SEO Pay, Pension and Benefits Manager
Government Legal Department
Apply before Midday on Thursday 7th November 2024
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Salary
This salary will increase in line with a pending annual pay award and there may be additional flexibility for the right candidate.
Existing Civil Servants will be appointed in line with the Civil Service pay rules in place on the date of their appointment. Modernised terms and conditions will apply.
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About the job
Job summary
About the Government Legal Department
From energy to security, health to human rights, we help the Government deliver life changing law for citizens.
The Government Legal Department is the largest provider of legal services across government, working on high profile matters that are frequently scrutinised in Parliament and the media. Our work includes:
- Developing and drafting legislation
- Providing legal advice on policies
- Securing our economic and trade relationships
- Ensuring value from commercial contracts worth billions of pounds
- Providing the Civil Service’s employment law advice
We are at the heart of delivering the Government’s priorities and our success depends on our people.
GLD is a non-ministerial government department, sponsored by the Attorney General. We are headed by the Treasury Solicitor, our Permanent Secretary and employ nearly 3000 people, including over 2000 legal professionals. Our offices include London, Leeds, Bristol, Croydon and Manchester as well as overseas. We provide specialist legal services including Litigation, Employment and Commercial Law as well as advising most Government Departments on the policies and services they deliver.
GLD also depends on a range of vital corporate services. These are essential to the smooth and efficient running of the Department and provide the foundation to enable GLD to deliver outstanding legal services. Our corporate functions include Strategy, HR, Finance, Digital, Data and Technology, Communications, Security, Commercial and Project delivery.
Our vision is to be an outstanding legal organisation and a brilliant place to work where everyone can thrive and fulfil their potential. This is an exciting time for GLD, with cutting edge legal work on global issues and a transformation agenda which is ensuring the Department exemplifies the Modern Civil Service.
To find out more about what we do visit the Government Legal Department’s webpage or have a look at this short film which showcases the breadth of work government lawyers and legal trainees are involved in.
Job description
About the Strategy, Culture and People Division
This role sits within the Strategy, People and Culture (SPC) Division in GLD. There are five principal teams within the Division: Human Resources (HR), Project Delivery & Transformation, Communications, Business Management and Strategy & Governance.
Forming part of our Chief Operating Officer Group, the Strategy, People & Culture Division advises, supports and enables GLD lawyers to help the government to govern well within the rule of law. Our purpose is to support GLD’s people strategies and enable the department to be the best employer for our people.
GLD’s HR team’s ambition is to build on our commitment, professionalism and expertise so that we can provide first class, customer focused HR services. We want to support all GLD staff, promoting a diverse and inclusive culture, and developing inspiring and confident leaders and managers. By doing this we will provide a strong foundation underpinning the delivery of legal services to the government.
The HR Function provides a full range of services to GLD including HR business partnering, learning and development, resourcing and transactional processing, including payroll, along with teams focusing on Policy, Pay and Employee Relations and Workforce Strategy. This means our people have opportunities to develop their capability across a broad range of HR work and contributes to a highly engaged team where we are passionate about supporting each other to succeed.
Our purpose is to support GLD’s people strategies and enable the department to be the best employer for our people. We work with colleagues across GLD to:
- Attract, develop and retain a talented and motivated workforce
- Nurture talent and build career paths
- Develop inspiring, confident and empowering leaders and managers
- Support employees’ health and wellbeing
- Promote a diverse and inclusive culture We do this through:
- Our expertise and professionalism
- Providing business focused advice on workforce and employee issues
- An effective HR Service striving to get the basics right and offering first class, responsive and consistent customer service
- Working in partnership with our customers
- Developing and delivering a range of resourcing policies and processes
- Establishing cost effective and flexible reward structures Effective systems, policies and processes
About the Role
We are looking for an experienced payroll specialist to join our HR Operations Team as a subject matter expert for issues relating to payroll, pensions and employee benefits
The team provides in-house HR, payroll and pension services to GLD, Attorney General’s Office (AGO) and Her Majesty’s Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate (HMCSPI) and is the first point of contact for related queries, responding to up to 2000 enquires a month via Service Now or the HR Helpline.
Our 2024/25 priorities are to:
- Provide accurate and compliant payroll and payroll services
- Provide efficient and high quality HR help to GLD employees
- Manage employee benefit schemes and third-party providers to deliver specialist HR services
- Improve digital HR user journeys and optimise MyHR to increase efficiency and self-service
You will work closely with HR colleagues to deliver our priorities and provide excellent payroll, pension and employee benefit services to GLD, AGO and HMCPSI employees
You will be accountable for pensions and employee benefits and support the Head of Pay in managing month payroll, annual pay awards and pay changes ensuring all staff are paid accurately and on time
You will be expected to keep up to date in legislative pay, tax and pension changes and use your knowledge and expertise to increase payroll accuracy and develop capability and implement best working practices across the team.
Key Responsibilities
Payroll (c 50%)
- Calculate and re-open payrolls after previous months cleardown and run monthly net pay report for initial checking
- Check payroll related changes eg. joiners, movers, leavers, changes of hours/work patterns, overtime claims etc are being processed correctly by the Employee Services Team
- Provide ongoing support and guidance to ensure they process changes and respond to pay queries in a timely, accurate and consistent manner
- Investigate and resolve errors arising from the First Reports before Final calculations.
