Senior Payroll and Benefits Service Delivery Lead

Job Overview

A dynamic and experienced professional is required to lead the payroll and benefits service delivery for plant support.

Key Responsibilities:

1. Manage a distributed team of factory payroll SPOCs across various locations, ensuring end-to-end payroll administration, statutory compliance, benefits coordination, insurance management, exit processing, and employee support functions are executed accurately and timely.
2. Act as the bridge between central payroll team and factory SPOCs, providing guidance and support to SPOCs who may be managing multiple HR/admin functions alongside payroll.
3. Ensure site SPOCs maintain input records, approvals, and audit backups as per governance requirements.
4. Conduct regular check-ins to monitor progress, resolve issues, and align on timelines.
5. Create a knowledge repository of SOPs, FAQ, templates, and escalation paths.

Team Leadership & Governance

1. Lead, mentor, and manage a team of payroll specialists and analysts.
2. Allocate responsibilities to team members for specific payroll cycles, statutory filings, and query resolutions.
3. Monitor Key metrics and KPIs set by the global governance team, ensuring continuous adherence.
4. Identify training needs and organize periodic knowledge sharing or refresher sessions for the team.
5. Drive operational rhythm through regular team huddles, issue resolution meetings, and escalation tracking.

Payroll Input Governance

1. Ensure timely and accurate collection of site-level payroll inputs such as attendance, overtime, leave, shift allowances, and other variable components.
2. Understand the clauses related to salary structure changes, allowances, retroactive payments, bonus eligibility, and effective dates.
3. Check salary revision data for accuracy employee codes, revised amounts, effective dates, arrear calculations.
4. Work with SPOCs to validate inputs before final submission to the central payroll processing team.
5. Flag anomalies or data gaps and coordinate with input owners for corrections.
6. Ensure segregation of duties between input generation and processing.
7. Approve sensitive entries like ad hoc payments, one-time adjustments or recoveries.
8. Drive periodic training and refreshers for input owners.
9. Maintain version control and audit trail of input files.
10. Lead root cause analysis for any input-related errors or escalations.
11. Report governance metrics (input accuracy, % delay trends, error root causes).

Benefits & Insurance Coordination

1. Oversee administration of employee benefits in line with the policy.
2. Ensure SPOCs handle enrollments, additions, deletions, and escalations related to insurance benefits.

Exit Management

1. Ensure SPOCs coordinate F&F processing for employee exits.
2. Monitor documentation for clearances, final input collection, and timely data sharing with payroll processing team.
3. Validate Gratuity, notice pay, leave encashment, and statutory recoveries for outgoing employees.

Query Management

1. Oversee the resolution of employee payroll queries raised at the factory sites.
2. Act as a second-level escalation point for unresolved or complex payroll issues.
3. Ensure SPOCs are equipped with updated knowledge on payroll policies, system changes, and FAQs.
4. Ensure standard templates and tone of communication are used while responding to employees.
5. Review common queries and propose policy clarifications or communication updates.
6. Facilitate periodic connects between central payroll and factory SPOCs to align on processes and feedback.

Compliance and Risk Management

1. Ensure payroll practices at the factory sites align with statutory regulations (PF, ESI, PT, etc.) and internal policies.
2. Maintain and implement ICFR and SOX controls for payroll.
3. Participate in internal, external, and statutory audits, provide data, backups, and clarify queries.
4. Maintain complete audit trail of payroll processing and employee payments.
5. Identify and mitigate operational risks, duplicate payments, and late payments.
6. Ensure employee payroll data is secured and accessible only to authorized personnel.
7. Train factory SPOCs and payroll processors on handling sensitive information securely.
8. Publish monthly/quarterly compliance dashboards to leadership.

Business Continuity Planning (BCP)

1. Establish backup processes for critical payroll operations during system failures or emergencies.
2. Document SOPs and cross-train team members for coverage during absenteeism or attrition.
3. Conduct periodic mock drills or simulation tests for BCP readiness.

The successful candidate will have the ability to lead, motivate and develop a high-performing team, drive process improvements, ensure compliance with regulatory requirements, and foster strong relationships with stakeholders.

---