People Operations Lead, APAC in 10 at Wella Company

THE ROLE

The Payroll Leader – APAC is accountable for the end-to-end delivery of accurate, timely, and compliant payroll services across the APAC countries, covering Payroll, Time & Attendance, and Benefits Administration. As a key member of the Global People Support Center, this role ensures operational excellence, robust internal controls, and superior employee experience, while leading and developing a high-performing team of specialists. The role requires a payroll leader who can operate across complex country requirements, manage vendor performance, influence stakeholders, and help modernize payroll and time processes while ensuring day-to-day delivery remains stable.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

1. PAYROLL OPERATIONS AND SERVICE DELIVERY

• Lead end-to-end payroll delivery across APAC countries, ensuring accurate, timely and compliant payroll cycles for salaried, plant, sales and other relevant employee populations.
• Oversee payroll inputs, payroll calculations, validation, approvals, funding, reconciliations, statutory submissions, month-end and year-end activities.
• Ensure strong governance and audit-ready documentation across payroll, time and benefits processes.
• Build visibility of payroll performance through KPIs, issue trends, root-cause analysis and service reviews.
• Partner with local HR, Finance, Total Rewards, Legal, Tax, Mobility and People Systems to ensure payroll outcomes are integrated and compliant.
• Identify opportunities to standardize, simplify and automate payroll processes across APAC, while respecting legitimate local statutory differences.
• Maintain and continuously improve internal controls (SOX compliance), documented SOPs, and risk mitigation frameworks.

2. TIME AND ATTENDANCE

• Oversee accurate administration of time and attendance processes across all countries in scope, ensuring proper integration with payroll systems.
• Ensure compliance with wage & hour laws, overtime regulations and collective agreements where applicable.
• Drive process improvements and system enhancements to elevate accuracy and employee experience.
• Ensure recurring T&A issues are analyzed structurally and translated into process, system or governance improvements.

3. BENEFITS ADMINISTRATION

• Oversee benefits administration operations (health, retirement, leave programs, statutory benefits) in partnership with Total Rewards and external vendors.
• Ensure statutory and company benefit deductions, contributions and reporting are processed accurately.
• Support benefits-related payroll impacts, including leaves, statutory benefits, retirement/social security contributions and country-specific benefit programs.
• Ensure controls are in place for benefits-to-payroll interfaces, reconciliations and exception management.

4. LEGAL, TAX AND COMPLIANCE

• Serve as the APAC payroll subject matter leader for statutory payroll compliance, tax, social security, labor-related payroll obligations, statutory filings and audit readiness.
• Monitor legislative and regulatory changes across APAC countries and ensure required updates are implemented on time.
• Partner with Legal, Tax, Finance and Mobility teams on complex payroll topics, including cross-border moves, expats, tax equalization, equity, severance, terminations and statutory payments.
• Ensure payroll-related audit requests, regulatory inquiries and internal control reviews are handled with strong evidence and clear ownership.

5. TEAM LEADERSHIP AND CAPABILITY BUILDING

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of payroll, T&A, and benefits specialists, setting clear direction, priorities, and performance expectations.
• Elevate team capability through structured development plans, technical training, and exposure to best practices.
• Foster a culture of accountability, continuous improvement, service excellence, and employee-centricity.
• Drive workload balance, succession planning, and talent retention within the team.

6. STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT AND COMMUNICATION

• Partner effectively with HR, Finance, Legal, Total Rewards, Mobility, and IT to ensure aligned, integrated service delivery.
• Communicate clearly and proactively with the employee population on payroll matters, ensuring transparency, timeliness, and a positive employee experience.
• Manage relationships with external vendors (ADP and others), holding them accountable to SLAs and driving service improvements.
• Provide executive-level reporting, KPIs, and insights to the Global Head of PSC and senior leadership.

7. VENDOR GOVERNANCE AND MANAGEMENT

• Act as the primary PSC interface for APAC payroll vendors, including ADP and other local providers.
• Run structured vendor governance, including SLAs, service reviews, issue logs, escalation management, root-cause analysis and corrective action tracking.
• Hold vendors accountable for service commitments, statutory compliance support, data quality, timeliness and issue resolution.
• Challenge vendor outputs where needed and ensure the team does not become overly dependent on vendor explanations without validation.

8. CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT AND TRANSFORMATION

• Identify and lead process improvement, automation, and standardization initiatives across payroll, T&A, and benefits administration.
• Contribute to the Global PSC strategy, aligning APAC operations with global standards, governance, and service models.
• Support system upgrades, integrations, and transformation projects (e.g., ADP enhancements, SuccessFactors integration).
• Partner with Global Payroll & Time Process Owner, Global Service Management, People Systems and regional PSC Leads to ensure process design, service delivery and controls are aligned.
• Translate APAC operational pain points into improvement roadmaps and system/process change requests.

KEY ROLE REQUIREMENTS

• Bachelor's degree in Accounting, Finance, Human Resources, Business Administration, or related field.
• Professional payroll certification strongly preferred, such as Global Payroll Management Certificate, GPA country/APAC payroll training, Australia Certificate IV in Payroll Administration / Diploma of Payroll Management, Singapore CHRS® Payroll / Certificate in Payroll Administration, Certified Payroll Professional India, or equivalent APAC country payroll certification.
• 12+ years of progressive payroll experience, including 8+ years leading payroll operations in APAC.
• Deep APAC payroll expertise across several of the relevant countries, ideally including India, China, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia/New Zealand.
• Deep, hands-on experience with ADP Celergo (required).
• Strong knowledge of tax, social security, employment, and wage & hour legislation in the countries in scope.
• Experience in a global shared services / People Support Center environment preferred.
• Proven track record of leading, developing, and elevating high-performing teams.
• Experience managing internal/external audits and SOX controls.
• Demonstrated experience supporting HR transformation, process standardization, system implementations, requirements definition, testing and stabilization.
• Strong internal controls, audit and risk mindset.
• Excellent stakeholder management, influencing and communication skills across HR, Finance, Legal, Tax, Total Rewards, Mobility and senior leadership.

KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS

• Payroll accuracy rate (≥ 99.9%) and on-time payroll delivery (100%).
• Compliance with all country specific filings and deadlines (zero penalties).
• Employee satisfaction with payroll services (case resolution time, NPS).
• Internal and external audit outcomes (no material findings).
• Team engagement, capability uplift, and retention.

CORE COMPETENCIES

• Leadership & People Development – inspires, coaches, and elevates team capability.
• Operational Excellence – delivers accuracy, timeliness, and compliance at scale.
• Stakeholder Management – communicates effectively with HR, Finance, Legal, and employees at all levels.
• Integrity & Confidentiality – particularly in handling sensitive data.
• Analytical & Problem-Solving Mindset – data-driven decision-making and root-cause analysis.

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