Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER March 6, 2017 12 FEATURES Canadian Payroll Reporter is designed to keep you up to date on legislation, regulations, court decisions, technology advances and other developments that affect payroll departments. STAY ON TOP OF PAYROLL LEGISLATION To order your subscription call 1.800.387.5164 | 416.609.3800 www.payroll-reporter.com/subscribe Subscribe today for only $179 Order No. 20186-17 Payroll Reporter Can R Can R adian adian a www.payroll-reporter.com September 2016 see BRITISH COLUMBIA page 7 PM #40065782 Legislative Roundup Changes in payroll laws and regulations from across Canada News in Brief pg. 4 Feds still working to fi x Phoenix payroll problems|B.C. Tax Commission to issue report in October|Little change in average weekly earnings in May Ask an expert pg. 5 Reporting fake SINs|Successor employers and vacation entitlement |Maintaining benefi ts while on leave Alberta Reminder: Minimum wage rates going up The general minimum wage rate in Alberta will rise from $11.20 an hour to $12.20 on Oct. 1. The rate will now apply to liquor servers since the government is eliminating a separate minimum wage rate for them on Oct. 1. Other minimum wage rates are also going up at the beginning of October. The rate for certain salespersons specified in provincial regulations will rise from $446.00 per week to $486.00. The rate for domestic employees who live in their employer's residence will in- crease from $2,127 per month to $2,316. Labour Minister Christina Gray says the government will keep an see CONSIDER on page 6 Credit: Adwo/Shutterstock New folio pg. 3 The CRA has retired its Employee Fringe Benefi ts Employer Interpretation Bulletin and replaced it with a new Income Tax Folio chapter. Advocacy leads to changes Canadian Payroll Association works with government to ensure payroll's voice is heard BY SHEILA BRAWN CODES NOW replace footnotes on the T4. There are now higher thresholds for Can- ada Revenue Agency (CRA) and Revenu Québec accelerated remitters. There are now graduated penalties for late remittanc- es. The timeframe for issuing electronic ROEs now better aligns with pay cycles. These are just some of the changes the Canadian Payroll Association (CPA) has successfully advocated for governments to make in recent years. From source deduc- tions to year-end reporting to employment standards and workers' compensation, CPA president and CEO Patrick Culhane says the association regularly works with government officials and civil servants to make payroll-related laws more efficient and effective for employers, government, employees and the general public. "Advocacy is important to us," says Culhane. "Our core purpose is payroll compliance through education and see GRADUATED page 2 Payroll technology changes don't have to cause headaches Research, well-defi ned plan and stakeholder inclusion help transition BY KIM GROOME BECAUSE PAYROLL plays such a critical role, it can be easy to jus- tify keeping your existing solution even when it means managing work-arounds, manual processes and maintaining external spread- sheets. In spite of this, to provide the best possible experience for em- ployees and to make a more strategic impact in your organization, The Canada Revenue Agency in Ottawa has worked with the Canadian Payroll Association through the years in making changes to payroll-related laws. RECOGNITION Givers of recognition see healthy ROI Employers should focus on more than just the recipients of rewards to see gains in employees' motivation, support, understanding, teamwork and pride By Jordan Rogers W hile study after study has confirmed em- ployee recognition's profound impact on key busi- ness metrics such as culture, turnover, engagement and a host of other business-related metrics, most studies have fo- cused exclusively on the impact recognition has on the person receiving it. But what about the person giving the recognition? It turns out those employees who are more inclined to give recog- nition see increases in: motiva- tion to contribute, support of company values, understanding of how teams contribute to or- ganizational success, likelihood to recommend the organization, pride in the organization, willing- ness to go above and beyond, and desire to be working at the same organization in one year. That's according to a global study by the O.C. Tanner Insti- tute that found employees who "always" give recognition see a 26 per cent increase in engagement scores, a 22 per cent increase in actual work results and a 33 per cent increase in innovation, com- pared to those who "never/rarely" give recognition. Giving recognition is especially impactful on a surprising sub- group of employees — millenni- als. Counter to what is often said, millennials were especially enam- oured with the concept of giving other people recognition. Most notably, 85 per cent of millennial employees agreed that recognizing someone else's achievement makes them want to work harder, compared to 79 per cent of generation X employees and 61 per cent of baby boomers. While it is true millennials love to receive recognition more than past generations, they are also more motivated by turning it around and giving other people recognition too. Are employees giving recognition? While giving recognition is im- portant, only 42 per cent of re- spondents to the study indicated they themselves had given recog- nition at work in the past seven days. It is important to note that within the study, recognition was defined as "an expression of gratitude or appreciation from someone else when they have done something well at work or experienced a personal milestone. Recognition may be as simple as you acknowledging, noticing, valuing or caring about the work of others." In other words, the study set a relatively low bar for recognition, so it is disappointing to see so few employees give recognition. Essentially, the results indicate that about 56 per cent of employ- ees self-reported that they them- selves hadn't expressed acknowl- edgment, value or care about someone else's work in the past week. Breaking down the result by organizational title also yields in- teresting findings. e good news is managers are more likely than non-manager employees to have given recogni- tion at least one time in the past month; however, for those who gave recognition at least once, non-manager employees, on