Manager, Payroll

About the role

Lead the day-to-day payroll operations for a large, complex, multi-state organization. Provide strategic and operational leadership to payroll teams, ensuring accurate, timely, and compliant payroll processing for a diverse workforce. Serve as a key partner across Human Resources, Finance, Tax, Benefits, Technology, and Compliance functions while driving continuous improvement, operational excellence, and team development.

This position requires extensive experience with Oracle Fusion HCM Payroll, strong leadership capabilities, and a hands-on approach to managing payroll operations, including payroll run books for both on-cycle and daily payrolls, issue resolution, process optimization, and system enhancements.

Responsibilities

• Provide developmental opportunities for team members; build collaborative, cross-functional relationships.
• Solicit and act on performance feedback; set goals and provide open feedback and coaching to drive performance improvement.
• Pursue professional growth; develop and provide training and development to talent; support execution of performance management guidelines.
• Lead, adapt, implement, and stay up to date with organizational change, challenges, feedback, best practices, processes, and industry trends.
• Foster open dialogue, engage, motivate, and promote collaboration within and across teams.
• Delegate tasks and decisions as appropriate; provide support, guidance, and scope; encourage development and consideration of options in decision making.
• Manage designated work unit or team by translating business plans into tactical action items; oversee completion of work assignments and identify opportunities for improvement; ensure all policies and procedures are followed.
• Align team efforts; build accountability for and measure progress in achieving results; determine and ensure processes and methodologies are implemented; resolve escalated issues; set standards and measure progress.
• Foster development of work plans to meet business priorities and deadlines; obtain and distribute resources; remove obstacles that impact performance; identify and address improvement opportunities; guide performance and develop contingency plans; influence teams to execute in alignment with operational objectives.
• Implement processes related to employee payments, reclamation, and garnishment orders:
  • Support preparation and distribution of employee payments (e.g., compensation, State Disability Insurance) in case of overflow and escalated issues.
  • Manage team processing garnishment orders.
  • Analyze and interpret trends in employee payment reclamation and garnishment orders use and procedures, including authorizing payments to third-party feeds (e.g., deductions, taxes withheld).
  • Analyze procedures and software used between Human Resources, Finance/Accounting, and Payroll to identify areas to improve accuracy and efficiency between systems.
• Support or leverage payroll data processing:
  • Support preparation and analysis of reports of key metrics (e.g., timesheets, employee hourly rates, earned time off).
  • Review data adjustments performed by the team and nonroutine data uploads.
  • Provide guidance to resolve issues related to adjustments and employee data.
  • Investigate and mitigate sources of systematic discrepancies and report them to senior management.
• Address employee inquiries and internal reporting efforts:
  • Consult with other departments to provide and gather information related to payroll and provide direction to the team.
  • Provide oversight and respond to complex inquiries regarding pay discrepancies, earned time off, basic tax analysis, and others raised by senior managers and directors.
  • Lead coordination with other departments such as HR and Benefits to obtain information through inquiries and process it; provide technical expertise to the team.
  • Analyze and interpret routine and nonroutine reports requested by leadership; request development of new report templates.
  • Identify trends or patterns within payroll data which may result in future issues and drive solutions through the team.
• Monitor adherence to best practices, tax regulations, union contracts, and regulatory authorities to ensure compliance:
  • Monitor current and potential changes in regulations and compare them to current policies and procedures.
  • Represent Payroll in departments and projects to ensure compliance with regulatory authorities as requested.
  • Review and resolve complex issues related to the submission of information to regulating authorities.

Requirements

• Minimum one (1) year of experience managing operational or project budgets.
• Minimum three (3) years of experience in a leadership role with or without direct reports.
• Bachelor’s Degree in Payroll, Accounting, Finance, Economics, or related field AND minimum six (6) years of experience in payroll or directly related field OR minimum nine (9) years of experience in payroll or a directly related field.

Preferred Qualifications

• Four (4) years of experience working with Human Resources (HR) data in a major HR Enterprise Reporting Platform (ERP) (e.g., SAP, PeopleSoft, HCM, etc.).
• Three (3) years of audit or accounting firm experience.

Skills

• Core: Ambiguity/Uncertainty Management, Attention to Detail, Business Knowledge, Communication, Constructive Feedback, Critical Thinking, Cross-Group Collaboration, Decision Making, Dependability, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Support, Drives Results, Facilitation Skills, Health Care Industry, Influencing Others, Integrity, Leadership, Learning Agility, Organizational Savvy, Problem Solving, Short- and Long-term Learning & Recall, Strategic Thinking, Team Building, Teamwork, Topic-Specific Communication.
• Functional: Data Entry, Data Quality, Financial Acumen, Financial Analysis, Financial Reporting, Financial Software, Regulatory Reporting, Reporting Tools, Trend Analysis.

Benefits

Kaiser Permanente strives to offer a market competitive total rewards package and is committed to pay equity and transparency.

Pay

$95,900 - $124,080 / year. Actual base pay determined at offer will be based on labor market data, internal alignment, and a candidate's years of relevant work experience, education, certifications, skills, and geographic location.

Schedule

• Scheduled Weekly Hours: 40
• Shift: Day
• Workdays: Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri
• Working Hours Start: 08:00 AM
• Working Hours End: 05:00 PM
• Job Schedule: Full-time
• Worker Location: Remote (worker location must align with Kaiser Permanente's Authorized States policy)