Payroll & T&A Specialist - Accurate, Impactful Operations

Bright Horizons; Northampton; On-site; GBP 28,000 - 36,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible working

Holiday entitlements

Discounted childcare

Employee Appreciation Weeks

Annual gala award evening

Discounts on high street retailers

Job summary

Bright Horizons in the United Kingdom is seeking a Payroll Officer to support end-to-end payroll processing, including collating inputs, calculations, statutory payments, and deductions, with UKG and Time & Attendance data handling.

You will investigate discrepancies, perform audits, support system testing, and maintain training materials while partnering with HR and Finance to ensure accurate, timely payroll delivery and a great employee experience.

Qualifications

• Strong understanding of end-to-end payroll processing, including audit, NMW checks (UK payroll essential).
• Experience using payroll and T&A systems (Workday preferred).
• High attention to detail and strong numerical accuracy.
• Strong written and verbal communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Experience contributing to process improvement initiatives.
• Experience in process design and risk management.

Responsibilities

• End to end payroll processing, including collating and processing payroll inputs, calculations, statutory payments, and other payroll related payments and deductions.
• Exception management on the UKG payroll system, including manager queries and reporting.
• Contribute to maintaining training guides and e-learning initiatives for T&A system, providing suggestions for required training based on queries, recurring issues and identifying trends.
• Support line managers in processing and maintaining absence records, including annual leave, sickness, maternity/paternity leave and other time-off requests.
• Investigate and correct T&A discrepancies, including missed punches, overtime, shift patterns, schedules and working-pattern issues.
• Participate in testing of T&A system changes, upgrades and new functionality, including user acceptance testing (UAT) and validation of accurate T&A-to-payroll results.
• Monitor absence records and identify discrepancies between T&A, HR/ payroll records, supporting investigation and resolution of identified issues.
• Reconciliation of T&A hours and time off data following monthly integration, including totals checking, investigation of errors and manual corrections where required.
• First line payroll checking, including peer to peer checking, input validation and variance.
• Maintenance of input trackers for payroll inputs and manual amendments, including payroll checking and evidence folder.
• Proactively identify and resolve payroll issues before payroll submission.
• Escalate risks appropriately while maintaining accountability for resolution using agreed tools, including Risk logs, and take responsibility for continuous improvement within assigned scope, including risk log actions.
• Partner with HR, Finance, and external providers as needed to ensure seamless payroll delivery.
• Act as a key point of contact for payroll queries from internal stakeholders and own the employee experience, ensuring payroll queries are resolved accurately, professionally, and within agreed SLA's.
• Identify inefficiencies in payroll processes and recommend improvements, support Payroll Operations Lead with suggestions for automation and system enhancement initiatives.
• Lead on assigned payroll procedure documentation creation and ongoing reviews.

Skills

End-to-end payroll processing

UKG payroll system

Workday

Audit

NMW checks

Process improvement

Risk management

Stakeholder management

Attention to detail

Numerical accuracy

Communication skills

Tools

Workday

UKG

Job description

Bright Horizons in the United Kingdom is seeking a Payroll Officer to support end-to-end payroll processing, including collating inputs, calculations, statutory payments, and deductions, with UKG and Time & Attendance data handling.

You will investigate discrepancies, perform audits, support system testing, and maintain training materials while partnering with HR and Finance to ensure accurate, timely payroll delivery and a great employee experience.