Reward Specialist - London based role Our compensation and benefit arrangements play a critical role in attracting, motivating and retaining our most critical resource - our employees. From managing elements of the annual pay and bonus review cycles, negotiating with vendors our various benefit renewals such as life assurance and medical insurance, ensuring our pension schemes remain compliant to implementing a new share incentive plan, you can be sure that this role will be varied and interesting and give you a real opportunity to become a true specialist.We are ideally looking to recruit someone who has recently started, or is keen to develop, a career in Reward to become a Reward Specialist. Equally, you may already work in another Human Resources function and keen to explore the exciting world of Reward. Either way, if you are IT literate, have an eye for detail and a passion to learn, this could be the ideal role for you.You will be based at our very centrally located London Head Office, which is less than 2 minutes' walk from Euston station.The Role You will ultimately support the Head of Reward, whilst developing vital working relationships with key stakeholders such as Human Resources Business Partners, the wider Human Resources community and business managers.As your knowledge improves and your confidence grows, over time you will become an expert and will ultimately serve as the primary point of contact and final escalation point for all Reward related queries.In this role, you'll get involved in annual pay reviews, benchmarking of jobs, revising and renewing benefit plans (life assurance, medical insurance, group income protection to name but a few) and re-launching share schemes. Ensure that the administration of all UK benefit arrangements is managed effectively and to provide first draft of all benefit communications. You will leverage and manage vendor relationships, including assisting the head of reward with the selection and supervision of any necessary benefit consultants and brokers.You will provide timely and accurate advice to employees on reward related policies and procedures. In this vain, you will be continuously reviewing and putting forward recommendations for improvement.You will lead the creation of monthly MI reports for the ultimate use of your key stakeholders, collating and auditing various data sources such as our payroll vendor, our SAP database and vendor reports.You will be responsible for the training and development of our key stakeholders in relation to all the reward related activities that you touch. General reward administration, such as the production of employee email communications, tailoring letters to new joiners/leavers, drafting contracts and filing (amongst other things) will be par for the course. You may also be asked to organise and take minutes at meetings, such as the semi-annual pension governance meetings.You will frequently liaise with UK payroll to ensure the correct payment of salary and benefits and the correct tax and social security is deducted for all employees.The role's main focus will be our UK markets. We are a global company though and, as such, there is scope to get involved from a reward perspective with some or all of our other markets in due course. Over time you may get exposure to our global mobility arrangements, liaising with our colleagues in tax, to create legislatively compliant arrangements for our expatriate employees.The DetailsWe looking for a self-starter, someone who can independently manage our compensation and benefit programs and maintain a small network of contacts and vendors.You will have a flexible and adaptable approach to work, willing to learn and get involved with duties outside of the day to day job description.IT literate, with strong numerical and analytical skills essential as is a high attention to detail, well organised with an ability to manage multiple projects concurrently.You should like communicating, both written and orally and have the ability to make somewhat complex issues simple and easy to understand. Ideally you will be educated to University degree level or equivalent, but this is definitely not essential. English will be the main language, but if you have a proficiency in other languages this would make you highly desirable.You may, at times, be required to visit our shared service centre in Birmingham, or if you are really lucky, to one of our support centres based overseas. About SSPSSP is the leading dedicated operator of food and beverage brands in travel locations worldwide. We have a long heritage in food and travel, with over 60 years experience in the industry. SSP employs 28,000 staff across 29 countries, and serves millions of customers every week.