Payroll & Workforce Analytics Manager

Position Overview

The Payroll & Workforce Analytics Manager owns the accurate, timely, and compliant execution of the company's end-to-end payroll operations and serves as the primary financial and systems expert connecting payroll data to labor cost reporting, workforce analytics, and external audit support. The immediate priority for this role is stabilizing and remediating the current payroll process before building out its longer-term analytics and reporting scope. This is a Finance-owned execution and analytics role, not a benefits administration role — benefits strategy, plan design, carrier relationships, and Open Enrollment ownership remain with HR. This role provides the accurate underlying payroll and headcount data that HR's benefits programs, and Finance's labor cost reporting, both depend on.

What This Role Does NOT Do

• Does not own benefits plan design, carrier relationships, or vendor selection - that sits with HR.
• Does not lead Open Enrollment communications, employee-facing benefits education, or enrollment strategy - that sits with HR. This role supports OE with system configuration, rate testing, and payroll-side data accuracy only.
• Does not set compensation or benefits philosophy - that sits with HR.

Key Responsibilities

Payroll Stabilization & Process Remediation (First 60 Days)

• Conduct a full audit of current payroll processing, identifying the root causes behind recurring errors (e.g., benefit deduction funding failures, 401(k) contribution/match discrepancies, leave/PTO coding mismatches) and correct them at the source rather than through repeated manual fixes.
• Establish clean, documented, repeatable payroll controls and reconciliation processes, closing the gap between what ADP processes and what actually posts correctly to the GL and to employees.
• Partner directly with ADP's account team to resolve open, longstanding system configuration issues and confirm root-cause fixes rather than temporary workarounds.
• Build a reliable, current inventory of every payroll-adjacent data feed (benefits deductions, leave codes, tax jurisdictions, retirement contributions) and confirm each one is accurate before treating it as business as usual.

Payroll Architecture & Operations

• Manage full-cycle processing of bi-weekly/monthly multi-state (and, as the company's international footprint requires, multi-country) payrolls for hourly and salaried employees, including multi-entity organizational structures.
• Own the integrity of time clock data as the source input driving hourly payroll calculations - this is a semi-automated process, and accurate, validated time clock feeds are a precondition for accurate downstream payroll processing, not a separate concern.
• Execute accurate calculation, posting, and auditing of payroll adjustments, variable bonuses, equity awards, and severance packages.
• Own accurate calculation and payment of sales commission plans, ensuring commission structures are correctly configured and payouts are auditable and tied directly to underlying sales performance data.
• Lead all year-end payroll processing routines, including W-2 balancing, tracking taxable fringe benefits, and final state/federal adjustments.
• Own reconciliation of payroll outputs directly to the general ledger (GL); partner closely with Corporate Accounting to research and clear variance anomalies.

Workforce Analytics & Labor Cost Reporting

• Design, build, and run advanced custom reports to deliver labor cost metrics, headcount data, and workforce cost trends directly to Finance leadership, feeding the same reporting cadence as broader FP&A.
• Partner with FP&A on labor cost forecasting and budget-to-actual analysis as part of the annual operating plan process.
• Partner with FP&A and sales leadership to translate commission payout data into a clear view of sales team performance trends, connecting payroll data directly to a broader performance-tracking lens rather than treating commission payment as a standalone transactional task.
• Track overtime trends across the workforce and flag material patterns to Operations leadership, supporting more proactive workforce-sizing decisions rather than reactive after-the-fact cost review.
• Provide accurate payroll and census data to HR to support benefit utilization analysis - the analysis itself, and any resulting program decisions, remain HR-owned.

Compliance & Audit Support

• Ensure strict compliance with federal, state, and local payroll-related regulatory requirements (including FLSA, and applicable state/local leave and wage laws such as Minnesota PFML).
• Serve as the primary operational point of contact for external auditors (e.g., Grant Thornton, CLA) on payroll-related matters; pull, clean, and validate payroll registers, census files, and deduction schedules for annual 401(k) compliance testing and corporate financial audits.
• Provide the underlying payroll data required for HR-owned compliance filings (ACA 1095-C, EEO-1, Form 5500) - filing ownership and accuracy of plan-level content remain with HR.
• Manage payroll-side vendor integrations and EDI feeds (e.g., ADP system feeds to payroll tax authorities and the GL); monitor for errors and resolve discrepancies. Benefit-carrier-specific EDI relationships remain HR-owned, though this role troubleshoots payroll-side data accuracy issues as they arise.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Accounting, Finance, Business Administration, or a closely related field.
• Minimum of 5 years of progressive experience directly executing multi-state corporate payroll, ideally within a Finance or Controller-led organization rather than an HR-led one.
• Demonstrated experience diagnosing and fixing a broken or error-prone payroll process, not just operating a stable one.
• Expert-level proficiency configuring and navigating ADP Workforce Now, with the ability to manage complex system structures, workflows, reporting, security, and data.
• Expertise in advanced Excel functions (VLOOKUPs, XLOOKUPs, pivot tables, and nested logic formulas) for heavy auditing and data analysis.
• Strong general ledger reconciliation and financial-controls background.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and organizational skills.
• Approachable, highly collaborative resource who interacts effectively with employees, Finance, and HR at all levels of the organization.

Preferred Qualifications

• Certified Payroll Professional (CPP) designation.
• Experience with ADP WorkforceNow
• Direct experience with international payroll processing - given the company's current EMEA and APAC footprint, this is a meaningful plus, not a nice-to-have.
• Proficiency navigating additional complex HRIS/payroll structures such as Workday, UKG Pro, Oracle, or Ceridian Dayforce.

Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities, and activities may change at any time with or without notice.