Payroll Manager

Payroll Manager

Hybrid – Shoreham

Up to £55,000

Focus Group is a £300m-revenue, 1,400-person technology services company backed by Hg Capital. Following our $1bn valuation in 2024, we're scaling rapidly and investing in AI to transform how we operate and how we serve our 30,000 SME customers.

As we continue to expand our portfolio and scale our operations, we're committed to setting new industry standards in managed service excellence. Our growth trajectory and strategic acquisitions position us as an organisation ready to redefine what world-class technical support means in today's rapidly evolving technology landscape.

We're looking for an experienced Payroll Manager to lead the end-to-end payroll function across our fast-growing group of companies. This is a genuinely hands-on and high-impact role: you'll be the subject matter expert for payroll across the business, responsible for the accurate and timely processing of multiple payrolls, while making sure compliance is watertight across payroll and pension administration.

You'll manage a small payroll team (currently one direct report) and work closely with stakeholders across the group, including payroll teams within recently acquired businesses. Focus Group continues to grow through acquisition, so you'll play a key role in bringing new payrolls into the fold as we integrate new companies into the group.

This role suits someone who's comfortable operating at pace, driving change, and taking a forward-thinking approach to compliance and process improvement.

• Owning the professional management of payroll across the group (predominantly CIPHR, with some instances of Sage), maintaining accurate pay data and 100% compliance with statutory deadlines
• Owning and maintaining the payroll system, including administration, upgrades and testing of process or system changes, and leading a project to migrate payroll systems in the near future
• Managing end-to-end monthly payroll processing, including starters, leavers, changes, variable pay (overtime, commission, on-call and other allowances), absence pay, statutory payments and deductions
• Processing deductions for employee benefits including pension, company cars, healthcare, cycle to work and the legacy childcare voucher scheme
• Acting as the main point of contact with HMRC and pension providers, ensuring full compliance across all reporting requirements
• Owning payroll reconciliations, investigating discrepancies and maintaining strong financial controls
• Managing year-end payroll processes, including P60s, P11
  
  Ds and PAYE Settlement Agreements
• Keeping on top of payroll legislation changes (National Minimum/Living Wage, holiday pay, statutory payments) and communicating the impact of changes such as the transition to mandatory payrolling of benefits in kind
• Providing clear, accurate and timely advice to staff and managers on payroll queries, acting as the escalation point for more complex issues
• Working with the People team to develop and automate processes such as starter/leaver workflows and source data changes
• Managing pension auto-enrolment and triennial re-enrolment, liaising with the pension provider as needed
• Leading, managing and developing the payroll team, including workload planning, training, coaching and performance management

• Experience running the complete payroll process for a similar-sized, multi-entity group, including operating separate PAYE schemes concurrently
• Previous experience setting up a payroll from scratch and migrating acquired businesses onto a group payroll
• Awareness of, or experience managing, the transition to mandatory payrolling of benefits in kind
• Strong system skills, including exposure to payroll system transitions
• Up-to-date knowledge of UK payroll legislation, including SSP, NMW, statutory payments, NI categories and thresholds
• Experience managing statutory reporting, including RTI/FPS submissions and year-end P60/P11D processes
• Hands-on experience of auto-enrolment and pension administration, including contract-based schemes and TPR compliance
• Excellent organisational skills, with the ability to plan workload for yourself and…