Head of Pensions and Benefits

Empowering Africa’s tomorrow, together one story at a time.
- With over 100 years of rich history and strongly positioned as a local bank with regional and international expertise, a career with our family offers the opportunity to be part of this exciting growth journey, to reset our future and shape our destiny as a proudly African group.

Job Summary

This role is accountable for the overall delivery of Pensions and Employee Benefits strategy, policy and related practices and services for Absa Group Limited. This includes strategy, tactical design and delivery plans, formulation of associated practice/s and ensuring operational implementation and adoption i.t.o. pensions and employee benefit methodology, governance and delivery objectives. The role will also oversee the effective implementation of technological solutions to enhance/improve employee engagement with their pension and benefit arrangements and strengthen management of these arrangements.

Job Description

Key Accountabilities:
Strategic Development and Partnering:

- Strategic advice to the Group and its various operating entities on pensions and employee benefits.
- Accountable to manage (or oversee management of) pension and benefits projects across the full Absa landscape as required.
- Support local (entity-level) pension and benefit arrangements by providing expert assistance to local Human Capital teams in specific African and International Operations locations.
- Ensuring effective pensions and benefits governance with internal and external stakeholders and committees.

Technical Research and delivery of pensions and employee benefits policy:

- Anticipate and research international, African and local International Office pension and benefits developments and trends at a high technical level (including legislative and regulatory change) and analyse the impact for implementation, e.g. for projects, change, BAU; Produce technical impact briefings to enable effective response.
- Assist in consulting on and responding to Group Reward initiatives that impact on Absa’s pensions and benefits e.g. organisation restructuring, employee benefit improvements.
- Assist in the delivery of Absa pension and benefits projects e.g. mergers, acquisitions and disposals, plan design changes, operational change.
- Contribute to Absa’s pension communications across the enterprise to ensure that the content is appropriate.
- Respond to Human Capital and, on an exceptional basis, individual complex pension and benefits cases.

Application of employee pensions and employee benefits policy and delivery:

- Assist in due diligence and implementation planning for acquisitions, disposals, out-sourcing, etc. that assists the Group’s commercial negotiations.
- Assist to manage the relationship with the various Trustee and other internal governance bodies across the Absa pensions and benefits landscape.
- Advise and assist in the optimisation of the working relationship with third party providers to ensure efficiency and ‘best in class’ practice.
- Enhance pension and benefits education/upskilling.

People Management:

- Lead, coach, direct and motivate the Pensions and Benefits team to ensure high level, consistent quality service delivery. Manage training for the Pensions and Benefits team and employee benefits/pensions champions in all Absa locations.
- Develop a high performing team by embedding formal performance development and informal coaching. Encourage frequent knowledge sharing between team members.
- Determine and analyse development needs for the team and ensure that identified training requirements are budgeted for and executed.
- Establish and maintain a succession plan for the team.

Business Management:

- Contribute to the development of Group’s Reward strategy for the next 2-3 years by providing a view on potential improvements for products or services and an assessment of the existing pensions and benefits suite, and anticipated changes in the external environment.
- Agree targets and take accountability for the overall achievement of performance objectives in the business area in terms of Colleague Engagement, customer experience, cost performance, return on investments, risk, compliance, and governance requirements.
- Manage departmental budgets including signing off of invoices and quotes within mandate. Escalate out of budgets items to the Managing Executive for approval.
- Analyse effectiveness of processes and systems in use in the Centre of Expertise and make recommendations for improvements.
- Review performance against balanced scorecard components as prescribed by the Executive, discuss gaps and agree action plans to close gaps.
- Benchmark productivity of the department against industry standards and create measures to improve productivity.
- Agree and manage service offerings and SLAs with internal customers (agree annually and measure monthly).

Risk and Compliance:

- Ensure that processes, control requirements and risk management f