Last night, Ascend Payroll was named the winner of the Team Excellence Award at the Reward Strategy Awards. An award that celebrates a team demonstrating outstanding collaboration, expertise and dedication to its clients.
We are especially delighted to have won this award as it is a category that recognises exactly what we set out to build when Ascend began. Not the biggest bureau, but a team that clients can genuinely rely on and that keeps getting better at what it does. Being recognised for that, by an independent panel of judges, means a great deal to everyone here.
Why the award matters to us
Ascend exists to deliver managed payroll differently. Too many businesses have experienced being funnelled through help desks and support tickets, speaking to someone new every time, and repeating the same problem over and over. We built our service model the other way round, around direct relationships, expert people, and a genuine commitment to continuous improvement. We have invested in great tech, but given an equal focus on the people element of the service.
Our most recent Customer Satisfaction Survey put numbers behind that approach.
- 92% of clients rated our onboarding as excellent or good.
- Every single respondent said our team was knowledgeable and easy to reach when they needed support
- 100% said they would recommend us.
Those results aren’t accidental. They’re the product of a deliberate decision to keep clients connected to the people who actually process their payroll.
A team built on the right habits, not just the right values
Our guiding principle is simple – ‘do the right thing, always’. But a principle only means something if it shows up in day-to-day behaviour, so we’ve built a set of team rituals around it, including
- Daily sit-down meetings
- Weekly look-aheads and retrospectives
- Risk and resilience reviews
- Post-implementation client reviews.
- Cross-skilling to avoid skill gaps
- Learn, Fix, Review log
- A buddy system that pairs senior processors with junior team members
- External coaching to build the softer skills that make a resilient team.
We knew this would build a strong team, and this was confirmed in our CIPP Payroll Assurance Scheme assessment, which described our team culture as “extraordinarily strong” and noted that we operate a genuine no-blame environment, where mistakes are treated as a learning curve rather than something to hide.
A win that belongs to the whole team
Awards like this are easy to frame as a company achievement, but this one belongs to the individuals who show up for clients and for each other every single day. It’s a recognition of the culture we’ve built together, and of the standard the team holds itself to without being asked.
Thank you to the judges for recognising that, and thank you to every client who took the time to share feedback that made this possible. We’re proud of what this award represents, and even more motivated to keep earning it.
