Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER October 3, 2016 12 NEWS Labour law research just got faster, easier and more comprehensive. LabourSource™ on WestlawNext® Canada combines the most robust collection of grievance arbitrations with court and board decisions, expert commentary, legislation and collective bargaining-related content – with Canada's most advanced search engine. A single search delivers the content you're looking for, whether it's case law, legislation, commentary, or legal memos. You can then filter your results to get exactly what you need. With LabourSource, you'll always be confident that your research is complete and that you haven't missed anything. Experience the benefits • Prepare winning grievance arbitrations and labour board applications • Successfully negotiate favourable collective agreements • Stay up to date on the latest labour-related decisions, industrial relations and economic news Legal content that is labour focused, not labour intensive Introducing LabourSource™ on WestlawNext® Canada See the LabourSource advantage View a demo at westlawnextcanada.com/laboursource 00224EP-A47770 contract and since it's a funda- mental term that you are going to be paid, there are all kinds of other things that can flow from that, like the possibility of constructive dis- missal," said McGee. If a payroll problem persists and causes employees to have fi- nancial difficulties, they may opt to quit for another job and pursue legal action, he said. "Courts might have some sym- pathy to the fact that there has been a constructive dismissal, that an employee hasn't been paid and has to go elsewhere to try to find some kind of income. If that somewhere else is a low- er-paying job, the employer may be on the hook for a reasonable (termination) notice period," said McGee. Financial hardship is a real pos- sibility for some employees. "If one paycheque isn't depos- ited, that can cause significant financial damage to people," said Champagne. "A lot of people have co-ordi- nated their mortgages, their rent, their car payments to their payroll deposit dates. If the money is not there on payday, it has a massive ripple effect." When a payroll-related change causes pay problems, the first thing to do is to identify the root cause and determine if it is a sys- temic problem or a process issue, said Champagne. A systemic problem relates to something being wrong in the system itself, while a process is- sue can mean that employees or managers are not interacting with the new change correctly. "If you've converted (to a new payroll system), you've gone live and now people are not getting paid when they are supposed to be getting paid, your worst case scenario is going to be that this is not a process (problem), but it's systemic. at is, you have done something wrong in your setup and it wasn't discovered in your testing," he said. "If this is systemic, it's going to keep perpetuating itself, so you've got to go in and find the absolute source cause of the problem and fix it, no matter how long that is going to take." To solve the problem, payroll departments should reach out to the company that helped imple- ment the change (if there was one) or to another firm with expertise in the area, said Champagne. "You've got to bring the right people in and analyze exactly what is going wrong to find out how you are going to fix it. Going in blind and deciding, 'Let's just fix the back-end results,' is not a solu- tion at all. You are just perpetuat- ing the problem." To help identify the source of the problem, payroll profession- als should look for patterns in employee pay complaints. "If you've got multiple people calling in and saying, 'This is wrong,' that's a good indicator of where you're going to start to look," he said. "If people are saying, 'I am not getting paid for my overtime,' then you know where you are going to start looking to trace backwards to see if there's overtime sitting there (in the system), but it's not be- ing approved. If it's not being ap- proved, find out why. Is it system- related or is it process-related? If it is process-related, try to find out why people are not doing it." Some department managers do not agree it is their job to go into the system and do an online ap- proval of people's exception time or positive time, said Champagne. "ey were supposed to be ap- proving manual timesheets be- fore. Now that it's online, it doesn't mean that it is something that is just not done." At the same time that payroll is working to identify and fix the problem, it must also make sure it has a plan to pay employees. "It is your responsibility to get funds into the employees' bank accounts on a certain date," said Champagne. "e fact that your payroll system goes down or breaks or is not available for what- ever reason doesn't change your responsibility." Employers would be wise to have a plan in place for paying employees when there is a payroll problem, regardless of the cause. "It's always sound practice to not have to think these things through as people are running around," said McGee. "It is a good idea to have some sense of what would go on gener- ally and, certainly, if you are doing sometime like migrating to a new pay system or a new provider or restructuring the way that people are paid, having a contingency plan is absolutely critica." It's about something as simple as having enough cheques on hand, said McGee. "How many places will have enough cheques..? at may be an issue." Employers should develop a payroll-business continuity plan to pay employees when an unex- pected event disrupts operations, said Champagne. While these plans generally fo- cus on how to respond to a cata- strophic situation that severely affects an organization's critical functions, such as a major elec- trical power failure, employers can adapt it to apply to situations where payroll-related changes lead to pay problems, he said. "Going through payroll busi- ness continuity planning would really help you analyze where the fail points would be and how deep you want to go into miti- gating those failure points," said Champagne. "You've got to make sure that your payroll business continuity plan puts in play one or two alternatives that will let you accomplish (your payroll) responsibility. Your responsibility doesn't end until the money gets into people's bank accounts." Issues to consider could include whether the employer is willing to pay employees by manual cheque if direct deposit is not working. Employers may also want to decide whether they will pay sal- ary advances and, if so, whether to base them on an employee's pre- vious net pay or another amount. Continuity plans are impor- tant even if an employer has out- sourced its payroll to a service provider since the employer is ultimately responsible for paying its workers, said Champagne. "What happens if their system goes down? What happens if they can't deliver a pay to a certain bank?" Sheila Brawn is editor of Canadian Payroll Reporter. Business continuity planning needed PAYROLL < pg. 1 To figure out the source of a problem, look for patterns in employee complaints.

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