About Them
This organisation is in the midst of an exciting transformation across the People & Culture function, focused on building a leaner, more contemporary and customer-focused HR division. A key part of this evolution is the creation of a new Payroll Manager that will drive a team to deliver accurate, compliant and seamless pay outcomes for staff while driving future system and process improvements.
Payroll is currently managed internally with solid foundations in place, but there’s plenty of scope to optimise — from process improvement to system integration — and this new role will play a central part in that journey.
About the Role
As the newly appointed Payroll Manager, you’ll lead and run the organisation’s payroll function, ensuring accurate, timely and compliant pay outcomes for all employees.
This is a dual-focused position balancing hands-on operational management with a strong strategic lens. You’ll lead a small team of payroll advisors, oversee end-to-end payroll processing, and partner across HR and Finance to embed efficiencies, strengthen governance and shape the future direction of payroll.
Key priorities include:
- Leading the payroll function and ensuring compliant fortnightly pay runs.
- Building capability within the team and elevating payroll to an advisory function.
- Optimising the payroll system, improving data integrity and automation.
- Providing expert advice on pay compliance, governance, and systems integration (including ServiceNow).
- Supporting enterprise bargaining and pay remediation projects.
You’re an experienced payroll professional who thrives in complex environments and enjoys leading both people and process improvement. You bring a strong technical foundation, particularly with Ascender (or a similar enterprise-grade system), and are confident driving compliance, systems optimisation and change.
You’ll also bring:
- Demonstrated experience leading payroll operations in a medium–large organisation.
- Proven ability to manage and develop a small team.
- A strategic mindset with an eye for process and system improvement.
- Strong stakeholder management and communication skills.
- A collaborative, confident and solutions-focused approach.
For more information or a confidential conversation, please contact Lorainne Winterstein on 02 8256 2512 or Lwinterstein@thenextstep.com.au
, quoting reference number 3970213.