Director Rewards Benefits and Payroll at University of the Western Cape/Universiteit van Wes-Kaapland

The University of the Western Cape (UWC) offers an exciting career opportunity for a seasoned rewards, benefits and payroll professional with proven expert knowledge and experience at a senior level.

For this key leadership role in the Human Resources Department, we seek an accomplished Rewards, Benefits, Payroll and HR Systems generalist who will contribute substantially as a strategic role player to the HR operations.

Reporting to the Executive Director: Human Resources and assisted by the Payroll Manager and other Specialists, your key tasks will include proactively managing the Payroll Delivery, Benefits Administration, Rewards Strategy, Payroll Budget, Management and Systems Management.

The role of the Director: Rewards, Benefits and Payroll is: 

• To lead and manage the Payroll and Rewards functions and ensure that UWC manages compensation within the budget parameters and a successful delivery of the monthly Payroll;
• To manage the rewards policy and strategy implementation;
• To ensure relevant salary/survey data is available for rewards management;
• To initiate procedures governing staff salaries, benefits and related issues;
• Enterprise Resources Planning System (ERP) maintenance and liaison;
• Overseeing/driving ERP systems optimization, with a specific focus on delivering e-HR solutions.

Minimum Requirements:

Consequently, you will need a postgraduate Financial Degree together with at least eight (8) years’ expert working knowledge at a senior level on all components impacting on budget control, rewards management and payroll delivery – from staff appointments to exits; preferably gained in a tertiary educational environment in South Africa, including a sound knowledge of and experience in HR Payroll Systems. Accreditation by the South African Rewards Associated will be an added advantage.

Key Performance Areas:

• Engage all stakeholders in a monitoring process to enable effective tracking of staff costs; liaise inter alia with senior management, IT support, HR staff, Finance Department etc.;   
• Analyse and report cost against Budget. Also report on quarterly trends;
• Maintenance of the budget data base with particular attention to post creation, post changes and post deletions, on the ERP system;
• To ensure that a logical hierarchy of faculties/departments/posts are maintained in the ERP database;
• Submit recommendations on Budget Management;
• Report on budget variances and highlight areas of potential over-expenditure, ensuring that Faculty records with regards to contract spending is aligned with the ERP system;
• Advise on financial impact as a result of policy changes, job evaluation/ad-hominem/ad hoc adjustments, etc. Where relevant, prepare Council/Executive Management papers to effect salary/policy changes;
• Maintenance of survey job database to ensure proper benchmarking and pricing of jobs;
• Ensuring data input for both survey updates as well as salary increases.
• Leads, coordinates and manages the improvement of payroll systems and processes.
• Rewards and benefits management - responsible to ensure benefit systems that are appropriate for staff.