Payroll Analyst

We are a leading financial services provider committed to making decisions easier and lives better for our customers and colleagues around the world. From our environmental initiatives to our community investments, we lead with values throughout our business. To help us stand out, we help you step up, because when colleagues are healthy, respected and meaningfully challenged, we all thrive. Discover how you can grow your career, make impact and drive real change with our Winning Team today.

Working Arrangement

Hybrid

Job Description

About the company

Our Employee Experience Operations team is responsible for delivering a consistent end-to-end client experience across business units and markets. We support the growth of our business through service excellence and a client-focused approach. We build our competitive advantage by leveraging our global scale, our global capabilities, and our local market focus. Our Centers of Expertise and Shared Services structure allow us to thrive in an environment of open communication and collaboration. Human Resources (HR) Administration Services provides HR administration services for payroll and workforce administration for employees in North America.

Job Summary:

As a member of the North America Payroll Services team, the Payroll Analyst will oversee and audit the daily operations of the Payroll department; identify and research discrepancies ensuring they are resolved in a proper and timely manner; be able to spot numerical errors, anomalies and trends in data. This role requires extensive knowledge of the laws and regulations in multiple states/provinces regarding compensation and taxation. In this high-volume and fast-paced team you will be working against tight deadlines with high volumes of work. This job reports to the Payroll Manager for the country (either U.S. or Canada).

General duties include:

• Take an active role in assisting the Payroll Manager and take responsibility for accurate and timely semi-monthly payroll processing for approximately 12,000 employees in 10 provinces with 10 companies.
• Performs a variety of complex duties in the preparation of processing, maintenance of payroll, salary, tax payments, allowances, benefit calculations, equity compensation plans.
• Research, analyze, and retrieve data to prepare and maintain complex payroll records, summaries and reports.
• Apply critical analysis to reconciliations and other large files to find patterns and anomalies in payroll, benefit, retirement and accounting data.
• Set up and maintain database files; create spreadsheets, reports and documents as required.
• Process Daily transactions from Inbound Interface from Workday, 3rd party vendors, and AskHR.
• Reconcile and report payments (net pay, taxes, garnishments, etc.).
• Assists with internal and external audit walk throughs and support gathering.
• Investigate and respond to Payroll Tier 1B escalated cases (tracked in Salesforce).
• Attends trainings and workshops as directed.
• Works OT occasionally (around year end, to support audits, busy periods, etc.).

Key Accountabilities: (Allocate the percent of total working time spending on each accountability, which should add up to 100%)

Individual Accountabilities:

Payroll Processing – 80%

• Audit work performed by Coordinators including manual edits made directly in the payroll system (Changes include but not limited to new hires, employee transfers, incentive pay, voluntary and involuntary deductions, tax changes, voluntary and involuntary terminations, STD, LTD, paid and unpaid leaves of absence, overpayment adjustments, etc.).
• Audit and transmit live payroll including net pay, garnishments and tax files to the payroll vendor.
• Process transactions from Inbound Interfaces, and other data files from Workday, and 3rd Party vendors. (i.e PECI, PICOF, commissions, benefits, equity, pension, etc.).
• Reconcile and remit third party payments including voluntary deductions, pension, WCB, and others as required.
• Process supplemental and Board of director, expat stock related off-cycle payrolls.
• Calculate and process transactions that impact the Gross to Net payroll including regular pay (salary), incentive payments, one-time payments, termination pay (voluntary & involuntary), vacation on termination, leave payments, overpayments & recovery, voluntary deductions, garnishments, employee tax set-up.
• Assist in the review of daily PECI (Payroll Effective Change Interface) integrations between Workday and ADP GlobalView). Monitor transactions and make manual corrections or entries in ADP GlobalView if any records error during integration. Changes include New Hires, Employee Transfers, Pay Incentives, Voluntary deductions, Garnishments, Employee Tax setup, Voluntary and Involuntary Terminations, STD, LTD, Maternity Leaves (others), Rehab Hours, Overpayment process.
• Prepare and upload batch files into the payroll system according to system specifications.
• Assist in producing and amending the year-end tax reporting (T4 and T4A, W2, W2c, Relevé 1 and 2) for all payroll groups.
• Assist with other quarterly, monthly, and yearend report balancing, reconciliation, and remittances including but not limited to: WCB, Health Tax, Quarterly tax form reconciliations, expat reconciliations, etc.
• Calculate and process transactions that impact gross to net payroll including salary, overtime, incentive payments, termination and severance pay, deductions, etc.
• Create on-demand checks and EFTs for off-cycle payments or payroll corrections.

Payroll Governance, Audits, and Controls – 20%

• Verify payroll data for reasonableness and compliance, able to identify anomalies and outliers.
• Ensure payroll documentation and procedures are followed and maintained, periodically review and update SOP (Standard Operating Procedures).
• Address and resolve tax notices (with CRA/IRS).
• Research, plan, test & implement legislative changes related to payroll, and make the necessary system and/or processes updates, liaise with Payroll vendor as needed.
• Test system scenarios and duplicate issues to resolve customer inquiries or implement new configuration.
• Support the payroll accounting team with journal entry and month end reconciliation research.
• Provide recommendations and implement process improvements and optimization projects.
• Research, resolve and respond to escalated Tier 1B payroll inquiries in Salesforce within designated SLAs.
• Other responsibilities as assigned.

