Leave & Benefits Specialist

Job Req ID: 106989

Job Type: Full-time

Work Category: Hybrid Telecommute

Application Close Date: 04/10/2026

Sponsorship: Not Available

Compensation: $ 70,400 - $ 105,600

We are GALLO

We’re a family-owned company with a 90+ year legacy, that’s consistently recognized as a Glassdoor “Best Places to Work.” We have 130+ brands in our total alcohol beverage portfolio including wine, malt, spirits, and ready-to-drink beverages. We’re home to the #1 wine and spirits brands in the U.S. - Barefoot Wine & High Noon and are the official sponsors of the NFL, NHL, UFC, and PGA of America.

A Taste of What You'll Do

You’ll play a critical role in supporting the Health & Wellbeing function by ensuring employees experience accurate, timely, and compliant leave, disability, and absence administration. In this role, you’ll blend analytical thinking with hands-on case management to support leaves of absence, disability wage replacement, workers’ compensation, and health benefits, all while protecting employee pay, access, and accruals.

Your work will sit at the intersection of people, process, and systems. You’ll manage intake and coding of absences through automated integrations, vendor interfaces, and manual adjustments, while monitoring exception reports and resolving issues before they impact employees. Each day brings opportunities to research, analyze, and resolve complex timekeeping and leave scenarios, including escalations, historical corrections, and new requests.

You’ll serve as a trusted resource to employees, managers, HR Business Partners, and Employee Relations by answering questions related to leave eligibility, pay coordination, and protected time under company policy, collective bargaining agreements, and California regulations. You’ll also collaborate closely with external vendors and internal partners to ensure service agreements, data accuracy, and compliance standards are consistently met.

Beyond daily operations, you’ll contribute to continuous improvement by analyzing absence trends, building dashboards, supporting system testing, and participating in integrated disability and absence management initiatives. Your attention to detail, commitment to confidentiality, and ownership mindset will help strengthen processes that directly impact the employee experience.

What You'll Need

• Bachelor’s degree plus 2 years of experience in Human Resources to include leave or absence experience reflecting increasing levels of responsibility; OR High School diploma or State-issued equivalency certificate plus 6 years of Human Resources experience to include leave or absence experience reflecting increasing levels of responsibility.
• Experience managing privileged and confidential information.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• High level of attention to detail.
• Skilled in the use of MS Office Suite (Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook) at an intermediate level.
• Experience in payroll administration/practices.
• Knowledge of California leave, disability, paid sick leave, and payroll laws and regulations.
• Required to travel to company offices, sites, and/or meeting locations for onboarding, training, meetings, and events for development, department needs, and business delivery up to 5% of the time, with or without reasonable accommodation. This may be in addition to travel requirements, if applicable, as listed in this job description.
• Required to be 18 years or older. This may be in addition to other age requirements, if applicable, as listed in this job description.

How You'll Stand Out

• Experience working with HRIS and timekeeping systems, including absence and leave integrations, exception reporting, and data reconciliation.
• Demonstrated ability to partner with external vendors and internal stakeholders to resolve complex leave, time, and pay issues.
• Experience creating dashboards, reports, or analyses to identify trends and drive process improvements.

Our Benefits & Perks

We are committed to providing competitive compensation, perks, and a culture that supports your well-being. Benefits depend on your work category and may include medical and dental coverage, 401k plans, profit sharing, pet insurance, company holidays, access to an employee wine shop, and more! Additional information will be provided before your first interview.

The Fine Print

• The Company does not sponsor for employment-based visas for this position now or in the future.
• Actual compensation paid within the range will be determined by factors such as the education, experience, knowledge, skills and abilities of the applicant, internal equity, and alignment with market data. In addition to the salary, this position may be eligible for bonuses, incentive plans, or participate in tasting room tip pools, as applicable.
• This position will be based in the location(s) specified in the job posting with an option for occasional telecommuting. You will be expected to live within a commutable distance.
• It is the Company’s policy for job postings to be open to internal candidates for a minimum of 5 days and to external candidates, if applicable, for a minimum of 3 days.

Gallo’s policy is to afford equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees and not to discriminate on the basis of race, traits associated with race, including but not limited to, hair texture and protective hairstyles (such as braids, locks, and twists), color, national origin, ancestry, creed, religion, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition as defined by applicable state law (including cancer and predisposing genetic characteristics), genetic information, marital status, familial status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation (actual or perceived), transgender status, sex stereotyping, pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions, reproductive health decision making, age, military or veteran status, domestic violence or sexual assault victim status, or any other basis protected by applicable law. Nor will Gallo discriminate based on a perception that an individual has any of the foregoing characteristics or is associated with a person who has, or is perceived to have, any of those characteristics.

Gallo will comply with state and local laws prohibiting discrimination for lawful out-of-work behavior, such as off-duty use of cannabis away from the workplace (subject to federal and state law exceptions), the existence of non-psychoactive cannabis metabolites in hair, blood, urine, or other bodily fluids as determined by a drug screening test (subject to federal and state law exceptions).

We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. Gallo is committed to providing reasonable accommodation for candidates with disabilities in our recruiting process. If you need any assistance or accommodation due to a disability, please let us know at 209.341.7000.

Gallo is enrolled in the Department of Homeland Security's E-Verify program and will use the program to verify the employment eligibility of all newly hired employees as required.