Payroll Lead - Tea Company (Project Role)

Work Location: Netherlands, Rotterdam

Limited travel

About the Tea Business

Unilever is proud of its Tea business, the biggest in the world, with world class purpose driven brands such as Lipton, PG tips and Pukka. Recently, Unilever decided to separate the Tea business to ensure it can best achieve its potential. Unilever is currently reviewing several options for separation, including a demerger, an initial public offering, a disposal or through partnership models. The process is expected to conclude by the end of 2021. The Tea businesses in India and Indonesia, and the partnership interests in the ready-to-drink Tea joint ventures will be retained.

The balance of the Tea brands and geographies and all Tea estates, with generated revenues of €2 billion in 2019, is growing and profitable with proven potential both pre- and post-COVID-19. As a standalone entity, the Tea company remains number one in the world and is even better positioned to lead the industry and take full advantage of the opportunities in the category, with more focus and entrepreneurship driving greater growth and value.

The current vision for the Tea company is to champion a tastier, healthier, more sustainable world of plant-based drinking. Purposeful thinking will be the core anchor of the business, its brands as well as its culture, and enables simple and agile decision making, supports an entrepreneurial mindset and is driven by passion for our consumers.

As we move through this journey towards separation, we are seeking employees with a passion for exciting entrepreneurial experiences, who want to pursue unique career opportunities and have a desire to be an integral part in building the bright future of this plant-based company.

Your Role:

As a Payroll Lead you will provide Payroll expertise to Tea Company (including process, policy, technical, and governance), In addition, you will act as a key driver of the global payroll strategy for the area of responsibility, ensuring that Payroll strategies, systems, processes, and policies, are consistently activated (including M&A, divestiture activity, third party payroll relationships). Furthermore, you will roll out global projects in Payroll area – e.g. related to Global Mobility, Global Equity, Employee Experience, new technologies, etc. as well as building relationships with payroll stakeholders to develop mutual understanding and define major risks/gaps which could cause problems/issues. Develop and oversee activities/plans required to mitigate/prevent country exposure to both internal and external risk. Capture, build and share internal and external knowledge. Actively engage in a Global Payroll Community of Practice.

Your Key Tasks:

Customer Service Management

• Manages the relationships with stakeholders and act as the global touch point to the Payroll management community

• Analyses feedback from HR community and Service Providers to evaluate the effectiveness of the Payroll solutions and continuously improve solutions to ensure the desired impact is delivered.

• Monitors and reviews service level targets, works to resolve issues/problems escalated. Drive improvements in service where metrics identify major/ongoing risks.

• Pro-actively communicate service information and understanding. Provide input to monthly service review.

• Interface with the Payroll and HR outsourced services providers at a global level to ensure effective definition and delivery of Payroll services.

• Ensures (through relevant audits and reporting) that the Payroll systems, processes, policies and tools are compliant with Tea Co internal-process standards and external regulatory requirements.

Programme Management

• Define key activities required across countries to drive payroll strategy. Identify and agree actions required with key country stakeholders and expertise teams.

• Support countries with advice and time when delivering local changes as a result of required projects.

• Cascade global changes in a way that countryies can understand and implement (taking into consideration local legal requirements to drive country alignment to global payroll strategy).

• Gather feedback on the global changes and providing it feedback to the change originators, assisting them in further improvements of the solution design

Transition Management

• Is responsible for gate keeping key external relationships with regional global Payroll vendors.

• Supports/facilitates the transition of impacted payroll deployments via use of in country management (e.g. provide expertise and governance to Country Project Leads, etc.)

• Challenge and negotiate costing/pricing provided by providers to the benefit/betterment of Unilever Tea Company.

• Partner with procurement team and contract team for request for proposals for new payroll and/or HR solutions.

Operations

• Strives for continuous improvement of service delivery in accordance with defined standards and co-ordination with the respective actors i.e. via country owners‘ input.

• Builds a network of external consultants and academic institutions to ensure that Unilever Tea Company leverages best practice knowledge, solutions and products to Payroll Services

• Shares internal and external knowledge and best practices amongst the members of the HRLT Leadership and Payroll expertise team

Scoop and Key Interfaces:

• Global scope

• Leading a global team of 5 direct reports

• Country Payroll Coordinators

• Operational teams

• Finance Key Stakeholders

• Global Mobility

• Global Equity

• Regional and Global IT

• Regional Auditors

• Supply Chain Key Stakeholders

• Outsourced Services Provider – Vendor management

Required Knowledge and Experiences:

• University graduate, 10 years of Employee Experience and Service Delivery

• 3-5 years of experience across:

• International Payroll and HRM related operations

• Payroll and inter-related processes and controls

• Operation of outsourcing, preferably outsourcing Payroll and HR

• Third party contracts compliance management with regulatory and required standards, including data protection

• Payroll, HRM, & Automated Time & Attendance systems applications, procurement, and implementation

• Knowledge in Finance

• Service Provider management

• Project management

• Information management

• Vendor Management

• Application and exploitation of information technology

• Language requirement: English

Required Skills:

• Strong relationship skills required to manage service providers and internal key Finance and HR stakeholders for payroll, and Supply Chain stakeholders for Time & Absence management.

• Good understanding of working in multicultural environment and appreciation of differing approaches to payroll

• Understanding and interpretation of Labor legislation (collective industrial agreements)

• Deep understanding of Payroll Administration and applied development methodologies. (E.g. business, technical and Vendor specifications, RFP’s, evaluations, and deployment activities)

• External orientation in the context of Payroll trends and benchmarking best practices in those processes.

• Consumer Love

• Strong communication skills

• Talent Catalyst

• Passionate about tea!

Excited about the Role?

Please apply online and submit your CV & Cover Letter. Your application will be reviewed against our requirements and we will be in touch to provide you with an update on the status of your application.