- Run and check net pay reports on completion of Final calculations and notifying MHR of any issues or discrepancies that could affect payroll being closed
- Communicate monthly payroll timetable to HR colleagues and business areas
- Support the implementation of annual pay awards, capability-based pay increases and the resolution of pay impacting complex HR cases
- Complete the NAO Annual Salaries and Wages Return
- Deputise for the Head of Payroll and Pensions as required
Pensions (c 25%)
- Ensure GLD meets its Civil Service Pension Scheme (CSPS) employer responsibilities, as set out in the Civil Service Employer Pension Guide, including the monitoring and actioning of Employer Pension Notices (EPNs)
- Manage GLD’s relationship with MyCSP including logging and escalating issue to raise at quarterly service review meetings
- Manage complex pension queries promptly and accurately and within target timescales, including undertaking any payroll actions required to reach a resolution e.g. Added Years under/overpayments
- Keep all pensions guidance up to date and regularly communicate pension and promote benefits to GLD employees
- Manage the three-yearly auto-enrolment exercise and annual and lifetime allowances communications
- Complete the Annual Accounting Certificate (AOC) on behalf of GLD, ensuring that it is compliant with its employer responsibilities.
- Liaise with MyCSP to obtain pension data for the annual remuneration exercise for publication in the GLD Annual Report
Employee Benefits (c25%)
- Manage the day-to-day relationship with Edenred on behalf of GLD and promote GLD’s Employee Benefits offer to GLD staff
- Manage GLD’s childcare salary sacrifice cycle to work schemes, including liaising with key stakeholders and validating and processing monthly orders and payroll changes
Line Management Responsibilities
- Line management of AO Pensions and Employee Benefits Advisor
This is an outline description of the key responsibilities and accountabilities involved and is not intended to be an exhaustive list. The post-holder may be required to undertake other duties across HR, commensurate with their grade and experience.
Person specification
Below are details of the Success Profiles that make up this role. You will be expected to provide evidence to show how you meet the criteria at application and/or interview stage.
Further information on Success Profiles can be found here
Essential Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
- Managing a Quality Service (Lead behaviour)
- Communicating and Influencing
- Changing and Improving
- Seeing the Bigger Picture
Essential skills and experience
- In-depth understanding of the payroll cycle and routine payroll tasks, including overseeing the accurate and timely completion of payroll changes and monthly payroll reconciliation
- Experience of reconciling net pay differences against previous payrolls and pay change actions and investigating and correcting potential errors and anomalies
- Experience of implementing annual pay awards
- Experience of running occupational pension schemes and resolving pension queries
- Up to date knowledge of relevant pay, tax and pension legislation
- Excellent numerical skills and proficiency in Excel eg. VLOOKUP, Pivot Tables, formulae etc
- Ability to support the team in dealing with complex pay and pension queries and using your technical expertise to coach and develop others
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills with the ability to communicate effectively and confidently with colleagues, customers and stakeholders and experience of drafting organisational level communication and guidance
- Self-motivated individual with attention to detail who is comfortable working with minimal supervision and pro-active in identifying priority work
Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
- Managing a Quality Service
- Communicating and Influencing
- Changing and Improving
- Seeing the Big Picture
Benefits
- Learning and development tailored to your role
- An environment with flexible working options
- A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
- A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%
Things you need to know
Selection process details
Application
This vacancy is using Success Profiles, and will assess your Behaviours, Strengths and Experience. To apply for this post, you will need to complete:
1.An online CV setting out your career history and experience, along with key responsibilities and achievements. CV will be scored assessing Experience.
2.A Personal Statement (maximum 750 words) providing evidence of your suitability for the role, with particular reference to Managing a Quality Service and Experience as outlined in the person specification
Failure to submit either element will mean the panel only have limited information on which to assess your application against the criteria in the person specification. Any personal statements exceeding the 750 words may not be considered.
Your application should include relevant examples and demonstrate how you meet the criteria for the post, with relevant examples. It will not be sufficient to reiterate the criteria; you are expected to illustrate how you have met them.
In the event that we receive a large number of applications, we reserve the right to sift against using the CV only.
Selection Process
After the closing date, the appointing panel shall assess candidates’ suitability for the role based on evidence provided in their application against the behaviours and experience outlined in the person specification.
Interview
Should you be successful in being invited to interview, you will be assessed on your performance in all essential criteria as listed in the Person Specification, alongside strength-based questions. Candidates invited to interview will be given further information on the day and time to prepare.
- Managing a Quality Service (Lead behaviour)
- Communicating and Influencing
- Changing and Improving
- Seeing the Bigger Picture
- Skills and Experience
Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview.
Interviews will take place remotely via video conference, full details of the interview format will be provided to shortlisted candidates prior to interview. The timeline later in this pack indicates the date by which decisions are expected to be made, and all shortlisted candidates will be advised of the outcome as soon as possible thereafter.
Offer
Regardless of the outcome, we will notify all candidates as soon as possible after the final interview.
We appoint in strict order of merit. If you meet the minimum criteria for this position but are not successful for a post, you will be placed on the reserve list for up to 12 months. We then may contact you to see if you are interested in a post at the same, or a lower grade, in GLD should one arise.
Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.
Security
Nationality requirements
Working for the Civil Service
We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).
Diversity and Inclusion
Apply and further information
Contact point for applicants
Job contact :
- Name : Stephanie Timms
- Email : stephanie.timms@governmentlegal.gov.uk
Recruitment team
- Email : activecampaigns@governmentlegal.gov.uk
