Senior Business Specialist

When you join the team at Unum, you become part of an organization committed to helping you thrive.

Here, we work to provide the employee benefits and service solutions that enable employees at our client companies to thrive throughout life’s moments. And this starts with ensuring that every one of our team members enjoys opportunities to succeed both professionally and personally. To enable this, we provide: 

• Award-winning culture 

• Inclusion and diversity as a priority 

• Performance Based Incentive Plans

• Competitive benefits package that includes: Health, Vision, Dental, Short & Long-Term Disability 

• Generous PTO (including paid time to volunteer!) 

• Up to 9.5% 401(k) employer contribution 

• Mental health support 

• Career advancement opportunities 

• Student loan repayment options 

• Tuition reimbursement

• Flexible work environments 

And that’s just the beginning…  

With 10,000 employees helping more than 39 million people worldwide, every role at Unum is meaningful and impacts the lives of our customers. Whether you’re directly supporting a growing family, or developing online tools to help navigate a difficult loss, customers are counting on the combined talents of our entire team. Help us help others, and join Team Unum today! 

Colonial Life is looking for a Senior Business Specialist in Columbia, SC to support Underwriting and product development teams. This is the second level in a three-level career path. This position is primarily responsible for providing extensive system (automated and manual), processes, testing and project support for medium to large sized functional and/or cross-functional business area initiatives. The incumbent partners extensively with IT, other functional areas and the Program Office. The incumbent also mentors junior team members.

Please note, this role is available in only in Columbia, SC,  requiring a minimum of 3 days in the office.

Principal Duties and Responsibilities

Application/Technical/Process Support

• Directs/Leads the effort to identify, research and resolve complex problems.
• Ensures that a variety of solutions are analyzed and the appropriate solution is implemented.
• Ensures that production systems/processes are being monitored.
• Support the identification, analysis and documentation of complex System Change Requests that impact one or more systems or business units.
• Ensures that appropriate level of analysis has been conducted to develop requirements.  Partners with other functional areas and IT to help prioritize and implement system change request.

Subject Matter Expert

• Represents functional area on large functional/cross-functional projects which are highly complex to effectively communicate business needs.
• Actively participates in and partners with others on requirements elicitation sessions and other phases of the system development life cycle.
• Ensures that all the system development/enhancement work undertaken keeps the customer (end user) in mind.
• Support the documentation for the system and/or processes the business area owns/supports is comprehensive and adequately maintained.
• Assesses technical/process impact of making complex business changes.

Testing (System Change Request (SCR) and Projects)

• Manage testing for medium to large initiatives, within or outside of the functional area and with IT partners, ensuring testing is comprehensive in order to have high quality and minimize defects.
• Able to develop test timelines, test plans, test cases and management updates.
• Ensures that testing results are analyzed thoroughly, tracked, effectively documented and has proper signoff.
• Ability to think beyond the current system/process being tested and assesses impacts to other systems/process that integrate/touch the system/process being tested.

Business Initiatives

• Performs project coordination, extensive situational business analysis/problem solving and/or implementation support for large sized functional/cross-functional projects which have high degree of complexity.

Partnering and Communications

• Ensures that there is strong partnership and collaboration within the functional area and cross-functionally with other functional areas and IT.

Continuous Improvement/Process Innovation

• Looks for ways to improve existing processes that the functional area owns/supports or one that spans multiple functional areas.
• May train or mentors junior team members.
• May perform other duties as assigned.

Job Specifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent work experience
• 5+ years in functional area or other related area
• Agile Methodology
• Advanced business knowledge of the systems and/or processes the functional unit owns/supports and advanced business knowledge of other functional areas.
• Advanced capability to assess down-stream impacts when a change is proposed to systems/processes that integrate/touch the system/process the functional unit owns/supports.
• Advanced knowledge of the customers the functional area supports and the processes they follow.
• Advanced knowledge of MS Office (Word, Excel, Power Point) preferred
• Strong ability to effectively articulate difficult, extremely complex and multi-faceted ideas and concepts through clear and concise verbal and/or written communication.
• Basic knowledge of MS Project preferred, as well as PC/Mainframe/applications experience
• Advanced negotiation skills
• Excellent planning, organization and time management skills
• Has personal initiative to set goals and task that stretch abilities and follow through on them.
• Expands accountability beyond direct tasks.
• In addition to oneself, leads/drives others to act with an appropriate sense of urgency to achieve successful results.
• Advanced leadership skills.
• Strong, proven knowledge and work experience of Project Management methodology
• Strong knowledge/understanding of corporate systems development methodology and broad understanding/awareness of other methodologies

#LI-AS3

~IN1

Unum and Colonial Life are part of Unum Group, a Fortune 500 company and leading provider of employee benefits to companies worldwide. Headquartered in Chattanooga, TN, with international offices in Ireland, Poland and the UK, Unum also has significant operations in Portland, ME, and Baton Rouge, LA - plus over 35 US field offices. Colonial Life is headquartered in Columbia, SC, with over 40 field offices nationwide.

Unum is an equal opportunity employer, considering all qualified applicants and employees for hiring, placement, and advancement, without regard to a person's race, color, religion, national origin, age, genetic information, military status, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability, or protected veteran status.

The base salary range for applicants for this position is listed below. Unless actual salary is indicated above in the job description, actual pay will be based on skill, geographical location and experience.

Additionally, Unum offers a portfolio of benefits and rewards that are competitive and comprehensive including healthcare benefits (health, vision, dental), insurance benefits (short & long-term disability), performance-based incentive plans, paid time off, and a 401(k) retirement plan with an employer match up to 5% and an additional 4.5% contribution whether you contribute to the plan or not.  All benefits are subject to the terms and conditions of individual Plans.

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