Benefits Manager

Job Summary:

As our Benefits Manager, you will lead the strategic development, seamless implementation, and daily administration of our comprehensive benefits portfolio. You will champion our life, health, disability, leave management, wellness, and retirement programs. Your mission is to ensure our programs remain equitable, highly competitive, legally compliant, and aligned with our overarching business strategy. You will also step into a mentorship role, guiding benefits team members in their day-to-day career execution.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• Strategy & Retention: Design and manage an ongoing benefits strategy that supports a high-performing culture to attract and reward top talent.
• Data-Driven Analysis: Evaluate industry trends, regulatory changes, and internal metrics to deliver actionable benefits recommendations.
• Employee Feedback: Gather and leverage corporate and field employee insights to continuously evolve our benefits approach.
• Legal Compliance: Partner closely with our legal team to own compliance with evolving federal, state, and local labor laws.
• Program Execution: Lead the administration of annual open enrollments, new hire onboarding, and rigorous year-end plan audits.
• Process Optimization: Build and document structured HR procedures to streamline workflows and educate regional HR managers.
• Vendor Management: Direct and negotiate vendor relationships with all third-party benefits service providers.

Job Skills & Abilities:

• Experience and knowledge of all pertinent federal and state regulations, filing and compliance requirements, both adopted and pending, affecting employee benefits programs, including ACA, ERISA, COBRA, FMLA, ADA, Section 125, COBRA, DOL and all other legal requirements.
• Skilled with HRIS/Payroll systems and their functionality, i.e. ADP Workforce Now
• Ability to build strong relationship with internal and external partners and suppliers
• Strong team building and leadership skills
• Excellent negotiation skills and ability to sell ideas
• Ability to lead system-wide change management projects and general project management
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Able to gain a strong understanding of company culture and be able to meld work style into the company’s culture
• Highly proficient with Microsoft Office (Excel, Word, Power Point)
• Presentation and public speaking skills
• An ability to work with others including executive/corporate management, divisional management, supervision and all employees.
• Strong analytical, numerical and reasoning abilities; problem analysis and problem resolution at both a strategic and functional level.
• Self-motivated, with a strong work ethic and demonstrated initiative with a sense of urgency to meet deadlines.
• Ability to exercise autonomy, independent judgment and decision making; providing sound accurate recommendations to resolve issues and mitigate risk to the company
• Extremely strong interpersonal communications with the ability to have difficult conversations with tact & professionalism
• Ability to keep sensitive information confidential and demonstrate sound judgement

Education and Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree in Human Resources, Business, Finance or related field
• Minimum of 7 years’ proven work experience in relevant benefits and leadership roles, including broad experience with strategic benefit programs to attract, develop and engage the workforce
• At a minimum, must have spent the last 3 years in a managerial, benefits-focused role
• Certified Employee Benefit Specialist (CEBS) preferred

Physical Requirements:

• Work is onsite only.
• Domestic travel requirements of approximately 10%.
• Willingness to come in early/stay late without direction to complete time sensitive tasks.
• Very high level of organizational and time management skills.

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