, which led to frequent payroll errors and a significant amount of manual cleanup.

These issues severely impacted employee satisfaction and consumed valuable time and resources within the payroll department. The payroll department’s goal was to fully redesign their workforce management approach, aligning with industry best practices and future business needs.

A year before the implementation began, payroll launched targeted sessions across multiple departments to showcase the proposed system designs, gather user input, and identify inefficiencies.

“We collaborated closely with HR business partners to evaluate pay rules—determining which rules needed updates, which were no longer relevant, and identifying requirements for new ones,” said Bennett. “Once a test system was available, we held additional review sessions with departments and HR stakeholders, allowing users to explore the system and provide feedback on its direction and functionality.”

This collaborative approach laid a strong foundation for a user-centered implementation, ensuring the system met both operational and strategic needs. Most importantly, it fostered a sense of ownership among users. This wasn’t a system they were simply required to use; it was one they helped shape…

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Blain Supply, Inc.—Processes

In an age of big box stores, it can feel a bit nostalgic to walk through the doors of one of America’s oldest discount retailers, especially a retailer like Blain’s Farm and Fleet, which has always catered to rural customers. In 1955, brothers Claude and Bert Blain opened the first Blain’s Farm and Fleet store in Janesville, Wisconsin, in a tiny 1,000 square foot store.

Fast forward 70 years, and Blain’s Farm and Fleet—also known as Blain Supply, Inc.—is still headquartered in Janesville. While still owned by the Blain family, it has grown substantially, with 46 locations in 10 Midwestern states.

Like the American retail landscape, the payroll profession has experienced significant changes. In October 2022, when Blain’s Supply hired a new payroll director, different areas within the department were closely scrutinized and processes were examined to determine which areas needed streamlining.

It didn’t take long to identify some areas—many that had been in place for decades—in need of modernization.

“[There were] many of our payroll processes that were highly manual and lacked sufficient audits and controls,” said Wendy Nehring, CPP, Associate Payroll Manager. “Associates didn’t have access to their personal or pay information other than what was on their paper paystubs. Very little payroll backup was saved electronically, making it difficult to research questions and provide audit responses. Improving these workflows became a priority for the payroll team.”

The payroll department partnered right away with the total rewards department and enabled employee and manager self-service (ESS/MSS) within a couple of months. There was also an evaluation of the existing payroll staff, many of whom had been processing payroll for many years and had a great reputation.

They, however, didn’t have a lot of payroll industry knowledge, so new remote staff were hired in early 2023 to bring in their payroll expertise and drive the transformation. The payroll team conducted a thorough review of existing payroll processes to identify inefficiencies and areas for improvement. Once these were outlined and prioritized, the issues were shared with key stakeholders.

“The stakeholders were highly receptive to the proposed changes,” said Nehring. “Rather than challenging the initiative, they offered strong support and encouragement, recognizing the need for modernization and enhanced controls. It was so widely known that our processes were out of date that it didn’t take any buy-in to get projects improved.”

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G&A Partners—Management

The value organizations had to place on the wellbeing of their staff members increased dramatically amid the COVID-19 health crisis when remote and hybrid work environments became more acceptable. The changing landscape of America’s workforce that began with the 2020 pandemic helped to spotlight the importance of prioritizing employees.

However, Houston-based G&A Partners has long embraced this practice of treating their staff like family. Similarly, the company believes its staff members follow this example and also treat their clientele like family.

In fact, everything at G&A starts with taking care of its people.

“Nearly every new and existing team member tells us that G&A’s payroll department is the best place they have ever worked,” said Erin Rafferty, CPP, G&A Partners’ Vice President of Client Payroll Operations and Client Onboarding. “How do we accomplish this? Support from peers and managers and excellent teamwork are two key reasons.”

This formula creates employees who are happy to come to work and who want to provide excellent service to fellow staff members and the company’s growing list of clients. Aiming to establish a culture of excellent teamwork and employee empowerment, the company has adopted several new key best practices since 2023 that have helped to boost morale and support professional growth.

These best practices include the following:

• Remote working opportunities—Allowing staff members to continue to work from home has boosted employee morale
• Automated PTO balances on paychecks—The company implemented a process that automatically loads balances from the company’s time and labor management system, removing the need to input manually. This resulted in an estimated savings of $213,348. Accounting for 10% annual growth, the savings over a two-year span are projected to be $240,183.
• Management backup coverage system—When employees have a time-sensitive question, they need an immediate response, but managers aren’t always able to respond promptly due to meetings or paid time off. To ensure teams get assistance immediately, G&A created backup and round-robin manager coverage among their team of managers.
• Certification support program—When employees pursue Fundamental Payroll Certification (FPC) and/or CPP credentialing, G&A coordinates study groups and then provides financial assistance after they achieve certification to ensure they remain certified…

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Otsuka America, Inc.—Shared Services

Innovative thinking has been a core value of Otsuka since the company’s beginnings in 1921.

The Japanese pharmaceuticals conglomerate expanded to the United States in 1985. Today, Otsuka America, Inc., is made up of more than two dozen companies across the pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, and consumer markets, including Ridge Vineyards and vitamins and herbal supplements leader Pharmavite.

In 2024, Otsuka launched the Payroll Center of Excellence (PCOE), a shared services model designed to unify people, processes, and technology across its U.S. affiliates. The goal was to leverage consolidation, centralization, policy improvements, and advanced technologies to create a more efficient and effective payroll operation than traditional standalone services.

“The PCOE has implemented numerous best practices and enhancements that have delivered measurable benefits to our affiliates—particularly in cost and time savings, system utilization, standardization, accessibility, and scalability,” said Amanda Kassler, CPP, Payroll Shared Services Manager at Otsuka America, Inc. “Many of these services would have been cost-prohibitive for smaller affiliates.”

As a result, the PCOE has implemented numerous best practices and enhancements that have delivered measurable benefits to Otsuka affiliates, some of which include the following:

• Workflow Automation—Standardized and automated payroll and time-of-approval workflows across affiliates, reducing manual errors and turnaround times. This has improved service level agreement (SLA) compliance and reduced processing time by more than 30%.
• EWA and Paycards—Reduced manual check processing and mailing costs with a curent utilization rate of 28%
• Training and Communications Portals—Created centralized access to training materials, policy updates, and best practices, which improved payroll efficiency, ensured consistent knowledge transfer, and fostered an atmosphere of education and networking
• Compliance Dashboard and Auditing Tools—Created dashboards to strictly monitor compliance metrics, audit trails, and regulatory updates
• Jira Ticketing—Affiliates use the ticketing system to request access, report issues, and initiate enhancements

The PCOE is made up of two employees reporting to the vice president of finance at Otsuka America, Inc. The PCOE provides a centralized payroll processing department for three affiliates including the core Otsuka America, Inc. holding company, research lab A&P Inphatec, and Crystal Geyser Water Company. It offers full-service payroll for these affiliates, including coverage for vacations, emergencies, and one-person departments…

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Bryan Kirk is the Senior Writer and Editor of Membership Publications for PayrollOrg. Sean Tait Bircher is the Writer and Editor of Membership Publications for PayrollOrg.

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