av- erage, gave more. e results indicate it is more difficult to break through and get front-line employees to give rec- ognition but, once you do, they can become some of the most fre- quent givers at an organization. But the study highlights a chasm that exists between the perceptions of senior leaders and non-manager employees. Overall, a much lower percentage of front- line employees believe everyone at their organization has the op- portunity to give and receive rec- ognition. Ninety-one per cent of executives say everyone has the opportunity to be recognized at their organization, but that num- ber drops to 60 per cent among non-manager employees. e study highlights the fact that often times the perceptions of management don't match the reality of front-line employees at the same organization. Why don't employees give more? e study also asked employees why they don't give recognition more often. One of the most com- mon reasons was because their organization doesn't have a for- mal program to give recognition. However, beyond that, one out of five employees indicated they don't feel empowered to give rec- ognition at work and 17 per cent of employees indicated they don't feel like it is their responsibility to give recognition at work. To overcome these challenges, employers need to clearly com- municate that recognition is im- portant. Switching the conversa- tion to centre on the person giv- ing recognition opens up a unique opportunity to make prescriptive recommendations to employees. Simply put, an employer can't really tell employees it is impor- tant for them to receive more recognition because they have limited power in determining how often they actually receive recognition. However, employees can be told it is important to give recog- nition because it is something em- ployees have the power to actually do themselves. Organizations vastly underes- timate the power of email. Nearly three-fourths of employees indi- cated that if their organization chose email as the primary meth- od to encourage them to give rec- ognition, they would want emails at least monthly. Thirteen per cent indicated they would want emails daily, 29 per cent would want emails week- ly, and 31 per cent would want emails monthly. Email communi- cations are an easy way to reach all employees, help them understand that recognition is everyone's re- sponsibility, and empower all em- ployees to give recognition. Respondents also indicated that a recognition culture needs to be championed by leadership within the organization. "Have a culture of recognition — if leaders and others don't rec- ognize employees much, it doesn't motivate us to do it either," said one respondent. Another employee empha- sized that leaders need to "cre- ate a culture with more genuine recognition." Ultimately, leaders are the ones who set the tone. Only a concert- ed effort from senior leaders will allow organizations to overcome some of the top reasons em- ployees are not currently giving recognition. Promoting open channels for all levels of employees to provide rec- ognition will result in enhanced employee engagement and an elevated workplace culture. All levels of employees should feel like they can and should provide regular recognition to their co- workers — giving recognition is a universal action unrestricted to just top managers. While front-line employees may feel like it's not their place to provide recognition, it's in an organization's best interest to do what it can to dispel that percep- tion. e gains of giving recog- nition are clear, and employers should reevaluate how they can better nurture a culture that fos- ters recognition — not just for the recipients' sake, but for those who are giving it. Jordan Rogers is the manager of re- search and measurement at O.C. Tan- ner in Salt Lake City, Utah. He can be reached at (801) 493-3090. For more information, visit www.octanner.ca. Only a concerted effort from senior leaders will allow organizations to overcome some of the top reasons employees are not giving recognition. Employees naturally engage in social comparisons and a sense of fairness is important, says Gubler. "If you do something that ben- efits one class of employee, espe- cially if they're the employees who were the worst offenders before you implemented the program, this can make people very angry." To handle that challenge, "you could provide an award to more than just one individual, or you might find other ways to com- pensate your best performers, perhaps separately from the pro- gram," he says. Making a point of singling out the intrinsically or pro-socially motivated top performers is also a good idea, according to Pierce. "If I were to implement this type of program, for example, the first thing I would do is go back and look at people who had his- torically perfect attendance in the last year," he says. "And then when I announced the start of the award program, I would add that first I want to recognize all the people who, over the last year, have been leading the charge on this initia- tive… For the most part, that's all that people want: Some recogni- tion for their contributions." Part of complex system Reward programs are not stand- alone, say the researchers, but are one element of a larger compensa- tion and motivation mechanism. "Managers often want to move one lever without thinking about what happens to all the other ones," says Pierce. "Incentives and pay are not the sole com- ponents of labour costs. Labour cost is a function of wages and productivity." "If you have to increase wages by 10 per cent, but that increases productivity by 20 per cent, your costs just went down." Reward programs can seem like a low- or no-cost way to boost productivity, but the calculation is in fact, more complex, he says. "Managers can be so focused on cost-cutting that they think only about the wage component of la- bour costs and not the productiv- ity component." is research brings the actual costs of reward programs into better light, says Pierce. "Our main message isn't that awards systems are necessarily bad or costly," he says. "ey're a great tool for a manager, just like wages and a number of other components, but there is no free lunch and there are no simple solutions." Melissa Campeau is a Toronto-based freelance writer. Sense of fairness important REWARDS < pg. 11

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