Payroll Operations Team Manager (6 month FTC)

Company Description

Life can sometimes be unpredictable, and it pays to plan ahead. Our aim at Legal & General Retail is to help our customers plan for the unexpected, achieve financial security for their tomorrow, and protect everything that’s important to them. To better understand our customers and meet their needs, we’ve brought our protection, retirement income, savings, lending and advice, fintech and mortgage businesses under one umbrella. Created at the start of 2022 through the merging of our long-standing and trusted retail retirement and insurance businesses, we’re a fast-growing division with big, customer-centered ambitions. 

Job Description

Our customers are at the heart of everything we do within Retail Annuities and the Customer Payroll team is no exception. We process the payments to our customers, ensuring that all payments and deductions are paid accurately and on time. We have many payroll processes and controls to ensure this, so we protect our customers from unnecessary hardship either due to incorrect or late payments, or inaccurate reporting that could affect customers in other ways.

The job holder will manage the team of Operational Specialists and support the Payroll Operations and Reconciliations Manager and lead by example within the team. You will support your team following the L&G behaviours, processes and expectations of its managers. 

You will be responsible for managing the team who perform the daily payroll processing and relevant reconciliations. You will provide specific Payroll expertise when required within the function and the wider business. They will ensure related Payroll processing is completed to the agreed tolerances and reported within agreed L&G and legislative deadlines, including (but not limited to): demonstrating, quality checking and attesting to relevant controls, KPI management as well as leading on complex cases.

What you will be doing:

• Manage the operations team members, payroll activities and controls, through our agreed mechanisms, ensuring and attesting to the fact that all tasks are carried out and engagement in the team is at a high level. 
• Support the customer payments leadership team in adapting/developing the existing operational process/systems to accommodate ongoing changes/new requirements, specifying the business change requirements to the relevant systems or processes and liaising with project teams and vendors as appropriate, undertaking appropriate project work as required.
• Support colleagues through the sharing of knowledge by delivering training on processes to help maintain excellent customer service and quality standards within the department, following change control processes and ensuring we have all processes documented, incorporated into and assessed against the agreed skills matrix and ensure these are reviewed to the agreed timescales. 
• Authorise money out sign off and act as support/delegate for Periodic Payment System access requests as appropriate.
• Provide expert technical support to internal customers, assisting with/recommending solutions to complex payment problems and Undertake transaction monitoring to protect both the Legal & General and our customers from any financial loss.
• Process Improvement - identify areas of improvement and working within LGR processes and Agile framework to take action to continually enhance the customer journey. 
• Consumer Duty- Ensure that the principles of Conduct Risk are embedded into your day-to-day operations to deliver good customer outcomes at all times. Ensure that all business processes and internal controls within your role are designed and performed in a way that delivers good customer outcomes and demonstrates effective management of Conduct Risk. 
• People Management - Manage, motivate and develop employees at all levels, in a manner that is consistent with the Company’s policies and procedures the including Partnership Agreement, to maximise the performance of the area. 

Qualifications

• Payroll and Pensions Industry Awareness  
• Legal & General pension products serviced by the function, payroll processes, software & change management  
• Payroll Regulatory/Risk  
• Processing payroll 
• Payroll reconciliations, exceptions and variance analysis and resolution 
• Experience in a similar environment working on pension payrolls (10,000+ volume) and reconciliations of payrolls on a B2c and B2b basis 
• Managing people 
• Analysis and interpretation of financial and technical payroll data for reconciliation and query resolution 
• Initiative – Trouble shooting and issue resolution 
• Communication at all levels 
• Problem solving and decision making 
• Planning/Organisation of payroll duties 
• Keeping velocity in a chan