Shared Services Centre Lead -HR Services & Payroll Operations
- Full time
- Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa
- HR Generalists
Shared Services Centre (SSC) Lead – HR Services & Payroll
Operations
Melrose, Johannesburg, South Africa
The HR SSC Hub Lead will provide visionary and strong leadership for a growing HR Shared Services model that underpins global payroll and HR operations. The HR Hub is a one-year-old operating model with strong foundations, a clear strategic vision, and significant opportunity to mature and scale. This role is accountable for stabilising and optimising day-to-day delivery while evolving the Hub into a high-performing, insight-driven service organisation. The successful candidate will bring credibility, operational depth, and a modern shared services mindset to lead the next phase of growth, strengthening governance, capability, and stakeholder confidence across the business.
Key Responsibilities:Team Building & Service Enablement
- Lead, develop and build upon the 14 strong delivery team responsible for HR Services (e.g., employee data changes, onboarding, exits) and payroll operational support (e.g., inputs, validation, reports).
- Establish a team culture centred on operational excellence, service delivery, and continuous learning.
- Build on the comprehensive library of training materials, SOPs, job aids, and knowledge base content to support team capability and consistency.
- Develop onboarding and upskilling programs to accelerate performance and support career growth within the SSC team.
- Reporting to the Global Head of Operations, develop the long-term strategy for HR and payroll shared services, ensuring alignment with global HR goals.
- Oversee service delivery across regions (e.g., EMEA, APAC, LATAM) via collaboration with Regional Leads.
- Monitor performance, escalate issues, and ensure alignment with service delivery commitments, compliance, and controls.
- Drive process standardization, automation, and efficiency gains across all supported countries and service lines.
- Lead change management and communication for new processes, system changes, or service transitions.
- Drive the effective implementation of Servicely, embedding a ticketing system, tracking SLAs and KPIs throughout the shared service center.
- Proven experience of leading a team through strong coaching, mentoring, and performance management skills.
- Global HR operations and payroll management responsibility in a shared service environment.
- Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional teams and to interact across time zones and geographies.
- Deep knowledge of HR operational processes, global payroll delivery, and service centre best practices.
- Strong understanding of global compliance, statutory payroll requirements, and data governance.
- Experience with HRIS and outsourced payroll systems (e.g., Workday, SuccessFactors, SAP, TMF etc.).
- Proficiency in global service delivery tools (ServiceNow, Jira, Confluence etc.)
- A flair for automation, how technology can streamline and strengthen the operation.
- Excellent interpersonal and communication skills for engaging with internal and external stakeholders globally.
- Expertise in HR process optimization (payroll, onboarding, benefits, employee data management).
This is a unique opportunity to build upon the foundations of the SSC, shape the global operating model, and lead a team that delivers critical HR and payroll services to our employees around the world. You’ll be at the heart of a growing global capability, with the chance to make a lasting impact across systems, processes, people, and culture.
Who we are
Glencore is one of the world’s largest global diversified natural resource companies and a major producer and marketer of more than 60 commodities that advance everyday life. Through a network of assets, customers and suppliers that spans the globe, we produce, process, recycle, source, market and distribute the commodities that support decarbonisation while meeting the energy needs of today.
With over 150,000 employees and contractors and a strong footprint in over 35 countries in both established and emerging regions for natural resources, our marketing and industrial activities are supported by a global network of more than 50 offices.
Glencore’s customers are industrial consumers, such as those in the automotive, steel, power generation, battery manufacturing and oil sectors. We also provide financing, logistics and other services to producers and consumers of commodities.
Glencore is proud to be a member of the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights and the International Council on Mining and Metals. We are an active participant in the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative.
We will support the global effort to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement through our efforts to decarbonise our own operational footprint. We believe that we should take a holistic approach and have considered our commitment through the lens of our global industrial emissions. Against a restated 2019 baseline, we are targeting to reduce our Scope 1, 2 and 3 industrial emissions by 15% by the end of 2026, 25% by the end of 2030, 50% by the end of 2035 and we have an ambition to achieve net zero industrial emissions by the end of 2050, subject to a supportive policy environment. For more information see our 2024-2026 Climate Action Transition Plan and the About our emissions calculation and reporting section in our 2023 Annual Report, available on our website at glencore.com/publications.
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