Senior Payroll Officer

Senior Payroll Officer

3 Month Contract - Potential to go permanent

Based in Kensington, London - Onsite

£34.48 PH (36 hours PW) Inside IR35, VIA Umbrella

Job Purpose

• To plan and manage the day-to-day work of the Payroll Team to ensure that all employees are paid accurately and on time and in accordance with statutory, regulatory and internal requirements.

• To manage each payroll production cycle from beginning to end, ensuring all inputs are checked and all anomaly reports and other outputs are checked and resolved prior to finalisation according to the production schedules.

• To manage the reconciliation and production of all payroll outputs to internal service areas and external third parties, which includes outputs to the General Ledger, Pensions providers, statutory bodies, courts and voluntary contribution bodies.

• To ensure that all internal processes are followed correctly by the Payroll Team and that any changes to existing processes are devised, reviewed and appropriately consulted upon prior to implementation.

• To work with schools and other connected education establishments in the monthly collection, reconciliation, monitoring and transmission of pension returns for Teachers Pensions and the London Pensions Fund Authority, and to ensure that any employer forms connected to this are completed accurately.

DESCRIPTION OF DUTIES:

• To manage the full end-to-end production cycle for all payrolls covering Company employees, the Returning Officer, and pensioners. Ensuring that all controls are operated and that exception/anomaly reports are run for each payroll and corrective action is taken prior to payroll finalisation so that the integrity of the payroll is maintained.

• Ensure that the payrolls and their associated processes and outputs are fully compliant with statutory and regulatory requirements and local contractual obligations.

• Ensuring that reconciliations are performed for each payroll cycle and that information is sent as appropriate to Finance Teams to match reconciliations and balancing to the General Ledger outputs, investigating any areas where differences arise and taking corrective action as appropriate.

• Ensure that all outgoing payments to all third parties from each payroll cycle are made accurately and on time, are appropriately reconciled, and that internal records are maintained to reflect this.

• Ensure that all outputs from each payroll cycle (eg His Majesty's Revenue & Customs (HMRC), Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS), Teachers Pensions, Payslips, P45s) are valid and have been checked for accuracy and completeness prior to onward distribution.

• Monitoring day-to-day claims and payments being made to employees to ensure they are being paid in accordance with Company policy and statutory/regulatory requirements, devising procedures with the Payroll Manager that enable regular review of all such payments, and taking pre-emptive action to prevent incorrect payments, ensuring that any follow-up action is taken with relevant managers to maintain compliance.

• Identify potential software flaws or anomalies which affect the integrity of the payrolls or any aspect of its production or the manner in which users interact with it from a payroll perspective, and to raise any concerns through the Payroll Manager to the local HR System Administration Team.

• Ensure the underlying employee data has integrity to support payroll-related activities such as increment progression, pension auto enrolment/re-enrolment, reduced pay for absences, calculation of actual pensionable pay and whole-time pensionable pay, etc.

• Devise procedures, forms, training notes, etc., to support the work of the Payroll Team and to ensure that clear, accurate and user-friendly documentation is in place relating to payroll functions.

• Advise the Payroll Manager of situations where new or changed pay elements, pension schemes or absence schemes may be required, or changes in practice may be needed to meet new regulatory requirements, eg changes to NI rules, taxation, etc.

• Run all tax year-end processes and processes relating to the new tax year and ensure that all necessary actions are taken and outputs produced, eg tax code uplifts, P60, HMRC year-end submissions, etc.

• Manage the checking process for pay award implementation, including all retrospective changes, to ensure that pay arrears are correctly calculated and correctly allocated to the relevant General Ledger codes.

• Oversee and monitor the management of overpayments, ensuring appropriate controls are operated to limit their occurrence and that recovery arrangements are made for all overpayments including those where employees subsequently leave the Company's employment.

• Ensure that controls are operated to minimise underpayments by ensuring that pay calculations are accurate according to each employee's contractual entitlements.

• To manage the handling of all incoming and outgoing payroll-related helpdesk enquiries, monitoring progress and tracking resolution rates, and ensuring that responses are timely and in accordance with establishment policy and procedures.

• Manage the testing of payroll-related Oracle system software changes, quarterly updates, emergency patch releases, and work with the local Oracle system leads in HR to ensure that all supporting documentation and training guides are kept up-to-date.

• Produce any changes to in-system knowledge articles and frequently asked questions (FAQs) relating to payroll.

• Manage the processes for the employer role in the collection, submission and reconciliation of all incoming data relating to Teachers Pensions (TP) and the London Pension Fund Authority (LPFA), and ensure that monthly and year-end submissions are made in accordance with the policy of each pension scheme.

Skills; Experience and Attitude

• Detailed knowledge and experience of payroll operations, and the ability to provide advice and guidance on it to a wide variety of people.

• An understanding of the legal, regulatory and employer-specific obligations of employers in the management of a local authority payroll service and ability to ensure this is reflected in processes and operational delivery.

• Understanding of the underlying payroll information technologies and the interdependencies between HR data and the payroll outputs.

• Strong analytical skills covering numerical and non-numerical information from a wide variety of sources, with the ability to interpret data in support of the delivery of the payroll service.

• High level of proficiency and accuracy in Excel to support the analysis of payroll information.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills to accurately communicate complex payroll requirements to a wide variety of people, both internally and externally.

• Being mindful of technical language and using appropriate terminology based on the audience.

• Ability to work effectively under pressure whilst ensuring the high quality and accuracy of outputs.

• Experience of mentoring and training staff to deliver high quality outputs to strict deadlines, ensuring that team members are motivated and that their skills are maintained and developed according to the needs of the service.