As the Group Payroll Manager at Marlowe Environmental Services (MES), you will oversee all aspects of in-house payroll processing across a multi-entity organisation, ensuring accurate and timely payments to approx. 1800 employees whilst adhering to the relevant laws and regulations that govern Payroll.

The role is based in Gloucester with hybrid working of three days per week in the office and two at home, managing a small and dedicated team with responsibility of 12 monthly payrolls across the UK & Ireland.

With an extensive understanding of payroll regulations and pensions, exceptional attention to detail, and great leadership skills, you will play a pivotal role in the efficiency, accuracy, and compliance of this core business function.

This is a hands-on role with an expectation that the Manager will get stuck in and support with all elements of the Payroll process, including tasks performed by the Payroll Advisors.

Responsibilities:

Team Management:

• Managing a team of 3 Payroll Advisors with differing levels of skill

• Developing skillsets, training, delivering performance management and workload distribution

• Ensure the team are kept updated with knowledge on key Payroll attributes such as salary related employment law, working time directive, tax laws etc

• Drive adherence to internal processes relating to data received from HR and Operational Teams

• Encourage and drive a strong relationship with critical teams such as HR and Fleet

• Instil a culture of confidentially and data protection

• Ensure team resolve all payroll discrepancies and queries in a timely and accurate manner

• Ability of all team to be able to manually calculate salaries

Behaviours:

• Always present a positive professional manner to all business stakeholders and employees

• Inspire a can-do, right first-time work ethic across the Team

• Display a mentoring and considered approach to best practice, change and decision making

• Take ownership and accountability for own actions and those of the team

• Lead by example demonstrating the desired behaviours of the team to inspire others to follow

Compliance, Policy & Data Management:

• Ensure adherence to all statutory requirements (HMRC, Tax, NI, Pensions)

• Maintain accurate employee payroll records and always ensuring data integrity

• Develop and implement payroll policies and procedures to ensure operational efficiency and compliance

• Manage all issues relating to performance of the payroll system

Skills:

• Influence, motivate and enable others to maximise their development potential

• Act as a key point of contact for payroll escalations and internal stakeholders

• Adopt a “Business Partnering” approach to all internal stakeholders

• Excellent analytical and interpretation abilities

• Confident, consistent, and diligent decision making

• Clear and articulate communication and people skills

• Manage any conflict and appropriate resolution when dealing with employee queries and disputes

• Ability to work under intense pressure meeting key deadlines, with agility to change priorities quickly

• Strong excel skills (v lookups, pivot tables etc)

• Lead and own annual tasks such as NMW increases, pay reviews, reporting of benefits in kind, etc

• Work with third parties to deliver the best solutions

• A continuous improvement outlook, always looking forward but stabilising the as-is

Reporting:

• Creation of variance reporting as part of the payroll file preparation process

• Generate monthly payroll reports, analysing data for accuracy and anomalies

• Timely calculation and payment of PAYE taxes

• Train and develop others’ ability to produce required reporting

• Respond to any external audit requirements as requested

What you will bring:

• Ideally CIPP or CIPD qualified with a minimum of 5 years’ ideally in a large multi-site organisation

• Provenhistoryof managinga Payroll function with a minimum of 1500 employees with multiple pay elements

• Have a solid understanding of HR legislation to identify/complete any payroll related processing downstream

• In-depth knowledge of UK payroll legislation, year end and P11D processes

• Ability to lead, coach and mentor using a variety of tools and techniques

• Excellent leadership and team management skills

• Ability to articulate professionally with confidence and accuracy, with adaptable communication styles

• A critical thinker, always evaluating and making sound judgements

• A demonstrative continuous improvement mindset

• Excellent analysis and evaluation skills with strong attention to detail and accuracy

• Sage 50 Payroll – desirable

• Knowledge of project ownership and delivery implementation (desirable)

• Irish payroll knowledge (desirable)