Time to ditch the monthly payroll

Paying people once a month is an outdated hangover from the days of pen and paper. Employers need to get creative or lose out, says Merryn Somerset Webb.

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In 1954, UK-based technology company Pye Radio came up with a neat little cost-cutting innovation. In order to avoid the expense that came with collecting cash from the bank, guarding it, checking it and sorting it into individual wage packets, they decided they would pay their (mostly very skilled) workers by cheque.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.