Canadian Payroll Reporter

August 2015

Focuses on issues of importance to payroll professionals across Canada. It contains news, case studies, profiles and tracks payroll-related legislation to help employers comply with all the rules and regulations governing their organizations.

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News Published 12 times a year by Thomson Reuters Canada Ltd. Subscription rate: $179 per year Customer Service Tel: (416) 609-3800 (Toronto) (800) 387-5164 (outside Toronto) Fax: (416) 298-5106 E-mail: carswell.customerrelations @thomsonreuters.com Website: www.carswell.com One Corporate Plaz 2075 Kennedy Road Toronto, Ontario, Canada M1T 3V4 Director, Carswell Media Karen Lorimer Publisher John Hobel Associate Publisher/Managing Editor Todd Humber Editor Sheila Brawn sbrawn@rogers.com Lead Editor Sarah Dobson Assistant Editor Mallory Hendry (on leave) Assistant Editor Anastasiya Jogal Marketing Manager Mohammad Ali mm.ali@thomsonreuters.com (416) 609-5866 Circulation Co-ordinator Keith Fulford keith.fulford@thomsonreuters.com (416) 649-9585 Payroll Reporter Can R Can R adian adian a www.payroll-reporter.com ©2015 Thomson Reuters Canada Ltd ISBN/ISSN: 978-0-7798-2810-4 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher (Carswell, a Thomson Reuters business). Return Mail Registration # 1522825 | Return Postage Guaranteed Paid News Revenue Toronto Canadian Payroll Reporter is part of the Canadian HR Reporter group of publications: • Canadian HR Reporter — www.hrreporter.com • Canadian Occupational Safety magazine — www.cos-mag.com • Canadian Payroll Reporter — www.payroll-reporter.com • Canadian Employment Law Today — www.employmentlawtoday.com • Canadian Labour Reporter — www.labour-reporter.com See carswell.com for information August 2015 | CPR Alberta looking at changes to overtime pay having full coverage under the ESA overtime pay provisions," the Centre's report says. It adds that this affects low-income workers even more, with only 29 per cent fully covered by the Act's overtime rules, compared with 69 per cent of middle-in- come and 71 per cent of higher- income employees. "Low-income workers such as residential care workers, farm workers, swimming pool installers, and landscapers are just some of the workers fully ex- cluded from overtime premium pay," the report notes. It also calls on the government to eliminate overtime averaging provisions in the ESA. Averaging allows employers and employees to enter into written agreements to average hours of work over periods of two or more weeks to calculate overtime pay. "Workers have little bargain- ing power to negotiate overtime agreements," the report says. "Averaging overtime over an ex- tended period enables employ- ers to not only schedule workers for excessive overtime, but to do so without paying them time and a half after working 44 hours in a week." Alberta changes Alberta is also considering em- ployment standards changes. Last year, the Ministry of Jobs, Skills, Training and Labour launched a review of the prov- ince's Employment Standards Code. It asked for public feed- back on a number of issues, in- cluding paying overtime after eight hours of work per day or 44 hours of work per week, special overtime rules for certain indus- tries and overtime agreements that allow employees paid time off in lieu of overtime pay. The Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) recommended changes to overtime rules. In its submission to the review, the AFL advocated for overtime pay after 40 hours of work per week instead of 44. It also called for employers to pay double time when employees work more than 12 hours a day, as required in British Columbia. The organization also spoke out against any plans to allow employers to average hours over a period of weeks. "The demand for averaging overtime hours over a period of weeks allows the employer to cover busy times by balancing with slower weeks and avoid overtime premium pay," it said in the submission. "What it accomplishes is to ensure the worker receives fewer wages over the time period than if weekly or daily overtime provi- sions were in place. The worker does not receive premium for the busy week, when the extra work may create home life bur- dens such as child-care arrange- ments, missing activities, and a lack of rest and sleep," it said. With a change in government in Alberta, it is too early to know if or when there will be any over- time changes, says Jay Fisher, a public affairs officer with the ministry. from ONTARIO on page 6 Workday that has more payroll technology now than they have in the past or you see things like SAP Employee Central pushing hard on the payroll capabilities that technology has. The same with Oracle PeopleSoft," he says. Even if the payroll system is not changing, it will have to be integrated with a new HRMS, DiClaudio says. "The payroll integration is also incredibly vital to the success of not only the payroll technology, but the HR technology as well." To be successful, he says it is important organizations take a holistic approach that looks be- yond merely implementing a new system for HR and brings in other key players, such as payroll. Results from this year's survey show that 30 per cent of respon- dents — what the survey calls an "all-time high" — plan to replace their core HR system in 2015. And many of these organiza- tions — 40 per cent) — are look- ing to move from an in-house system to SaaS, the survey says. "SaaS has absolutely emerged as the platform for organiza- tions," says DiClaudio. "Our pre- diction... is that it is going to be the de facto technology delivery model in the next few years; and in, arguably, five to 10 years, it will have really taken hold, not just in HR, but in payroll and fi- nance and supply chain as well." When it comes to mobile platforms and SaaS in the work- place, DiClaudio says employees are increasingly expecting "con- sumer grade" services from their employer. "I should be able to submit my timesheet the same way I would book a flight, using my mobile device, or the same way I would buy a book on Amazon or I would read an email," he says. Despite the interest in work- place technology, the survey found a wide gap between the level of satisfaction with HR technology and the extent to which organizations still use paper to carry out certain HR tasks. For instance, although 79 per cent of respondents say the technology they use for core compensation activities is effec- tive, 47 per cent continue to use paper for this task. "I don't think you will find many companies that are com- pletely beholden to their paper processes. I think what you will find are companies that feel that they can't get out from under- neath it," says DiClaudio. "Either they can't find a tech- nology that meets their financial limitations or constraints or they can't find a technology they feel comfortable is going to be able to meet their business require- ments." from TECH on page 3 Paper still popular

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