Manager, Payroll

Job Requisition ID & Information Job Requisition ID: 2026-02560 Time Type: Full time Employee Group: Staff Job Category: Human Resources Operations Employment Type: Permanent Department: Human Resources
- Total Rewards Hiring Range: $95,538.29
- $119,422.87 Posting Information: This posting is for an existing vacancy. The internal posting deadline for this position is Thursday, September 3rd at 11:59PM. Primary Purpose The Manager, Payroll oversees all functions related to the delivery of compensation (domestic and international) and corresponding payroll services in adherence with strict deadlines and in accordance with government legislation and University policy and procedures. In collaboration with Director, Total Rewards participates in special projects to ensure effective, efficient, and compliant payroll practices are developed and maintained; contributes to the achievement of Human Resources’ departmental goals and professional services delivery. Key Accountabilities
- Remain Current and Conversant with Compliance Requirements, Trends, and Best Practices
- Maintain awareness of legislation, regulations, and standards related to payroll to ensure compliance within area of responsibility
- Maintain awareness of best practices and emerging issues related to payroll
- Participate in professional development to aid in ongoing knowledge and skills acquisition
- Provides senior level payroll expertise, advice and guidance to all University stakeholders (Employee, Management, Leadership, Committee) in complex and sensitive matters and policy interpretation related to payroll
- Support the creation of, and give feedback on, policies and guidelines affecting payroll, ensuring compliance with government legislation
- Manages the Effective and Accurate Execution of Payroll
- Oversee the administration and processing of all aspects of payroll for the University, ensuring payroll is delivered accurately and on-time through monthly and biweekly standard cycles, with off cycle payments as required
- Provide final sign-off to monthly and year-end processing and filing, ensuring completeness and compliance with strict deadlines; oversee the coordination of year-end reconciliation of government remittances (i.e. CPP, EI, Income Tax, WSIB, EHT) with HR Financial Officer
- Develop and maintain all payroll processes/procedures and documentation, focusing on best practice, compliance and continuous quality improvement
- Coordinate training of payroll team to ensure consistent application of University policies and standard operating procedures and compliance with legislative requirements
- Manage the payroll team, providing guidance and direction when higher level issues arise, and ensuring standard procedures are followed and service standards are achieved
- Ensure all complex, unique, and sensitive issues are investigated and resolved, working with external entities (i.e. CRA, Service Canada, auditors, consultants, etc.) and campus partners or other HR colleagues as required
- Participate in audits, providing support to the Assistant Payroll Manager and HR Financial Officer and acting as primary contact when necessary; design and implement internal controls to meet audit requirements; coordinate with Human Resources Data Analytics (HRDA) team to design and obtain audit reports in Workday as required to support the payroll function
- Continuously leads the analysis, measurement, review, development, and implementation of effective and efficient processes, practices and system capabilities to govern all payroll activities to ensure quality and consistency and delivery against defined targets
- Support the Effectiveness of the HR/Payroll System Application Support the Effectiveness of the HR/Payroll System Application As the Subject Matter Expert for the payroll and time tracking modules in the HR/Payroll system (Workday), work with Information Systems Technology (IST) Teams to: Define requirements in accordance with the University policies and legislative requirements; Test configuration changes to ensure achievement of requirements; Evaluate and test the system and ongoing releases/updates on an ongoing basis to ensure functionality achieves requirements; Ensure appropriate controls are in place to maintain system security; and, Request that access be granted or restricted, as needed. As the Payroll Manager, work with HRDA, IST, and all HR users of Workday, to ensure the system’s configuration allows for accurate and compliant payroll processing; identify issues that are impacting the effectiveness, efficiency, or accuracy: Identify upstream issues that are impacting payroll processing (e.g. pending events, missing information, timeliness of approvals, etc.); Provide suggestions (data, coding, processing, configuration) suggestions that might be viable solutions to address and resolve the production issues; Support the testing of such configuration changes to ensure achievement of requirements; Support the Assista