Director Gbs Payroll Americas

Purpose & Overall Relevance for the Organization: 

The Director Payroll provides strategic and operational leadership to first line management team, overseeing all aspects of Americas payroll administration activities. Provides day to day leadership, ensuring proper and adequate processes and controls, monitoring performance while managing and developing the Payroll team. 

Key Responsibilities: 

• Ensures that Payroll services are processed in accordance with established procedures along with all legislative compliance requirements.  

• Ensures adherence to Internal Controls, other guidelines, and supports internal/ external audits. 

• Monitors the team’s daily performance, ensures direct reports meet their individual tasks, deadlines and perform to established standards.  

• Coach and mentor staff to ensure each team member excels individually while engages and motivates the team to work together towards the success of a common goal.  

• Acts as an escalation level and solves as quickly as possible, including root cause analysis and process improvement based on findings. 

• Evaluates and reports performance of service and takes corrective actions when needed. 

• Builds and maintains long-term relationships with key stakeholders along with internal and external customers.  

• Support ongoing outsourcing relationship and vendor management with Payroll vendors in the region. 

• Support implementation of Payroll Strategy regarding tools, programmes, and processes on a regional level. 

• Creates and implements realistic goals for the team in alignment with GBS strategy. 

• Develop and implement best practices, key performance indicators and SLA metrics.  

• Maintains confidentiality of any private employee information, any proprietary information and ensures HR and Payroll information is secure. 

• Participates in internal and cross functional projects as required. 

• Act as a role model in compliance with the relevant laws and regulations as well as adidas’ Fair Play Code of Conduct and other internal policies and company agreements. 

 
Key Relationships:  

• GBS Operations and Process Excellence teams 

• External authorities, consultants, and suppliers 

• HR Experts: Rewards, Cross Border Employment (CBE), Talent Management 

• HR Business Partners 

• Tax department 

• Legal department 

• Payroll Vendors 

• Tax Vendors 

• Finance Department 

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities: 

• Must work well under strict deadlines and under a high-volume environment where multi-tasking is essential  

• Must be able to interact with various levels of management 

• Very good analytical skills and detail-oriented work style 

• Team player mentality 

• Strong customer focus and service mindset 

• Experience in leading and managing teams and ability to lead by example as well as ability to prioritise team’s workload to provide excellent customer experience having high volume administration to execute 

• Very good level of affinity to and experience with SAP HR or Success Factors 

• Knowledge of country and local wage, tax and social benefits for compliance along with benefit in kind regulations  

Requisite Education and Experience / Minimum Qualifications:  

• At least 8 - 10 years payroll processing experience with people management experience 

• Strong knowledge of Payroll and Time Management Systems 

• Strong knowledge of Payroll processing administration and taxes 

• University degree in Business Administration/Finance or similar 

• Broad and deep theoretical understanding of job function 

• Proficient in English and Spanish a plus.  

• Strong knowledge of MS-Office applications 

• Proven work experience with Payroll Vendors  

• Experience in a shared service environment and solid understanding of HR cycles 

• Excellent communication skills, ability to effectively supervise team members and achieve accurate results