Payroll Project update
July 10, 2020
These important updates correct certain problems some employees have experienced with Workday and implement a number of important changes that will benefit all College employees. In order to address these issues, we called in an expert in Workday payroll configuration from PwC Canada who has given us a number of recommendations for improvements that will reduce errors and inquiries.
Please note that the Project is continuing and further updates will follow.
Problems and Solutions
Retroactive Pay Adjustments for Union Dues: Previously, union dues would not be automatically recalculated and adjusted when an employee received a correction to their previous pay. This could lead to either an over-deduction or under-deduction of the year-to-date union dues for the employee. This has now been corrected, and any changes to earnings from a previous period will also include an adjustment to the employee’s year-to-date union due deductions on their current pay.Pay Groups and Pay Slips: Full-time employees who also have a part-time job with Algonquin College in a given time period have been receiving a single pay slip with combined pay and deductions, inadvertently leading to errors in compensation and deductions in some cases. Workday has now been modified so that employees with both full-time and part-time jobs will receive two distinct pay slips. As a result, employees will be accurately compensated for their earnings as deductions are correctly calculated for each of their earnings types. Employees will also benefit from the greater clarity of the information itemized on separate pay slips. At year-end, employees will now receive separate T4 slips for their full-time and part-time earnings.
Net Pay Validation and Arrears: In limited situations, due to a low number of hours worked in a given pay period, a part-time employee’s voluntary and required payroll deductions could exceed their gross pay, resulting in zero net pay for the employee. In these situations, tracking and recovery of arrears deductions required manual intervention by the Payroll Department. This has caused some employees to miss benefits deductions or contributions that should have been captured by an arrears calculation process. As a result of the new configuration changes, Workday will now track all deductions that have not been contributed to in full, and will automatically recover these deductions on future pays.
Earnings, time in lieu: Full-time employees with part-time positions were being paid twice for any time in lieu claimed against their primary full-time position. Now, when selecting in lieu time off, the time will only be paid out on the primary position, ensuring there is no double payment.
Pension plan auto-enrolment for part-time employees: Part-time employees are not required to enrol in the CAAT DBplus pension plan; however, as part of the enrolment agreement, once they have enrolled in the plan, part-time employees must stay enrolled unless they have had a break in service of more than two years. Configuration changes have been made to Workday such that a part-time employee who returns after a break in service of less than two years, will automatically be re-enrolled in the pension plan. As well, part-time employees who have enrolled in the pension plan will no longer be able to select an option to opt out of the pension plan in Workday once their enrolment has been confirmed.