Payroll Lead, Animal Health Austria

**Job Description**:
**Payroll Lead, Animal Health Austria (m,f,d)**

The Payroll Lead, Animal Health (AH) Austria reports directly to the EMEA Payroll & Benefits Admin Lead, joining a regional team of peers. The holder will be responsible for leading the Animal Health part of our Austria Payroll Team and managing the Payroll function for the AH entities. The main office will be located in Vienna, with regular travel of approx. 30% of the time to the Krems office.

The Austria AH Payroll Lead will contribute to the definition of a Payroll strategy, supporting the structure of the function and the way Payroll services are delivered across all Austrian Animal Health sites. Furthermore, they will play an important role in providing significant value to the entire Austria organization by ensuring state-of-the-art Payroll processing, operations excellence, regulatory compliance, while acting as a liaison to multiple internal stakeholders as well as HR, Finance & Treasury.

For all activities, the Austria AH Payroll Lead demonstrates a continuous improvement mind-set to have issues solved at root cause as well as experience and a passion for leading a team to successful results with an inclusive team ethic.

**Responsibilities**:

- Lead and manage a staff of 3-4 resources delivering Payroll work across two sites, manage work to set service level agreements and work with their Human Health (HH) peer to ensure consistent processes across sites
- Management and oversight of Time & Attendance system & outputs for all AH sites
- Working closely with external payroll provider and internal HR teams, you will define and lead consistent and compliant end-to-end delivery of Payroll services at all AH sites
- Deliver the transition of Payroll to new vendor for Austria AH entities
- Ensure accuracy and productivity of the payroll functions including: payroll vendor relations, internal control monitoring, developing and maintaining high quality of efficiency standards
- Respond to all internal and external inquiries on payroll related issues, social insurance and taxation
- Ensure an accurate and timely monthly, quarterly and year-end close, including assisting Finance with the account reconciliations of payroll related balances
- Prepare periodic metrics reports regarding issues such as department efficiency and volumes; as well as contribute to the development and management of a Payroll dashboard
- Act as point of escalation on service issues across the AH Payrolls
- New Payroll system documentation, process optimization and continuous improvement

**Qualifications**
- Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Business or Accounting or another relevant Payroll qualification
- Previous experience in a complex multinational business environment, with focus on Payroll for multiple entities.
- Experience in Service Delivery (HR or Finance) a plus, including SLA management, customer management and issue escalation
- People management experience
- Knowledge of all aspects in Payroll - including Austria-specific employment legislation, equity based compensation, Expats, Commuters and Employee Share Purchase plans
- Outstanding with standard concepts, practices and procedures in the Accounting and Payroll field
- Demonstrated technical expertise on the automated systems and processes in designated areas of responsibility
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, ability to communicate relevant information to all levels of the organization
- Knowledge and understanding of relevant labor, social and fiscal legislation (Local)
- Fluent in German and English (written and spoken)
- Strong MS Office skills, mainly advanced Excel & PowerPoint
- Willingness to travel up to 30% to the Krems office

**Who we are**

We are known as Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, New Jersey, USA in the United States and Canada and MSD everywhere else. For more than a century, we have been inventing for life, bringing forward medicines and vaccines for many of the world's most challenging diseases. Today, our company continues to be at the forefront of research to deliver innovative health solutions and advance the prevention and treatment of diseases that threaten people and animals around the world.

**What we look for**

Imagine getting up in the morning for a job as important as helping to save and improve lives around the world. Here, you have that opportunity. You can put your empathy, creativity, digital mastery, or scientific genius to work in collaboration with a diverse group of colleagues who pursue and bring hope to countless people who are battling some of the most challenging diseases of our time. Our team is constantly evolving, so if you are among the intellectually curious, join us—and start making your impact today.

We are proud to be a company that embraces the value of bringing diverse, talented, and committed people together. The fastest way to breakthrough innovation is when diverse ideas come together in an inclusive environment. We enc