Qualifications:

• 4 to 6 years of payroll processing, preferably high volume, with large selection of Canadian provinces.
• Bachelor’s/University degree in Finance, Accounting or Business Administration or equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Fully capable of performing all Coordinator tasks.
• Strong sense of logic and an aptitude for mathematics.
• Strong knowledge of payroll processing, tax principles, wage & hours legislation.
• PCP with NPI (National Payroll Institute) obtained or in progress.
• Experience with large ERP systems like Workday, PeopleSoft, Oracle.
• Experience with large third-party payroll providers like ADP, Ceridian, UKG.
• Experience with ADP GlobalView (as a processing services client) preferred.
• Exposure to complex payroll scenarios mobile employees, long and short-term business travelers, expatriates, converting payments into different currencies.
• Able to demonstrate problem-solving and data analysis skills during interview.
• Able and willing to participate in Teams, Zoom, Webex or other conference platforms on camera.

Competencies:

• Strong Excel skills and able to solve complex inquiries using formulas (pivot table, power query, nested if/then, date functions, vlookup, hlookup, match), macros, and other functions.
• Ability to maintain complete confidentiality and protect sensitive and personal data.
• Excellent organizational & time management skills capable to prioritize work.
• Attention to detail, accuracy, efficiency, while juggling multiple priorities.
• Analytical, problem-solving, critical thinking.
• Establish and maintain cooperative working relationships with cross functional team members.
• Excellent verbal and written skills.
• Ability to communicate complex or technical explanations to Manulife employees and different government departments (tax questions, breakdown for pay statement etc).
• Capable to work autonomously and as a Team.
• Assist with the training of other staff assigned to the department.
• Able to review colleagues work and detect errors, offering guidance and retraining as needed.
• Work independently following designated procedures and process documentation.

#LI-Hybrid

About Manulife and John Hancock

Manulife Financial Corporation is a leading international financial services group that helps people make their decisions easier and lives better. With our global headquarters in Toronto, Canada, we operate as Manulife across our offices in Asia, Canada, and Europe, and primarily as John Hancock in the United States. We provide financial advice, insurance, and wealth and asset management solutions for individuals, groups and institutions. At the end of 2022, we had more than 40,000 employees, over 116,000 agents, and thousands of distribution partners, serving over 34 million customers. At the end of 2022, we had $1.3 trillion (US$1.0 trillion) in assets under management and administration, including total invested assets of $0.4 trillion (US $0.3 trillion), and segregated funds net assets of $0.3 trillion (US$0.3 trillion). We trade as ‘MFC’ on the Toronto, New York, and the Philippine stock exchanges, and under ‘945’ in Hong Kong.

Manulife is an Equal Opportunity Employer

At Manulife /John Hancock, we embrace our diversity. We strive to attract, develop and retain a workforce that is as diverse as the customers we serve and to foster an inclusive work environment that embraces the strength of cultures and individuals. We are committed to fair recruitment, retention, advancement and compensation, and we administer all of our practices and programs without discrimination on the basis of race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, religion or religious beliefs, creed, sex (including pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions), sexual orientation, genetic characteristics, veteran status, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, family status, disability, or any other ground protected by applicable law.

It is our priority to remove barriers to provide equal access to employment. A Human Resources representative will work with applicants who request a reasonable accommodation during the application process. All information shared during the accommodation request process will be stored and used in a manner that is consistent with applicable laws and Manulife/John Hancock policies. To request a reasonable accommodation in the application process, contact recruitment@manulife.com.

Salary & Benefits

The annual base salary for this role is listed below.

Primary Location

Waterloo, Ontario

Salary range is expected to be between $56,400.00 CAD - $94,000.00 CAD

If you are applying for this role outside of the primary location, please contact recruitment@manulife.com for the salary range for your location. The actual salary will vary depending on local market conditions, geography and relevant job-related factors such as knowledge, skills, qualifications, experience, and education/training. Employees also have the opportunity to participate in incentive programs and earn incentive compensation tied to business and individual performance.

Manulife offers eligible employees a wide array of customizable benefits, including health, dental, mental health, vision, short- and long-term disability, life and AD&D insurance coverage, adoption/surrogacy and wellness benefits, and employee/family assistance plans. We also offer eligible employees various retirement savings plans (including pension and a global share ownership plan with employer matching contributions) and financial education and counseling resources. Our generous paid time off program in Canada includes holidays, vacation, personal, and sick days, and we offer the full range of statutory leaves of absence. If you are applying for this role in the U.S., please contact recruitment@manulife.com for more information about U.S.-specific paid time off provisions.