Director, Total Rewards Service Continuity — Interim

The mandate

The benefits and total-rewards service needs a director for a fixed six months spanning a scheduled enrolment cycle and provider reconciliation period, after which the permanent director returns. Several operational escalations currently depend on one leader's personal knowledge of plan and supplier arrangements. An interim Director will maintain executive service ownership, strengthen delegation and return a reliable operation when the permanent director resumes responsibility.

The six-month assignment starts on 26 October 2026 and ends with the incumbent's planned return and overlap in April 2027. Five days a week are reserved for this role, which is fixed term with no extension. Early preparation identifies time-critical enrolment, employee-event and provider deadlines; later work tests whether team leads can handle exceptions without depending on the absent director or recreating undocumented instructions.

Benefits service continuity requires more than closing employee tickets. Eligibility changes must reach providers correctly, contributions and invoices must reconcile to agreed populations, and a late correction can affect an employee's access to a benefit. The interim will track those dependencies explicitly, using approved plan rules and specialist input. Sensitive individual cases remain subject to controlled access, with service escalation designed to protect both confidentiality and timely resolution.

The Director can set team priorities, approve routine service resolutions and direct provider follow-up within existing delegation. Plan design, material vendor expenditure and exceptional eligibility decisions require the Global Rewards Operations Head or designated specialist owners. The role does not change compensation policy, determine legal entitlements or approve banking payments outside established controls. It also excludes a new global benefits procurement and replacement of the core people platform.

Return acceptance requires two completed major service cycles, reconciled provider balances and incumbent-led review of selected employee-event exceptions using the updated operating instructions. Team leads must demonstrate the escalation routes for unresolved eligibility or invoice facts. The incumbent and operations head accept the residual queue with named owners and dates, avoiding a handback that merely transfers six months of deferred decisions to the returning leader.

What you will own

• Establish the cover-period event calendar from approved enrolment, contribution and provider obligations, identifying decisions that require advance specialist attention before a critical delay arises.
• Decide service team priorities and escalation coverage within the existing delegation, ensuring regional leads know which routine exceptions they may resolve and which eligibility questions require specialist review.
• Govern provider population reconciliation through authorised employee events, testing whether additions, exits and amendments reached the supplier before an apparently accurate invoice is accepted for financial review.
• Lead investigation of contribution and invoice differences with finance and provider owners, preserving the distinction between a service correction, a contractual query and a payment approval outside the director's authority.
• Build controlled operating instructions for recurrent employee-event cases, limiting personal-data access while making the evidence and escalation needed for a timely service outcome usable by authorised team leads.
• Run weekly exception and provider-dependency reviews, exposing cases whose unresolved facts could affect employee access or future financial reconciliation rather than measuring success only through ticket closure.
• Complete incumbent-led service and exception replay during return overlap, obtaining acceptance of residual work and ensuring delegated team capability remains useful after interim executive ownership ends.

Candidate qualifications

• Demonstrate senior total-rewards, benefits operations or comparable hire-to-retire service leadership through major enrolment or provider cycles. Describe an employee-event dependency that normal ticket measures missed, how you made it visible and the operating decision taken. Evidence should show service judgement and coordination with plan or compliance owners, not only experience producing compensation analytics.
• Bring strong understanding of eligibility interfaces, provider populations and financial reconciliation in a multi-region services environment. Explain an invoice or contribution discrepancy whose origin was an employee change rather than a calculation error, the approved facts verified and how the provider and finance records were brought into alignment without bypassing the appropriate decision authority.
• Show practical leadership and confidentiality discipline under sensitive employee circumstances. The interim should develop regional leads, limit unnecessary data access and sustain an escalation route for uncertain entitlements. Provide an example where urgent service demand did not justify an unsafe information or approval shortcut, and explain the authorised alternative that maintained employee support and an auditable decision record.
• Establish availability for five-day ownership across the six-month absence, with relevant notice and concurrent obligations disclosed. Demonstrate a leave-cover or operations transfer that included a returning owner's live test rather than document delivery alone. The assignment requires confidence maintaining continuity while accepting that plan design and permanent executive responsibility will remain with the established leadership.

Application

Applications for this mandate are received in one way only: through the India Board Terminal's application process. It is automated end to end. Your Executive Passport travels to the mandate holder in its confidential form, your answers to the three questions below are read before anything else in your file, and every stage that follows is recorded on your applications page.

There is no address to write to and no intermediary to call. The mandate holder reads what the Terminal delivers and nothing else, which is what keeps the process the same for every applicant and keeps your name out of it until you release it. Applications close on 15 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-INT-2026-IND-064.