Question Period Note: Update on Pay Stabilization: support for employees, and investments

This note focuses on the efforts and progress to provide support to employees, stabilize the administration of pay, and financial investments in Phoenix.

Notes:

• All questions related to the mental health of public servants should be directed to the President of the Treasury Board
• All questions related to Next Generation Human Resources and Pay solution are in a separate question period card developed by Shared Services Canada
• All questions related to the negotiation of collective agreements and compensation for Phoenix damages agreements should be directed to the President of the Treasury Board
• Issues related to income tax are under the purview of the Canada Revenue Agency. Questions related to the taxability of damages payments should be directed to Canada Revenue Agency

• The Government of Canada is committed to supporting employees and continues to take action on all fronts to resolve public service pay issues
  • Since the launch of Phoenix, we have implemented a series of measures and made consistent progress towards pay stabilization
  • We have put in place over 3,000 systems enhancements and fixes, which have helped move the pay system to a much steadier environment
  • As of November 23, 2022, the backlog of financial transactions beyond the normal workload has decreased by 48% since the peak of January 2018, representing a reduction of 184,000 transactions
  • Over the same period of time, the overall queue of transactions waiting to be processed at the Pay Centre has decreased by 36%, representing a reduction of 231,000 transactions
  • While there is still much work to do, we continue to progress towards pay stabilization, to ensure federal government employees across Canada are paid accurately and on time

If pressed on support to employees:

• Financial support is and will remain available for employees missing any of their pay. This support includes an emergency salary advance or priority payment
• Flexible measures have been put in place to help minimize financial hardships for employees for the repayment of overpayments related to Phoenix pay system issues
• The Client Contact Centre is available to all current and former federal public service employees with pay and benefits questions
• The Client Contact Centre escalates cases of hardship so they can be addressed quickly, and agents are trained to respond to situations where employees may be in distress

If pressed on specific actions:

• We have introduced MyGCPay to all departments and agencies serviced by Phoenix. MyGCPay is a web application that provides employees with a centralized and simplified view of their pay and benefits, to help employees better understand their pay
• In April 2021 we launched the MyGCPay stub – designed to be more user-friendly and to help employees better understand their pay

Stabilizing the administration of pay

Since the launch of Phoenix, PSPC has implemented a series of measures focused on stabilizing the administration of pay. These include providing employees with greater support through our Client Contact Centre, introducing the Pay Pods model, implementing a One Pay-Processing Workforce approach that strategically aligns pay processors’ skillsets to the pay workload, and implementing technical fixes that have improved payroll processing, such as increased automation of transactions.

In addition, we are focusing on other operational priorities in pay administration including pension arrears, terminations, and overpayments. We have improved service standard compliance while managing sustained increases of transactions submitted to the Pay Centre by departments and agencies, starting in 2021 and expected to continue going forward.

We are working closely with all our partners, including employees, unions, Members’ of Parliament offices, departments and their representatives from HR and pay, to support our employees and resolve public service pay issues as quickly as possible.

Employees who have been underpaid can request emergency salary advances or priority payments from their departments. Unpaid amounts owed to employees can result from regular pay transactions such as overtime and acting pay that are not yet processed or due to errors.

Underpayments are not automatically tracked in the Phoenix pay system because it is impossible to obtain these figures accurately until all backlogged pay related transactions are processed by compensation advisors.

Collective agreement implementation – 2014 and 2018 contracts

The Government is committed to implementing collective agreements within Phoenix in a timely manner. With regard to the 2014 round, we processed approximately 207,000 collective agreement transactions manually. To ensure retroactive payment amounts were accurate, PSPC conducted a manual review of over 200,000 individual accounts. This manual work was completed in December 2020. In total, we processed 126 TBS and separate employer’s agreements and salary rate updates, representing close to $2.5 billion in payments to employees.

The implementation of the 2018 round of signed collective agreements is nearly complete. To date, 2018 collective agreement implementation (CAI) salary adjustments and retroactive payments have been completed through the automated process for 140 TBS and separate employer agreements, representing over $2 billion in payments to employees (as of August 2022).

Lessons learned from the implementation of the 2014 round of bargaining allowed PSPC to collaborate with departments and agencies, and bargaining agents, to simplify processes, improve accuracy of payment and reduce the need for manual work.

Based on the work done so far, we expect an overall average of approximately 10% of the 2018 round of collective agreement transactions will need manual intervention, resulting in a reduction of hundreds of thousands of manual transactions as compared to the 2014 round. The results of each retroactive payment process are expected to vary due to a combination of many factors, including agreement complexity and projected volumes. However, we are on track to complete the 2018 collective agreement implementation within negotiated timeframes.

In comparison, the 2014 round required compensation advisors to manually process and manually validate approximately 90% of collective agreement transactions.

TBS is responsible for engagement with PSPC, employees and unions on collective agreements and compensation for Phoenix damages.

MyGCPay

MyGCPay is a web application developed by PSPC to help rebuild federal government employees’ confidence in the integrity of their pay. It provides employees with a centralized and simplified view of their pay and benefits. It helps employees identify pay issues earlier and allows them to monitor their open cases with more detail.

On average, MyGCPay has had over 330,000 visits from employees across the Government of Canada each month since its launch in November 2019.

The application allows employees to:

• view the most current information about their pay and benefits
• print important documents such as tax slips and proof of employment
• identify pay issues earlier and, if an employee’s current or former department was served by the Pay Centre, monitor any open enquiries and cases in detail
• access historical information, pay cheques, benefits plans, enquiries, and Pay Centre cases dating back to 2016

Following consultations with Government of Canada employees, the MyGCPay project team introduced a new and improved pay stub in April 2021.

Investments in Phoenix

This section provides an historical record of investments to deliver pay and respond to pay issues. The current total is $2.19 billion:

• $50 million (2016) PSPC – build capacity, enhance technology, employee support
• $141.7 million (2017) – build capacity, enhance technology, employee support. This included $15 million for Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS) and $127 million for PSPC
• $454.2 million (Budget 2018) PSPC/TBS - build capacity, enhanced technology, and employee support
• $5.5 million (Budget 2018) Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) – process income tax reassessments needed due to pay issues
• $16 million (Budget 2018) TBS – work with experts, federal public sector unions and technology providers on a way forward for a new pay system
• $555.8 million (Budget 2019) PSPC – ensure adequate resources to address pay issues; support system improvements. This included $25.1 million for TBS and $530.7 million for PSPC
• $9.2 million (Budget 2019) CRA – process income tax reassessments needed due to pay issues
• $910 million (Budget 2020) – 3-year forward plan funding, to continue efforts to eliminate the backlog of pay issues for public servants, maintain measures to deliver pay and support employees, and stabilize pay for the Government of Canada
• $47 million (Budget 2021) over the next 2 years to support the workforce dedicated to processing pay transactions

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