Global Benefits and Compensation Consultant - Northern Hemisphere

Xero is a beautiful, easy-to-use platform that helps small businesses and their accounting and bookkeeping advisors grow and thrive. 
At Xero, our purpose is to make life better for people in small business, their advisors, and communities around the world. This purpose sits at the centre of everything we do. We support our people to do the best work of their lives so that they can help small businesses succeed through better tools, information and connections. Because when they succeed they make a difference, and when millions of small businesses are making a difference, the world is a more beautiful place.
How you’ll make an impact
The Benefit and Compensation Specialist  will be responsible for developing, designing and delivering all benefits across North America and EMEA (and support Asia Pacific (APAC)). They will ensure programmes align with Xero’s strategy and support attraction, motivation and retention of key talent. As part of this role they will partner closely with our Finance, Legal, Procurement, Payteam, Accounts and People and Talent Experience team. They will also participate in day to day compensation activities with a focus on North America and EMEA.

What you’ll do

• Administer all employee benefits, manage vendor relationships, and review vendor services, across all benefit vendors in North America and EMEA . 
• Collaborate with brokers and Xero leadership to review, recommend and implement benefit plan changes aligned to company talent strategy, market changes or legislative requirements. 
• Ensure benefits plans comply with all company policies as well as local legislation (US, CA and EMEA)
• Monitor and ensure timely completion of plan compliance activities related to our US benefit plans, including but not limited to: regulatory filings and updates, notices, plan documents, ACA mandates & reporting, plan audits, and employee benefit file transmissions to vendors, as required.
• Annual strategy and planning review to support plan year including project management of open enrolment, planning for wellness fund, updates to employee handbook and policy reviews
• Develop and complete annual communication campaigns to keep employees well-informed about their benefits 
• Relationship owner of US Leaves of Absence servicer and ensures appropriate care of leaves of absence, including maintaining leaves documentation and providing employee support
• Maintain an understanding of current, new and developing legislation and design trends affecting employee benefits programs, recommend changes to ensure continued compliance and that benefits continue to be market competitive
• Partner with People Experience and key partners to continuously evaluate and modify benefits programs and operational processes to ensure that benefits programs are meeting employees needs and that operational processes are accurate and efficient
• Work with global wellbeing lead to provide in-region support for company’s broader wellbeing programs and initiatives 
• Handle all systems and files used in the administration of employee benefit programs; includes maintaining data integrity, ensuring successful data exchange, evaluating user experience, requesting, or delivering enhancements, recommending system changes, and participating in implementations
• Respond to a variety of employee inquiries and identify opportunities to minimize employee issues through efficient eligibility operations, timely and effective communication strategies, and beneficial vendor partnerships or solutions
• Broader program oversight such as fringe benefits, escalation management, annual plan review and Open Enrolment planning, new vendor review and implementation, broker relationship management and platform provider relationship management
• Launch and management of new benefits platform, arranging benefit provider sessions, annual review of pension and insurance
• Support all benefits activities across the group including APAC
• Complete benefit data submissions to ensure we are able to obtain information on relevant market practice
• Be a point of contact for estimates, forecasts and calculations for benefit expenses to make sure we’re aligned with Finance

Other Reward activities

• Benchmark roles against organizations of a similar size, industry and recruitment environment, ensuring a consistent and systematic approach.
• Support PX and TX teams in day to day compensation related issues and advise People Leaders on interpretation and application of compensation structures and individual compensation treatment.
• Support the business to meet its legislative requirements for gender pay for North America and EMEA.
• Be the first point of contact for compensation approvals within Lever and Workday.

What you’ll bring with you

• Experience in managing be