Payroll Business Process Consultant
Payroll Consultant - 4 Week Diagnostic (Outside IR35)
Duration: 4 weeks (up to 20 days)
Location: Remote with occasional London meetings
Start: Immediate, 11th May 2026
Overview
We are supporting a UK organisation with a centralised HR and Payroll function, operating across multiple brands, to deliver a fast-paced payroll diagnostic engagement.
This assignment will focus on identifying inefficiencies, reducing late payroll payments across brands, and driving cost savings through process and data improvements.
You will act as the day-to-day delivery lead, working closely with a Partner, to assess current payroll operations and deliver a clear, actionable improvement roadmap.
Key Objectives
- Map end-to-end UK payroll processes (including JML, approvals, controls and data flows)
- Identify root causes of payroll inefficiencies, with a focus on:
- Late payments across multiple brands
- Manual workarounds and reconciliation effort
- Payroll cut-off and timing challenges
Assess HR–Payroll–Finance data flows and integrations, identifying opportunities to:
- Improve automation (APIs, SFTP, batch processing)
- Reduce manual intervention and errors
Deliver:
- “As-is” process maps (Level 2–3)
- Key findings and validated themes
- A prioritised remediation roadmap, including quick wins and cost-saving opportunities
This aligns with the broader objective to reduce inefficiency, manual processing and payroll adjustments while improving data quality and timeliness
Responsibilities
- Lead workshops and stakeholder interviews across HR, Payroll and Finance
- Conduct process mapping and maturity assessment (people, process, tech, controls)
- Analyse payroll data flows, integrations and system landscape
- Identify pain points, risks and cost drivers
- Produce clear documentation and executive-ready outputs
- Validate findings with stakeholders and support final read-out
Required Experience
- Strong UK payroll expertise (end-to-end operations, controls, governance)
- Background in consulting or short-term diagnostic engagements
- Proven experience in:
- Payroll transformation or optimisation
- HR–Payroll integration / data flows
- Process mapping (as-is/to-be, L2–L3)
- Experience identifying efficiency gains and cost-saving opportunities
- Confident running virtual workshops and stakeholder interviews
- Ability to quickly synthesise complex information into clear recommendations
Desirable
- Experience with Sage payroll or similar UK payroll systems
- Exposure to multi-entity / multi-brand payroll environments
- Prior work on payroll diagnostics or rapid assessments
Ways of Working
- High-intensity, 4-week consulting engagement with defined deliverables
- Autonomous delivery lead, with Partner oversight
- Strong focus on practical, implementable outcomes (not just analysis)