Payroll and Benefits Coordinator - Part Time

Department: People and Culture

Reports to: People and Culture Director

Salary: up to £21,000 DOE (pro rata salary)

Location: Manchester

This is a part-time role offering 20–21 hours per week, with some flexibility around how these hours are worked. This could be 21 hours across 3 days, or 20 hours spread across 4 or 5 days.

The Opportunity
We’re looking for a Payroll and Benefits Coordinator to join our People and Culture team and help keep our payroll, benefits and people processes running smoothly.

You’ll coordinate our monthly payroll for around 160 colleagues, working closely with our outsourced payroll provider to make sure information is accurate and everything is ready for sign-off. You’ll also support with pensions and benefits, employee lifecycle activities and maintaining accurate people information in Cezanne.

Alongside the day-to-day, you’ll help us make better use of our people data by producing regular reports and management information. You’ll also be a friendly and knowledgeable first point of contact for colleagues with questions about their pay, pension or benefits.

Key Responsibilities

• Coordinate the accurate and timely delivery of the monthly payroll for c.160 employees, acting as the primary point of contact between the business and the outsourced payroll provider.

• Compile, validate and submit all monthly payroll input – including starters, leavers, contractual changes, overtime, bonuses, expenses and statutory payments – ensuring all provider deadlines and cut-off dates are met.

• Review and reconcile the provider’s output and gross-to-net reports ahead of sign-off, investigating and resolving any variances so that every employee is paid correctly and on time.

• Ensure payroll is processed in full compliance with HMRC requirements, including RTI/FPS submissions, PAYE, National Insurance and statutory payments such as SMP, SPP and SSP.

• Administer the workplace pension scheme, re-enrolment and provider liaison.

• Coordinate payroll year-end activities with the provider, including P60s, P11Ds and benefit-in-kind reporting.

• Administer employee benefits and salary sacrifice schemes (such as pension, health cash plan, holiday buying, EV scheme and cycle-to-work), managing enrolments, changes and provider relationships.

• Act as the first point of contact for employee payroll, pension and benefits queries, resolving them professionally, accurately and with discretion.

• Maintain accurate, up-to-date employee records, ensuring data integrity between the HR system (Cezanne) and the outsourced payroll provider.

• Support core HR coordination activities across the employee lifecycle, including processing starters, leavers and contractual changes.

• Produce regular and ad-hoc people and payroll management information – including headcount, absence, turnover, pay and cost reporting – using Excel to a high standard.

• Prepare and collate people-related management information and board reporting packs, ensuring data is accurate, clearly presented and delivered to deadline.

• Ensure sensitive payroll, pension and personal data is handled in line with GDPR and data protection requirements, and support continuous improvement across payroll, benefits and HR administration.

Measures of Success

• Accurate, timely payroll: monthly inputs and reconciliations completed by agreed cut-offs, supporting correct payment on the scheduled pay date; errors and off-cycle corrections tracked and recurring causes addressed.

• Effective payroll controls: gross-to-net checks, variance investigations and approval records completed for every payroll cycle before sign-off, with unresolved exceptions escalated promptly.

• Compliance and year-end delivery: payroll, pension and year-end activities within the role’s remit completed by applicable deadlines, with provider completion confirmed and evidence retained.

• Reliable benefits and pensions administration: enrolments, changes, deductions and contributions accurately reflected in payroll and provider records within agreed timescales; discrepancies resolved or escalated.

• Accurate employee data: starter, leaver and contractual changes recorded by agreed deadlines, with monthly reconciliation between Cezanne and payroll records and discrepancies investigated.

• Dependable reporting: people and payroll management information, board reporting inputs and budget-support data delivered to agreed deadlines, reconciled to source records and clearly explaining material variances.

• Responsive employee support: payroll, pension and benefits queries acknowledged and resolved within agreed service timescales, with outstanding cases tracked and progress communicated.

• Secure handling and continuous improvement: required data-handling controls consistently applied and incidents promptly escalated; agreed process improvements delivered with evidence of reduced errors, manual effort or turnaround times.

About You

Essential

• Demonstrable experience coordinating monthly payroll, including validating inputs, reconciling gross-to-net outputs, investigating variances and meeting payroll deadlines.

• Practical working knowledge of UK payroll requirements, including PAYE, National Insurance, RTI, statutory payments, pension auto-enrolment and payroll year-end activities.

• Experience working with an outsourced payroll provider, coordinating submissions, resolving queries and checking outputs before approval.

• Experience administering employee benefits and workplace pensions, including enrolments, changes, deductions and liaison with providers.

• Confident Excel skills, including formulas, pivot tables and data reconciliation, with experience producing accurate people or payroll management information and explaining variances clearly.

• Experience maintaining employee records in HR or payroll systems and coordinating starter, leaver and contractual changes, with checks to ensure consistency across records.

• Strong attention to detail and a methodical approach to checking data, identifying discrepancies and following issues through to resolution or appropriate escalation.

• Ability to handle confidential payroll and personal information with discretion and apply data protection and secure data-handling requirements in day-to-day work.

• Clear, professional communication skills, with the ability to explain payroll and benefits information, resolve employee queries sensitively and build effective working relationships with colleagues and providers.

• Ability to organise and prioritise workload independently, meet fixed payroll and reporting deadlines, and respond to urgent changes without compromising accuracy or controls.

Desirable

• Experience of using Cezanne HR, or a comparable HR/payroll system, would be advantageous

Your Development and Benefits

At Leep, we believe in stable growth and putting our people first. Our 5-year strategic growth plan gives us stability today and prepares us for the future, while nurturing a str