Director of Payroll

01st July, 2026

Our Client is hiring a Director of Payroll to provide strategic leadership and continuous improvement for payroll functions across a heavily unionized, national, multi-district, multi-business-line healthcare organization. With 30,000+ employees and approximately 700 corporate staff, payroll operations operate at scale and require a leader who can strengthen process consistency, governance, and service delivery in a complex operating environment.

Reporting into the Senior Director of Payroll, this role owns the future-state payroll strategy and drives change initiatives that improve payroll performance across distributed operations. The payroll team includes 12 total team members, with direct reporting responsibility for 2. This is a net-new role, created to raise the bar on payroll execution through continuous improvement, strong implementation leadership, and Workday payroll/HRIS expertise.

The environment also includes frequent acquisitions and integrations, making exposure to M&A dynamics a strong advantage.

What You’ll Do (Role Responsibilities)

• Lead and execute a strategic payroll roadmap, improving accuracy, timeliness, compliance, employee experience, and internal controls.
• Drive continuous process improvement and process modernization across a national, multi-entity payroll model.
• Own change management and transition strategy for payroll-related initiatives, ensuring stakeholder alignment and operational readiness.
• Provide strategic payroll support and issue leadership, resolving complex payroll challenges and ensuring operational resilience.
• Lead Workday execution and optimization, serving as a key expert for both HRIS and payroll workflows.
• Support integration activities and acquisition-related transitions (preferred), ensuring continuity and governance through change.
• Navigate payroll complexity in enterprise systems and distributed environments, including experience that may extend across common payroll ecosystems (Workday exposure preferred).
• Coach and develop the payroll team, establishing performance expectations, accountability, and scalable ways of working.
• Ensure strong implementation practices: deliverables, timelines, risk management, and measurable outcomes.

What You Bring To The Table!

• Senior Manager / Director-level payroll leadership experience within a large, complex organization, with unionized environment experience strongly preferred.
• Expert-level Workday experience (as both an HRIS and payroll platform), with demonstrated ability to lead system/process improvement.
• Proven continuous improvement mindset with measurable results (accuracy, cycle time, compliance, efficiency, service levels).
• Strong change management and transition leadership capabilities, comfortable leading through ambiguity and operational shifts.
• Experience supporting payroll across multi-entity / national structures with distributed stakeholders.
• Acquisitions/M&A exposure preferred, including comfort supporting integrations and transition handoffs.
• Strong leadership presence, able to influence stakeholders and deliver payroll strategy through the team.

Position Details (At-a-Glance)

• 2–3 days per week onsite (Markham area) ** Flexible
• Compensation: $150,000–$155,000 Base Salary
• Bonus Target: 15%
• RRSP: 4% match
• Health Benefits: from Day 1
• Full Time Perm Role

JOB VACANCY STATUS

The organization is accepting applications with the intention to hire as soon as possible.

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ACCOMMODATION & INCLUSIVITY At The Talent Company, we recognize the value of different perspectives and experiences in prompting innovation, sparking creativity, and solving problems. As an equal employment opportunity organization, we do not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment based on race, Aboriginal peoples, members of visible minorities, sex, age, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, persons with disabilities and all other categories protected by law.
We are committed to Equal Opportunities and welcome applications from all sections of the community. Please let us know by emailing recruitment@thetalent.co if an adjustment or adaptation is required at any stage to support you during the recruitment journey.