Public-Payroll Arrears Recovery Leader

The mandate

The agency manages employees across multiple regions where appointments, transfers, allowances and progression adjustments must be coordinated with payroll and funding approval processes. Regional records include paper attendance and local authorisations that headquarters must verify, while some claims combine standard entitlements with matters requiring grade or role clarification. The agency needs executive recovery that ensures verified workers are paid promptly without allowing urgency to bypass public-money controls.

The first twenty-five days require a claimant-and-period census covering appointment, grade, location, attendance, funding source, pay element, approval, amount, dispute and worker hardship. By day sixty, each cohort needs an evidence standard and reconciliation from authorised service through gross entitlement, statutory deduction, prior payment and net arrear. The ninety-day window must stop new arrears, pay the oldest verified cases under approved funding and protect workers from retaliation for raising claims.

Decision rights include assigning case review, approving reconciled arrears within delegated policy, stopping unsupported claim batches, requiring event updates and escalating funding or authority gaps. The interim may prioritise verified hardship cases using transparent criteria. Grade determination, appointment validity, collective-agreement interpretation, fraud findings, budget appropriation, tax rulings and waiver of public controls remain with authorised public bodies, counsel, unions and audit authorities.

The assignment must leave regional and central payroll operating one evidence chain. The leader will appoint or prepare a permanent payroll assurance head, establish appointment-to-pay service levels and observe the successor lead two payrolls plus a regional arrears clinic. Handover will identify disputed service, missing attendance, funding dependencies, deceased estates, tax corrections, union undertakings, audit referrals and cases whose entitlement requires external adjudication.

The remit excludes creating appointments, altering grades, fabricating attendance, legal advice, union adjudication, disciplinary findings and payment outside appropriated authority. The leader cannot require workers to waive claims, favour politically connected cohorts, net unrelated alleged debts without authority or treat missing central data as proof that no service occurred. Public service commissions, treasury, unions, courts and auditors retain their powers.

Why this seat is open

The suspension left payroll without trusted leadership while regional claims and worker hardship continued accumulating. HR sees appointments, depots see service and finance sees approved funding, but none owns the complete entitlement trail. A fixed-term recovery executive can verify and pay lawful arrears, repair event control and transfer accountable operations without determining public appointments.

What you will own

• Build the claim census across worker, service period, appointment, grade, location, attendance, pay element, funding and hardship.
• Establish evidence standards for paper and digital records, regional authorisations, acting service, transfer and progression.
• Reconcile gross entitlement, statutory deductions, prior payments, net arrears, interest or remedy dependencies and ledger entries.
• Prioritise verified payments using age, hardship, critical service and funding readiness through transparent published criteria.
• Create protected clinics, worker updates, dispute routes, representation access and non-retaliation monitoring across regions.
• Stop recurrence through appointment, transfer, grade, attendance, funding and payroll event ownership with service-level controls.
• Transfer case registers, funding schedules, audit referrals, unresolved entitlements and observed payroll cycles to the successor.

Candidate qualifications

• Has led payroll arrears or wage-remedy recovery in a large public, unionised or geographically distributed workforce.
• Understands appointments, grades, acting service, allowances, attendance, statutory deductions, appropriations and public audit.
• Can assess imperfect regional evidence without either abandoning workers or weakening public-money control.
• Has implemented transparent cohort prioritisation and worker communications during constrained funding and severe hardship.
• Brings credible coordination with treasury, public HR, unions, legal, regional management and audit authorities.
• Has handed a recovered arrears portfolio through live payroll and regional claim-review cycles.