Name: Senior Payroll & Benefits Manager

Salary: £75,000 plus bonus

Location: North London

A leading organisation based in North London has an urgent requirement for a Senior Payroll & Benefits Manager to lead and manage the Payroll & Benefits team ensuring accurate processing of the high volume payrolls.

Responsibilities include:

• Ensuring all payroll deadlines for weekly and monthly payrolls are met including tax year-end procedures
• Ensuring new payroll legislation and requirement are adhered to including reporting requirements i.e. gender pay gap
• Implementing comprehensive annual pay review changes
• Managing all of the company benefits schemes
• Managing the auto-enrolment process and multiple defined pension contribution schemes

To be considered for this Senior Payroll & Benefits Manager position, applicants must have experience of managing a large payroll team and have experience of processing high volume multiple payrolls. If you have the CIPP payroll qualification as well as experience of using an ERP system, this will be highly advantageous.

JGA Recruitment Group Ltd. (“We”) are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. We are a specialist payroll, HR & Marketing recruitment agency and recruitment business as defined in the Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003 (our business). This statement together with our privacy notice sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us.

The role –

As our Payroll & Benefits Specialist, you’ll join our growing HR team who pride themselves on delivering an exceptional service to CFC colleagues in our London, New York and Brussels offices. You will manage and process three payrolls, being the first point of contact in HR for any payroll/benefits queries, as well as handling any complex payroll and benefit issues with service vendors to help us optimise our approach to payroll and benefits.
You’ll bring your experience of managing UK and international payrolls and of implementing effective payroll policies, processes and working practices to ensure a first-class approach to compensation and benefits at CFC.
With your eye for detail and accuracy, you’ll enjoy collaborating with others to help us improve our MI/reporting and look for new ways to drive operational efficiencies within HR. This is a hybrid payroll & benefits and HR support role so will suit someone seeking a broader role to grow and expand their payroll/HR experience.

Responsibilities & accountabilities
Payroll
• Ensuring effective management, administration and payroll processing for three payrolls including our London HQ (360+ employees) and two new small office payrolls for Brussels and New York;
• Inputting of joiners, leavers, salary changes, pension contributions/allowances, sick pay, maternity and paternity leave/pay and variable pay changes (such as sign-on bonuses, ex-gratia payments etc.);
• Working with and managing our vendor relationships for ADP (UK), FMP (Brussels) and Paychex (US) ensuring that vendors deliver against agreed fully managed SLAs;
• Be the first point of contact for employee payroll related queries, escalating any complex queries to the HR Manager or payroll vendors for investigation;
• Support annual salary/bonus review and planning processes, working closely with the HR and Finance;
• Annual preparation of P11Ds and data submitted to the HMRC to ensure compliance with requirements;
• Regularly review payroll processing practices, policies and procedures and look for new ways to ensure that we maintain a robust and compliant approach to payroll processing and management for all regions;
• Produce relevant payroll journal and ad-hoc reporting for monthly/quarterly FC, HRD, CEO and ExCo packs and support annual HR/payroll audits working closely with HR/finance and our auditors as required;
• Work with our payroll provider (ADP) to collate gender pay gap reporting and work with the HR Director to produce our annual gender pay gap report and publish this in line with deadlines for annual reporting; and
• Work with our Talent Acquisition team to support pay benchmarking and keep abreast of legal/regulatory and payroll industry changes that present risks/challenges and opportunities for CFC.

Benefits and pension administration
• Responsible for administration of employee benefit plans for employees in London, New York and Brussels and work closely with our benefit plan insurers and providers to update employees on changes to plans;
• Be the first point of contact in HR for employee queries on benefit plans (income protection, life insurance, pension/401k, medical insurance, family friendly policies – maternity/paternity pay and voluntary benefits);
• Co-ordinate our new joiners/leavers process for adding/removing employees to benefits plans, working with our benefit plan insurers/providers and third-party administrators to ensure timely enrolment on/off plans;
• Explain our benefit plans to new joiners and provide enrolment forms to on-board new employees into our plans and promote participation in CFC’s benefits via our HR portal for employees (CFC Circle);
• Complete monthly pension payments, reporting and reconciliations, workplace pension auto enrolments and respond to employee pension plan queries (escalating to our pension providers as required); and
• Work with our 401k third-party administrator to provide joiners/leavers data and support the day-to-day administration of our pension plan to ensure compliance with plan requirements.

Systems & HR support
• Be the super-user for CFC Circle (SagePeople HRIS) responsible for joiners/leavers/transfers, salary/benefit changes and ensuring CFC Circle is kept up to date with any policy/document changes;
• Co-ordinate on-boarding of new joiners working closely with the talent acquisition team, L&D, IT and Finance to ensure timely notification and actioning for joiners/leavers and internal transfers; and
• Be the subject matter expert for payroll and benefits in HR and keep the HR team up to date with any changes to legislation that impact payroll/benefits (e.g. using tools such as XpertHR).

Skills, knowledge and experience
• You have at least 4-5 years’ experience of UK and international payroll processing along with benefit plan administration in a previous role most likely at Payroll & Benefits Specialist / Officer level;
• You will most likely have strong experience of major payroll system such as ADP (Paychex desirable) and have vendor management skills to ensure we get the best from our payroll/HRIS vendors;
• You have thorough knowledge of statutory requirements relating to payroll and a broad understanding of pensions and UK / US employee benefit plans;
• Experience of administering an HRIS is preferred as you’ll be our super-user for SagePeople (CFC Circle);
• You’re confident using Excel (use of Pivot tables, VLOOKUPs) and manipulating complex data; and
• A team player with good planning and prioritization skills but equally confident working alone on projects.

Education & Qualifications
• Educated at least to A level standard and ideally with a CIPP / payroll certification.