Payroll Leader APAC

Wella Company · Mumbai, India

ABOUT THE WELLA COMPANY

Together, WE enable individuals to look, feel, and be their true selves.

Wella Company is one of the world’s leading beauty companies, comprised of a family of iconic brands such as Wella Professionals, Clairol, OPI, Nioxin, Briogeo and ghd. With 6,500 employees globally, presence in over 100 countries, Wella Company and its brands enable consumers to look, feel, and be their true selves. As innovators in the hair and nail industry, Wella Company empowers its people to delight consumers, inspire beauty professionals, engage communities, and deliver sustainable growth to its stakeholders.

For additional information about the Wella Company please visit .

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.

WELLA COMPANY COMPETENCY FRAMEWORK:

This defines how we operate and what is expected of our leaders.

Lead with Speed

Drive Simplification

Champion Accountability

Operate with Intensity

WELLA COMPANY CORE VALUES:

• Creative - We foster creativity and excellence to create value for our brands & business.
• Create brand & customer experiences that delight
• Value expertise and intuition with data
• Promote innovative ideas & excel in executing them
• Collaborative - We work together to create the extraordinary.
• Act as one team from global to local and across functions
• Inspire & empower others to succeed
• Treat everyone with trust & assume positive intent
• Courageous - We are agile, entrepreneurial and we own our future.
• Take full accountability for driving results
• Make things happen quickly, turning decisions into action
• Be open minded & adaptable to new thinking and ways to work
• Connected - We stay connected, ensuring we are always customer centric.
• Connect with professional & consumer needs & behaviors
• Think digital first as we engage with professionals & consumers
• Create active & engaged communities physically & digitally
• Committed - We are responsible for our impact on others & planet.
• Build inclusive and diverse teams
• Act with integrity & transparency towards each other & the consumer
• Work to have a positive impact on the planet