Payroll Officer

Job summary

We have an exciting opportunity to join the Crown Prosecution Service Pay and Benefits Team, gaining insight into Payroll and the CPS HR and Finance systems and processes.

As Payroll Officer, your main responsibility is managing a key team workstream to ensure all action is complete for payroll deadlines.

You support the business and employees, providing bespoke advice and guidance. You also support our Payroll Managers to ensure new and improved processes and controls are in place, making improvements for the business and employees, whilst adhering to current and changing policy and legislation.

This post can be based in Nottingham, Wakefield or York (though frequent travel to Nottingham will be required on starting). Occasional travel may also be required to other CPS locations.

The Crown Prosecution Service is based in England and Wales. If you’re applying for this role and live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you must let us know when accepting this offer as you need permission to work from your home address if hybrid working is part of your role. There’s no guarantee that we will grant this approval.

You must be aged 16 or over at the point of starting in this role. The expected start date is approximately 8–12 weeks after the application closing date. Candidates are expected to commence employment as soon as possible following the expiry of their notice period. Requests for significantly later start dates may not be accommodated.

Job description

Your roles and responsibilities

• You provide advice and guidance to colleagues across the business on the application of HR processes, on Legislation, Payroll Processes and HR policy.
• You ensure work is accurate and prioritised in line with timescales and milestones, escalating any issues that may affect delivery milestones to line management.
• You support the delivery of the monthly payroll and assist on the quarterly update testing and defect resolution for Oracle.
• You manage all outstanding incidents assigned to you, taking appropriate action to ensure resolution within SLAs and to customer expectations.
• You actively participate at team meetings, planning events and the day to day management of end user support issues both individually and collectively with the wider support team.

A copy of the full job description is attached.

Person specification

To be eligible to apply you need to have

• experience of using Microsoft; Teams, Outlook, Word and Excel.
• work, time and resource management skills.
• communication skills.

It is desirable that you have the below experience but this is not required to apply:

• financial Systems and Operations.

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Communicating and Influencing
• Managing a Quality Service
• Delivering at Pace

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £30,700, Crown Prosecution Service contributes £8,893 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

Join the Crown Prosecution Service and find your purpose.

Why we work for the Crown Prosecution Service

The Crown Prosecution Service is passionate about ensuring that we're a top performing organisation and a great place to work. We're a committed equal opportunities employer, creating a culture where you can bring your whole self to work, and individuality is truly appreciated.

This culture of inclusion is underpinned by our staff networks covering disability, faith and belief, LGBTQI+, race, social mobility alongside our mental health first aiders programme and wellbeing sessions.

The Crown Prosecution Service commits to offer its employees the following experience.

• You can do impactful, purposeful work that’s making a difference to your local communities.
• You are able to learn and grow, with access to the right opportunities and resources.
• We care about your wellbeing.
• We want you to feel valued, trusted and included.

We also offer the following range of benefits:

• Civil Service contributory pension of up to 28.9%
• 25 days’ leave, increasing to 30 days after 5 years
• £350 each year to spend on personal development
• lawyer training programme for all new prosecutors
• an extra privilege day to mark the King's birthday
• competitive maternity, paternity and parental leave
• flexible working including flexitime, and a family friendly approach to work
• Cycle2Work scheme, employee savings.

Diversity at the Crown Prosecution Service is about inclusion, embracing differences and ensuring our workforce truly reflects the communities we serve. We want you to feel that you belong and can thrive, whatever your background, identity or culture. As a Disability Confident employer, we're happy to support requests for reasonable adjustments and improve your recruitment experience. If you'd like any reasonable adjustments made to our recruitment process, let us know within your application or contact [email removed].

The Crown Prosecution Service has fixed rates for its Executive Officer grade – a developing rate (the starting salary) and a spot rate (the maximum salary). Applicants typically join us on the developing rate and, after completing a 15-month development period, move to the spot rate if your line manager confirms you’re performing the role to a satisfactory standard.

If you’re joining the Crown Prosecution Service on a lateral transfer from another government department, you should contact us about the impact on your salary and the implications of any time you’ve already spent at that grade before applying or accepting an employment offer. Your salary may be adjusted if your location changes when you join us. This adjustment also takes into account any existing allowances that may have previously been consolidated into your basic pay – there’s no guarantee that you can retain these when you transfer.

We want to ensure our employees can thrive at work and home and offer a range of support to achieve a balance. This includes flexibility of working hours, flexibility to support caring responsibilities and a flexible approach to deployment. We offer a hybrid working policy. You must spend at least 40% of your contracted hours over a four-week period at court, in an office or another official workplace depending on business need and the kind of work you're doing.

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will asses