Associate Director – Reward, Compensation & Benefits

 

Role Purpose

The Associate Director – Reward, Compensation & Benefits will lead the design, governance, and delivery of the firm’s Total Reward strategy, ensuring we attract, retain, and motivate top talent through competitive, equitable, and transparent reward practices. This senior role has strategic accountability for compensation and benefits, including pay frameworks, incentive design, benefits strategy, pay transparency, and statutory reporting. 

Operating within a Global Rewards COE model, the role balances global frameworks with local market expertise, acting as a trusted advisor to senior leadership and shaping reward as a core pillar of our Employee Value Proposition. A key focus will be pay transparency, Gender Pay Gap reporting, and broader pay equity initiatives, ensuring regulatory compliance while driving meaningful insight, action, and long-term fairness.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead the design, delivery, and evolution of the firm’s Total Reward strategy, aligning compensation and benefits to business, talent, and growth objectives.

• Own reward governance frameworks, ensuring transparency, strong controls, audit readiness, and regulatory compliance.

• Act as a trusted advisor to Executive, Partners, and senior leadership on reward investment, workforce cost modelling, and reward-related decisions.

• Design, manage, and evolve compensation frameworks, salary structures, incentive schemes, and job architecture.

• Lead the firm’s pay transparency roadmap, ensuring readiness for EU Pay Transparency Directive and other regulatory requirements.

• Oversee market benchmarking, internal equity analysis, and reward modelling.

• Lead annual pay review, promotion, and bonus governance cycles, ensuring practices are fair, competitive, and consistent.

• Lead the firm’s benefits strategy, including pensions, healthcare, wellbeing, lifestyle, and voluntary benefits, ensuring competitiveness and inclusivity.

• Partner with brokers and providers to optimise value, engagement, innovation, and cost effectiveness of benefits programs.

• Drive benefits communication and employee engagement to maximise understanding and utilisation.

• Take executive ownership of Gender Pay Gap and broader pay equity reporting, analysis, insight generation, and action planning.

• Collaborate with leadership on remediation strategies and long-term equity improvement.

• Act as a senior leader within the Global Rewards COE, balancing global consistency with local relevance.

• Monitor external market trends, regulatory developments, and emerging best practices to ensure competitiveness.

• Build and lead Reward capability across Compensation and Benefits, embedding reward literacy across HR and leadership communities.

• Develop data, analytics, and digital enablement within Reward to drive continuous improvement and innovation.

Skills & Experience Required:

• Bachelor’s degree in HR, Business, Finance, or related field; professional certification (e.g., CIPD) desirable.

• Senior-level experience, 8 years+, in Reward, Compensation, and Benefits within complex, matrix, or professional services environments.

• Proven leadership of Total Reward strategy and delivery.

• Deep expertise in pay transparency, pay equity, and regulatory frameworks.

• Experience operating within a Global COE model.

• Strong commercial acumen and ability to influence at Partner and Executive level.

• Highly credible advisor with strong executive presence.

• Strong governance, risk, and compliance mindset.

• Strategic thinker able to translate global frameworks into locally effective solutions.