Lead - Payroll & Benefits Service Delivery - Plant Support

Job Description Summary

To lead and manage a distributed team of factory payroll SPOCs across various locations, ensuring end to end payroll administration, statutory compliance, benefits coordination, insurance management, exit processing, and employee support functions are executed accurately and timely. This role is critical in driving standardization, process governance, and continuous improvement across the sites.

Job Description

Site SPOC Management

• Manage and coordinate with payroll SPOCs based at factory locations, ensuring clarity of payroll responsibilities.
• Act as the bridge between central payroll team and factory SPOCs.
• Provide guidance and support to SPOCs, who may be managing multiple HR/admin functions alongside payroll.
• Ensure site SPOCs maintain input records, approvals, and audit backups as per governance requirements.
• Conduct regular check-ins to monitor progress, resolve issues, and align on timelines.
• Create a knowledge repository of SOPs, FAQ, templates, and escalation paths.

• Lead, mentor, and manage a team of payroll specialists and analysts.
• Allocate responsibilities to team members for specific payroll cycles, statutory filings, and query resolutions.
• Monitor Key metrics and KPIs set by the global governance team, ensuring continuous adherence.
• Identify training needs and organize periodic knowledge sharing or refresher sessions for the team.
• Drive operational rhythm through regular team huddles, issue resolution meetings, and escalation tracking

• Ensure timely and accurate collection of site-level payroll inputs such as attendance, overtime, leave, shift allowances, and other variable components.
• Understand the clauses related to salary structure changes, allowances, retroactive payments, bonus eligibility and effective dates.
• Check salary revision data for accuracy employee codes, revised amounts, effective dates, arrear calculations.
• Work with SPOCs to validate inputs before final submission to the central payroll processing team.
• Flag anomalies or data gaps and coordinate with input owners for corrections.
• Ensure segregation of duties between input generation and processing.
• Approve sensitive entries like ad hoc payments, onetime adjustments or recoveries.
• Drive periodic training and refreshers for input owners.
• Maintain version control and audit trail of input files.
• Lead root cause analysis for any input related errors or escalations.
• Report governance metrics (input accuracy, % delay trends, error root causes).

• Oversee administration of employee benefits in line with the policy.
• Ensure SPOCs handle enrollments, addition, deletions, and escalations related to insurance benefits.

• Ensure SPOCs coordinate F&F processing for employee exits.
• Monitor documentation for clearances, final input collection, and timely data sharing with payroll processing team.
• Validate Gratuity, notice pay, leave encashment, and statutory recoveries for outgoing employees.

• Oversee the resolution of employee payroll queries raised at the factory sites.
• Act as a second-level escalation point for unresolved or complex payroll issues.
• Ensure SPOCs are equipped with updated knowledge on payroll policies, system changes, and FAQs.
• Ensure standard templates and tone of communication are used while responding to employees.
• Review common queries and propose policy clarifications or communication updates.
• Facilitate periodic connects between central payroll and factory SPOCs to align on processes and feedback.

• Ensure payroll practices at the factory sites align with statutory regulations (PF, ESI, PT, etc.) and internal policies.
• Maintain and implement ICFR and SOX controls for payroll.
• Participate in internal, external, and statutory audits provide data, backups and clarify queries.
• Maintain complete audit trail of payroll processing and employee payments.
• Identify and mitigate operational risks duplicate payments and late payments.
• Ensure employee payroll data is secured and accessible only to authorized personnel.
• Train factory SPOCs and payroll processors on handling sensitive information securely.
• Publish monthly/quarterly compliance dashboards to leadership.

• Establish backup processes for critical payroll operations during system failures or emergencies.
• Document SOPs and cross train team members for coverage during absenteeism or attrition.
• Conduct periodic mock drills or simulation tests for BCP readiness.

• Graduate/Postgraduate in HR, Commerce, or a related field
• 10-15 years of experience in payroll operations, with exposure to multi-site environments
• Strong understanding of payroll inputs, statutory compliance, and factory-level operations
• Experience in managing remote teams or stakeholders
• Strong coordination and people management skills
• Ability to manage priorities across multiple stakeholders
• High attention to detail with process orientation
• Good communication and training skills to enable site SPOCs