Director, Payroll and Employment Services

Engineering a world of possibilities

The Colorado School of Mines is a public R1 research university focused on applied science and engineering, producing the talent, knowledge and solutions to service industry and benefit society. Mines has a strong reputation and celebrates high rankings due to its STEM-focused education and research results.

The Director of Payroll and Employment Services is a critical position on the Controller's Office team. This unit provides critical support to Mines' mission by providing comprehensive support for vital university financial services, including Accounting, Bursar, Business Systems, Payroll & Employment Services, Procurement, and Service Excellence.

The Payroll & Employment Services Team supports administrative functions for campus in the process of onboarding new employees and payroll processing for an average total pay of $235 million annually. It is essential for the Director to have strong analytical skills to assess accuracy and efficiencies in business processes and provided the strategic leadership to manage change across the university.

As the director, you will be responsible for developing and maintaining close relationships and partnerships with all constituents and users of Payroll and Employment Services - virtually everyone on campus! You'll be responsible for developing and fostering a culture within Payroll and Employment Services that promotes teamwork and exceptional customer service that is collaborative and customer focused.

You'll work closely with various units to ensure compliance with all legislative and regulatory requirements and University policies while ensuring Payroll and Employment Services provides services that exceed customer expectations. You will support the institution through the assessment and development internal infrastructure/frameworks and policies; including continual improvement of developing effective, efficient, and customer centric processes and systems that maximize the operational success of the institution and will seek to improve operations and service levels. If you are a driver of innovative approaches with a focus on business improvements, ensuring effective people and processes are aligned to performance and outcomes, we welcome your application.

This position is hybrid in Colorado. The Colorado School of Mines provides dedicated professional development and training. Onboarding for this position includes training on financial systems, policies, procedures, regulatory compliance requirements, and processes. For more on the Controller's office and the Payroll and Employment Services team,

Leadership of Payroll and Employment Services

• Lead the Payroll and Employment Services function ensuring unit goals and practices clearly align with university objectives. This includes but is not limited to:
  • Evaluating current systems, procedures, and structure, recommending and implementing changes for improvement
  • Coaching and developing professional and classified technician positions.
  • Developing and maintaining collaborative partnerships with users of Shared Services and foster a collaborative and productive culture and work environment.
  • Leading process improvements across many functional units on campus and mentoring the team on transactional processes and systems to effectively and successfully move the department forward.
  • Stewarding change management through effective collaboration, communication, and the formation of relationships across the university, in particular, senior staff and division leads.
• Effectively identify and address system configurations and process challenges that create barriers for accurate and timely reporting. This includes the development and implementation of recommendations, training, and procedural documentation.
• Ensure campus constituents are trained on payroll processes and policies are updated, well documented, and easily accessible.

 Payroll Process management

• Ensure university compliance and timely transmission of applicable information to federal, state, banking, and other external organizations.
• Provide guidance, and leadership for internal control processes that include reconciliation of monthly payroll liability accounts to the supporting payroll, HR records and external bills received, monthly, quarterly, and annual federal and state reporting.
• Lead the calendar year-end preparation and distribution of W-2 and 1042-S statements to all employees and applicable vendors.
• Ensure proper management and system administration for the University’s payroll accounting system including, but not limited to, testing and implementation of system upgrades, web-time entry system for hourly employees, reconciliation of payroll data with the Un