Payroll Specialist

Payroll Specialist

Location: Malvern, PA - A local candidate working hybrid is preferred, however remote candidates will be considered if they have a strong Workday background. Pay Rate: $30.00- $42.00/hr Duration: 3 months+ Hours: 8-5pm

Summary: As a member of the payroll team, this position is responsible for the accurate processing and timely distribution of payments for hourly and salaried payroll cycles in a multi-employer/multi-state organization across U.S. and Canada for over 18,000 employees in thirty companies.

Responsibilities:

• The Payroll Specialist must meet multiple tight deadlines associated with weekly, biweekly, semimonthly, and monthly payroll schedules while ensuring compliance with U.S. Federal, State, Local and Canadian provincial taxes.
• Researches, analyzes, and resolves complex payroll-related issues, inquiries, and discrepancies. This requires knowledge of integration between HR input and the impact to payroll output from hire to retire.
• Responsible for the reconciliation of data that is interfaced into the payroll system from third party interfaces as well as manual data input from business unit customers.
• This position is a customer service supporting role which provides guidance and resources to business unit customers as it relates to payroll calendar schedules, system navigation, technology tools, and reports. Serves as a liaison between SSC Payroll and HR Business Partners, HRIS, Regional Benefit teams, Relocation, Accounting, and IT.
• Interprets personnel supporting documentation submitted by the business units and ensures appropriate authorizations are in place that satisfy internal audit procedures relevant to employee personnel changes including but not limited to salary changes, terminations, new hires, and promotions. Complies with the SSC Payroll Statement of Work in terms of the roles and responsibility between payroll and the customer.
• The Payroll Specialist is responsible for ensuring employees compensated in compliance with U.S. and Canadian regulations as it relates to taxability, timing of payments, and ACH and Positive Pay banking rules.
• This position is responsible for understanding the procedures and concepts for making special payments to employees along with the deductions and taxes associated with those payments.

Workday Experience & Payroll Operations

Demonstrated experience with Workday HCM and Payroll, including system configuration and day-to-day processing. Responsible for administering payroll within Workday, ensuring accuracy, compliance, and timely execution. Participated in Workday implementations, including parallel testing, system validation, and issue resolution. Experience developing and maintaining Workday configurations to support business needs. Additionally, created and delivered training materials and documentation to support end users and ensure successful adoption. Workday certification preferred.

• Expertise in payroll concepts utilizing in-house payroll system performing gross-to-net calculations ensuring the correct taxes and deductions are withheld from these payments for U.S and Canada.
• Responsibilities of the Payroll Specialist require the skills to process payroll cycles that are comprised of all or a combination of weekly, biweekly, semi-monthly, and monthly pay frequencies with varying pay periods and check dates across over thirty companies.
• Responsible for the printing and distribution of employee payroll checks.
• Ensures that the preparation and distribution of payrolls meet established schedules, company policies, and government regulations.
• Expertise in making the determination of when garnishments, deductions, 401k loans and union dues are withheld from employees' pay.
• Responsible for interpretation and input of Canadian garnishments.
• Performs the payment and distribution of off-cycle requests from customers daily.
• Ensures that off-cycle checks processed timely in accordance with company policy, union agreements and bank regulations.
• Responsible for performing reversal adjustments in the payroll system, a complex process, to correct a previous pay(s) processed in error. Validates that HR updates employee master data to prevent errors to the employee's future pay.
• Prioritize workload to achieve excellence in a deadline driven environment on a daily basis.
• Researches, analyzes, and resolves complex matters by providing root cause analysis and identifying corrective action.
• Requires comprehensive knowledge of payroll policies, procedures, systems, and federal/state/local regulations with little supervision.
• Performs due diligence relating to customer requests for payroll to make manual adjustments by ensuring that the appropriate controls are in place such as written requests and appropriate level of approvals.
• Responsible for ensuring that all transactions are completed in preparation for processing payroll such as time files, authorizations, helpdesk tickets and personnel action back up documents.
• Compile and reconcile the data loaded from time and attendance and the Single Point of Entry tool submitted by the business units to the payroll system.
• Interpret pay data results for accuracy, identifying, troubleshooting, and maintaining data to produce complete, accurate pay results, or providing recommendations for correction.
• Reconciles with external partners and recommends appropriate updates.
• Responsible for processing void and stop payments between the payroll system and Saint-Gobain's financial institution to ensure integration between payroll and accounting.
• Analyze non-delivered functionality in the payroll system that is customized to satisfy special calculations associated with union dues, hourly rates, and paid time accruals.
• Participates in the development of continuous improvement initiatives that result in standardization, streamlining, and automation.
• Participates and makes recommendations to update training manuals and workflows related to SSC Payroll documentation and customer instruction manuals.
• Maintains elevated level of confidentiality due to the visibility of employee personal data, including pay, financial information, social security/insurance numbers and home addresses.

Customer Support

• Provides customer service across a highly diversified organization with significantly different business policies, pay practices, state regulations, union contracts, and taxing authorities.
• Accountable for maintaining positive collaborative partnership with customers.
• Ensure the roles and responsibilities outlined in the Statement of Work are followed.
• Escalate, to the Payroll Manager, any complex discrepancies that impact the accuracy and timeliness of paying employees. Payroll Manager provides direction to Payroll Specialist to make corrective actions to resolve discrepancies that may involve collaborating directly with the customer.
• Performs research and analysis to resolve customer inquiries.
• Communicates verbally or in writing to customer inquiries.
• Serves as a liaison between SSC Payroll and HR Business Partners, HRIS, Regional Benefit teams, Relocation, Accounting, and IT.
• Assists in educating customers relating to policies, procedures, payroll system navigation, resources, Single Point of Entry tool and government regulations.
• This position may require surveying customers to implement process improvements to streamline payroll processing and provide resolutions to customer issues.

Compliance and Special Payments and Projects

• Remains current on federal/state/local regulations such as tax rates on supplemental wages, limits on 401k and social security, overtime rules, bank regulations on direct deposit, etc.
• Makes recommendations to update training documentation within the payroll team as well as customer guides to ensure audit compliancy.
• Ensures all inquiries from customers, as well as requests from payroll management, for manual adjustments are requested by creating a payroll helpdesk ticket for auditing purposes.
• Process the bonus payments, company match makeup, manage shares, and deferred compensation payments annually as requested.
• Process and reconcile the annual merit increases.
• Perform year-end payroll close ensuring all special taxable entries are processed such as awards, gifts, relocations, tuition reimbursements, car allowances, imputed income, etc.
• Participate in payroll system testing for upgrades, releases, new program development and enhancements.
• Perform the testing and analytical results for new business acquisitions as requested.
• Completes additional tasks and projects as assigned.

Qualifications:

• Workday experience required.
• Candidates with a Bachelor's degree must have 2-4 years' progressive experience in payroll and customer service. If the candidate does not have a degree, they should have a minimum of 5 years' progressive experience in payroll and customer service.
• Candidate must have multi-state payroll experience.
• Requires intuitive and analytical thought processes to reach decisions with minimal supervision as it relates to standard operating procedures.
• Must be able to interpret payroll policies and procedures to proactively resolve customer problems and requests