Manager, Payroll

Manager, Payroll

The Payroll Operations Manager is responsible for leading the day-to-day payroll operations for a large, complex, multi-state organization. This role provides strategic and operational leadership to payroll teams, ensuring accurate, timely, and compliant payroll processing for a diverse workforce. The Payroll Operations Manager serves as a key partner across Human Resources, Finance, Tax, Benefits, Technology, and Compliance functions while driving continuous improvement, operational excellence, and team development.

This position requires extensive experience with Oracle Fusion HCM Payroll, strong leadership capabilities, and a hands-on approach to managing payroll operations, managing the payroll run books for both on-cycle and daily payrolls, issue resolution, process optimization, and system enhancements.

Job Summary:

Implements processes related to employee payments, reclamation, and garnishment orders by supporting the preparation and distribution of employee payments and analyzing/interpreting trends in payment reclamation procedures. Reviews nonroutine data uploads. Addresses employee inquiries and internal reporting efforts by consulting with other departments to provide and gather information related to payroll and provide direction to the team. Monitors adherence to best practices, tax regulations, union contracts, and regulation authorities to ensure compliance across payroll.

Essential Responsibilities:

• Provides developmental opportunities for others; builds collaborative, cross-functional relationships. Solicits and acts on performance feedback; works closely with employees to set goals and provide open feedback and coaching to drive performance improvement. Pursues professional growth; develops and provides training and development to talent for growth opportunities; supports execution of performance management guidelines and expectations. Leads, adapts, implements, and stays up to date with organizational change, challenges, feedback, best practices, processes, and industry trends. Fosters open dialogue amongst team members, engages, motivates, and promotes collaboration within and across teams. Delegates tasks and decisions as appropriate; provides appropriate support, guidance, and scope; encourages development and consideration of options in decision making.
• Manages designated work unit or team by translating business plans into tactical action items; oversees the completion of work assignments and identifies opportunities for improvement; ensures all policies and procedures are followed. Aligns team efforts; builds accountability for and measuring progress in achieving results; determines and ensures processes and methodologies are implemented; resolves escalated issues as appropriate; sets standards and measures progress. Fosters the development of work plans to meet business priorities and deadlines; obtains and distributes resources. Removes obstacles that impact performance; identifies and addresses improvement opportunities; guides performance and develops contingency plans accordingly; influences teams to execute in alignment with operational objectives.
• Implements processes related to employee payments, reclamation, and garnishment orders by: supporting the preparation and distribution of employee payments (e.g., compensation, State Disability Insurance) in case of overflow and escalated issues while also managing team processing garnishment orders; analyzing and interpreting trends in employee payment reclamation and garnishment orders use and procedures, including providing authorization of payments to third party feeds (e.g., deductions, taxes withheld); and analyzing the procedures and software used between Human Resource, Finance/Accounting, and Payroll to identify areas to improve accuracy and efficiency between systems.
• Supports or leverages payroll data processing by: supporting the preparation and analysis of reports of key metrics (e.g., timesheets, employee hourly rates, earned time off); reviewing data adjustments performed by the team; reviewing nonroutine data uploads; providing guidance to resolve issues related to adjustments and employee data; and investigating and mitigating the sources of systematic discrepancies and reporting them to a senior manager or director.
• Addresses employee inquires and internal reporting efforts by: consulting with other departments to provide and gather information related to payroll and provide direction to the team; providing oversight and responding to complex inquiries regarding pay discrepancies, earned time off, basic tax analysis, and others raised by senior managers and directors; leading the coordination with other departments such as HR and benefits to obtain information through inquiries and process it and provides some technical expertise to the team; analyzing and interpreting routine and nonroutine reports requested by leadership, and requesting the development of new report templates; and identifying trends or patterns within Payroll data which may result in future issues and driving solutions through the team.
• Monitors adherence of best practices, tax regulations, union contracts, and regulation authorities to ensure compliance by: monitoring current and potential changes in regulations and comparing them to current polices and procedures; representing Payroll in departments and projects to ensure compliance with regulation authorities as requested; and reviewing and resolving complex issues related to the submission of information to regulating authorities.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities: (Core)

• Ambiguity/Uncertainty Management
• Attention to Detail
• Business Knowledge
• Communication
• Constructive Feedback
• Critical Thinking
• Cross-Group Collaboration
• Decision Making
• Dependability
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Support
• Drives Results
• Facilitation Skills
• Health Care Industry
• Influencing Others
• Integrity
• Leadership
• Learning Agility
• Organizational Savvy
• Problem Solving
• Short- and Long-term Learning & Recall
• Strategic Thinking
• Team Building
• Teamwork
• Topic-Specific Communication

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities: (Functional)

• Data Entry
• Data Quality
• Financial Acumen
• Financial Analysis
• Financial Reporting
• Financial Software
• Regulatory Reporting
• Reporting Tools
• Trend Analysis

Minimum Qualifications:

• Minimum one (1) year of experience managing operational or project budgets.
• Minimum three (3) years of experience in a leadership role with or without direct reports.
• Bachelors Degree in Payroll, Accounting, Finance, Economics, or related field AND minimum six (6) years of experience in payroll or directly related field OR Minimum nine (9) years of experience in payroll, or a directly related field.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Four (4) years of experience working with Human Resources (HR) data in a major HR Enterprise Reporting Platform (ERP) (e.g., SAP, PeopleSoft, HCM, etc.).
• Three (3) years of audit or accounting firm experience.