Global Payroll Capability Manager

What You Can Expect

The Global Payroll Capability Manager leads the value-creation arm of the ZB Global Payroll Excellence (PEX) team, with accountability for the Operational Excellence, People Readiness and Change Enablement capability domains. Reporting to the Head of Global Payroll Excellence and working within the Global PEX Design framework, the role converts strategy into scalable ways of working, measurable improvement, stronger organizational capability and sustainable change. The Manager leads a team of two permanent Payroll Excellence SMEs and Leads, complemented by an occasional rotating team member, and owns payroll-specific transformation management as a permanent organizational capability. This position protects mission-critical Payroll Operations by governing improvement and change outside live delivery, from prioritization and design through readiness, adoption, stabilization and transition to BAU. The role partners globally with Payroll Operations, Regional Payroll Managers, HR, Finance, IT, project teams and vendors to increase the value realized from payroll people, processes and technology.

How You'll Create Impact

• Lead the Operational Excellence, People Readiness and Change Enablement capability domains, maintaining roadmaps, priorities, standards, KPIs and maturity plans aligned with Global Design.
• Build and govern a global continuous improvement portfolio based on operational signals, recurring issues, stakeholder feedback and strategic priorities, with transparent prioritization and benefits tracking.
• Lead process simplification, standardization, automation and root-cause prevention using Lean, PDCA or similar methods, with improvements designed for reuse across countries and teams.
• Define and report value metrics, including quality, cycle time, manual effort, recurrence, adoption, capacity release and cost avoidance.
• Establish and maintain the payroll knowledge architecture and internal Payroll Academy, including role-based learning pathways, curricula and content standards.
• Govern scalable knowledge management through on-demand courses, digital knowledge and learning tools, curated content, clear ownership, review cycles and accessibility.
• Standardize onboarding, knowledge transfer and transition practices; deliver targeted in-person enablement, deep dives and individual and team capability uplift.
• Own payroll-specific program and change leadership for payroll-impacting initiatives, from scope and planning through milestones, risks, dependencies and executive reporting.
• Lead business readiness, stakeholder engagement, training, cutover coordination, hypercare, adoption and transition to BAU for payroll-impacting changes, partnering with the Risk and Control domain and IT for control and technical assurance.
• Build and maintain reusable project and change playbooks, tollgates, templates and lessons learned, ensuring clear ownership, acceptance criteria and sustainability measures for each initiative.
• Lead, coach and develop Payroll Excellence SMEs and Leads; allocate capacity across the portfolio, manage performance and succession, and escalate trade-offs that threaten mission-critical delivery or PEX capability build-out.
• Partner with the Head of Global Payroll Excellence, Regional Payroll Managers, HR, Finance, IT and vendors to align design, governance, delivery and adoption and prevent duplicated or orphaned work.

What Makes You Stand Out

• Operating model and systems thinking: able to translate global design into practical, scalable capabilities and clear ownership.
• Continuous improvement and value-realization mindset: able to identify, prioritize and sustain improvements with measurable business outcomes.
• Program, project and change leadership: able to govern complex, cross-functional initiatives from scope through stabilization and transition to BAU.
• Knowledge and capability building: able to design learning architecture, knowledge systems, onboarding and targeted enablement that reduce key-person dependency.
• People leadership: able to lead, coach and develop experienced SMEs and Leads while balancing delivery, development and succession.
• Global payroll expertise: strong understanding of end-to-end payroll operations, multi-country complexity and the interaction of process, people, technology, controls and vendors.
• Data-driven prioritization and judgement: able to use operational signals, benefits, risks and capacity constraints to make clear trade-offs.
• Stakeholder influence and communication: able to align senior, cross-functional and multicultural stakeholders and explain complex payroll concepts in business terms.

Strategic-to-operational agility: comfortable moving between operating model design, portfolio governance and hands-on problem solving.

Your Background

• 10+ years of payroll, process excellence, transformation or related experience, preferably in a multinational or shared service center (SSC) environment.
• 3+ years of people leadership experience, including managing or developing senior specialists, SMEs or project leads.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills in English are required; additional European languages are an advantage.
• Demonstrated experience leading multi-country payroll, HR or Finance transformation initiatives from design through readiness, cutover, stabilization and handover to BAU.
• Demonstrated experience with Lean Six Sigma, PDCA, 5S or another structured continuous improvement methodology, including benefits realization.
• Experience establishing knowledge management, learning, onboarding or capability-development programs in a complex organization.
• Strong understanding of global payroll operating models, payroll and time technology ecosystems, controls and vendor dependencies.
• Experience with portfolio governance, executive reporting and cross-functional resource coordination; formal project or change management certification is an advantage.
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent relevant experience

Travel Expectations

5 %