Director: Rewards Benefits and Payroll at University of Western Cape

Director: Rewards, Benefits and Payroll 

The role of the Human Resources Department is to support the University’s People Strategy which presents challenging people deliverables in relation to change and transformation projects and strategies. Transformational leadership is required from all at the University, and the role of HR is both to enable and facilitate processes for continuous improvement.

The University of the Western Cape (UWC) offers an exciting career opportunity for a seasoned reward, benefits & 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 & 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 & Systems Management.

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

• To lead and manage the Rewards, Benefits and Payroll functions and ensure that UWC manages compensation within the budget parameters and 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.

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 and report on quarterly trends;
• Maintenance of the budget database with 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. and 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.

Applications should be submitted online by 30 April 2020