Daimler Truck - Manager - Total Rewards/Compensation & Benefits
Position Title : Manager - Total Rewards (Compensation & Benefits)
Function : Human Resources - Centre of Competence (TH/MBI-G)
Location : Oragadam, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Reports to:
Team
Experience
1. Purpose of the Role
This role owns the white-collar Total Rewards agenda for DICV - compensation strategy, salary structures, merit and variable pay design, benchmarking and governance. The mandate is to keep DICV competitive and compliant in the Indian commercial vehicle talent market while operating inside Daimler Truck's global compensation framework, which is moving from a hierarchy-based system to a job-architecture model where pay is linked to role value, impact and performance.
The successful candidate will be the single point of accountability for compensation governance at DICV and the country interface to the global and regional compensation community.
2. Key Responsibilities
- Benchmarking: Own participation in and interpretation of market surveys (Mercer, Deloitte, WTW and equivalent); track compa-ratio positioning, pay trends and inflation data to build a defensible market view.
- Differentiation frameworks: Build and maintain premium/discount skill frameworks for critical and niche capabilities, and translate them into hiring ranges and internal pay bands.
- Employer attractiveness: Use rewards as a lever for talent attraction, retention and diversity; quantify the cost and business impact of proposed changes.
2.2 Annual Cycles & Variable Pay
- Salary review: Own the end-to-end annual salary review and budget approval process - budget modelling, merit distribution proposals linked to performance and potential clusters, market corrections and retention instruments.
- Variable pay: Manage short-term incentive (STI) and long-term incentive (VSEP/LTI) administration, eligibility, target setting and payout inputs.
- System ownership: Ensure accurate set-up and data completeness in Oracle HCM - scope, access rights, roles, documentation and budgets - and support local HR teams on validation, cross-checks and approval readiness.
- Governance forums: Prepare and present compensation proposals to the CHRO, CFO and OpCom; follow through on decisions and communicate approved budgets.
2.3 Policy, Compliance & Governance
- Statutory compliance: Ensure salary structures comply with Indian labour legislation, including the Code on Wages and the consolidated Labour Codes; manage structural transitions with clear employee communication.
- Parity and controls: Conduct internal parity checks before offers, review and recommend on salary band deviations, and maintain the audit trail for compensation decisions.
- Guidelines: Author and maintain compensation guidelines and manuals for all employee levels, aligned to the Corporate Compensation Policy.
2.4 Analytics, Tools & Stakeholder Management
- Analytics: Build compensation models and simulations (CTC structuring, cost impact, band fitment, attrition and pay correlation) and present insights that support decision-making.
- Tools: Develop and maintain practical tools - e.g. CTC simulators and fitment calculators - for HRBPs, Talent Acquisition and Payroll.
- Payroll interface: Provide accurate and timely compensation inputs to Payroll and Finance for budgeting and operating plan cycles.
- Global interface: Represent DICV in regional and global compensation exchanges; align local practice with the evolving Daimler Truck job architecture and executive compensation framework.
3. Candidate Profile
3.1 Qualifications
- Certification in compensation (e.g. CCP, Mercer/WTW job evaluation or grading methodologies) is an
advantage.
3.2 Experience
- Demonstrated ownership of at least three full annual salary review and variable pay cycles in a mid-to-large organisation (1,500+ white-collar employees).
- Hands-on experience with job evaluation and grading methodologies, salary band design and market benchmarking.
- Experience in a manufacturing, automotive or engineering environment, ideally within a multinational with a global HR framework, is strongly preferred.
- Exposure to Indian labour law and the Code on Wages transition; working knowledge of Oracle HCM or a comparable enterprise HR system.
- Direct involvement in a level or grade system redesign - for example a "rethink levels" type transition from hierarchy-based pay to a role- and job-architecture-based model, including re-grading, role valuation and the bridging arrangements that follow.
- Experience of organisational restructuring and its rewards implications - band harmonisation after re-organisation or integration, fitment of populations into revised structures, cost impact modelling and the individual transition cases that arise.
- Proven track record of authoring a compensation strategy end to end - from market diagnosis through design principles to an approved proposal at executive committee or board level - rather than only administering an inherited framework.
- Demonstrated use of Total Rewards as a business lever - shaping the reward mix (fixed, variable, benefits, non-cash recognition) to address a defined business problem such as attrition in critical skills, employer attractiveness, diversity hiring or cost containment, with measurable outcomes.
3.3 Competencies
Analytical rigour:
Comfortable with large data sets, modelling and simulation; builds the numbers before building the argument.
Governance mindset:
Protects consistency, fairness and auditability of pay decisions; says no with reasoning when a deviation is not defensible.
Executive communication:
Can take a complex compensation proposal to OpCom, the CFO and the CHRO and land a decision in one sitting.
Stakeholder influence:
Works across HRBPs, Finance, Payroll, Talent Acquisition and global compensation teams without formal authority.
Confidentiality and integrity:
Handles highly sensitive individual pay data with absolute discretion.
Ownership and pace:
Runs annual cycles to date-certain deadlines and follows through on open points to closure.
Change resilience:
Has carried a population through a pay or grade system change - holds the design intact under pressure while handling individual transition cases with fairness.
4. Success Measures - First 12 Months
- Refreshed salary bands and benchmarking position approved by OpCom, with a clear market competitiveness view by level and function.
- Premium and discount skill framework operational and used in hiring range decisions.
- Full statutory compliance of salary structures maintained, with no audit findings.
- DICV compensation data complete and accurate in Oracle HCM; local practice aligned to the global job architecture transition.
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