CD 2013-008

Subject: New Executive Performance Pay (EPP) Web Application

May 31, 2013

1. Purpose

1.1. The purpose of this directive is to provide information concerning a new web application that will be used for the administration of the performance pay payment process.

1.2. The new Executive Performance Pay (EPP) web application will be available effective June 3, 2013 to those departments and agencies that have implemented the Compensation Web Applications (CWA) and who are using the Performance Management Program (PMP) Budget Module on the Executive Talent Management System (ETMS) at Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS).

1.3. The purpose of the web-based application is to provide a more automated and electronic tool to facilitate the performance pay payment process and to allow executives to view and track the status of their performance pay with the CWA.

1.4. In this text, use of the masculine is generic and applies to both men and women.

2. Background

2.1. The web-based application was developed as a result of a partnership initiative between TBS and Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC). This initiative consists of a bi-directional data exchange between the PMP Budget Module of the ETMS and the PWGSC CWA EPP application and the Regional Pay System (RPS).

2.2. This data exchange allows for the preloading of executives' March 31st salaries, and substantive position salary information, thereby reducing the administrative burden on departments to ascertain and manually enter salary information in ETMS and streamlining the PMP by facilitating the administration of performance pay payments (at-risk pay and bonus) for executives.

2.3. The EPP will further improve the accuracy and timeliness in processing of the performance payment by eliminating the time required by the compensation advisor to manually enter performance pay transactions in the RPS and reducing data transcription errors between ETMS and RPS. System edits and calculation functionality are also built into the application to ensure that the lump sum payment of performance pay that overlaps two calendar years is correctly prorated based on the number of days in the period covered. This ensures the proper pension contribution rate is applied.

2.4. The EPP application will allow compensation advisors to verify, reject and search EPP requests submitted from the ETMS. Departmental authorizers will be able to authorize, reject and search EPP requests verified by compensation advisors, and executives will be able to view the status of their performance pay request as it goes through the various processing steps (submitted, verified and authorized).

3. Policy

3.1. The Directive on the Performance Management Program for Executives is available on the Treasury Board Secretariat Web site.

4. Procedures and Instructions

4.1. Compensation advisors can access the new EPP application through the Pay and Pension Services for Government Employees Web site. On the home page, go to the right-hand menu under "Information For" and click on "Compensation Advisor". Next, choose the "Compensation Tools" link and click "Continue". Once you log onto the "myKey" page, you will be able to access the EPP link. The same access rights currently assigned to compensation advisors for RPS permit access to the EPP application.

4.2. Once an organization has submitted their PMP report through the Budget module, the performance pay information for those employees in receipt of a lump sum performance pay payment will be sent to the EPP application and an EPP request will be created. The EPP request will then be available to the compensation advisor for verification and to the departmental authorizer for authorization. Executives who are in receipt of a performance pay payment will also be able to view and track the status of their EPP request.

4.3. The EPP web application is designed to be easy and intuitive to use and provides step-by-step explanations of the process to follow when verifying and authorizing EPP requests. Help text and EPP general information pages are available to the users as they navigate through the various EPP screens.

4.4. Once created, the EPP application will display the detail of an EPP request submitted for verification and allow the compensation advisor to verify the request and create the appropriate EPP transaction detail information in order to ensure the correct pension contribution rate is applied.

The employee's personal, salary and employment information populated by the RPS is also displayed. A button beside each respective field provides the compensation advisor with a brief description of that field.

The executive performance pay (at-risk and bonus) is also displayed as a gross amount.

The compensation advisor will then be able to verify individual EPP requests or reject an EPP request for which they are responsible for.

4.5. A status bar is also displayed when viewing a request and provides the user with the status of the EPP request (submitted, verified, authorized or rejected) as well as the date associated with each change in status. A reference number is also associated with the EPP request.

4.6. Once verified, the request will be sent to the departmental authorizer for authorization. The employee's personal salary and employment information, gross performance pay amount, EPP status bar and EPP transaction detail information will also be available to the authorizer.

The authorizer will then be able to authorize individual EPP requests, bulk authorize all EPP requests or reject an EPP request for which he is responsible.

4.7. An EPP request with a status of "Authorized" indicates that the executive performance pay request has been authorized by a departmental finance officer (authorizer) with Financial Administration Act (FAA) Section 33 delegated authority and is pending processing in the RPS on the next available pay processing update.

4.8. Once an EPP request has been processed via the RPS, a supplementary payment will be issued. The supplementary payment will be post-dated seven business days and will be available for viewing using the CWA pay stub application.

4.9. Compensation advisors can verify if transactions were successfully processed in the RPS by viewing the transaction database and the error analysis report.

5. Inquiries

5.1. Any inquiries on the information contained in this directive should be addressed to your Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC) Compensation Services Office.

Original Signed by
Carrie E. Roussin

Carrie E. Roussin
Director General
Compensation Sector
Accounting, Banking and Compensation

Reference(s): CJA 8003-20