Archived: Response from Statistics Canada

From: Public Services and Procurement Canada

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Mr. Michael Wernick
Clerk of the Privy Council
80 Wellington Street, Room 332
Ottawa, Ontario  K1A OA3

Dear Mr.Wernick:

In response to your request of November 2, 2017, we are pleased to share Statistics Canada’s progress and ongoing efforts to support the Phoenix Pay system initiative.

Our context for pay is complex, as one of the six organizations using web services to interface internal human resource and financial systems with Phoenix to process pay. We are not served by the Pay Centre, and have retained an internal compensation team providing centralized pay and support services across the country. This emanates from the requirement to manage and pay our field staff as a separate employer. The operating environment includes over 5,500 public service employees, and an additional 2,000 employees for Statistical Survey Operations, with varying work schedules. In addition, we hired an additional 35,000 employees during the 2016 Census, 2,000 of whom were paid through Phoenix, a 33% increase to normal Phoenix pay workload over a few months.

Strong leadership, as well as active management and oversight have supported Statistics Canada in achieving the following milestones to support pay stabilization both internally and for the government of Canada:

  • Implemented 100% of 9,400 retro-active collective agreement payments on time;
  • Delivered 100% of biweekly progress reports for Minister’s dashboard, 100% of quarterly reports to the OCG, and provided full transparency on our business model and operations in three OAG audits on Phoenix and Public Accounts;
  • 100% employee post-payment reconciliation and understanding of outstanding pay issues;
  • Developed a plan with targets to reduce the backlog of pay cases and meet all service standards by August 2018;
  • Provided managers with a centralized, user-centric, integrated business model, which reduces burden on managers and increases efficiency and integrity of the pay process;
  • Communicated extensively with managers and employees on roles and responsibilities, nature of pay issues, availability of financial support to minimize hardship, as well as service standards and ongoing progress to resolve issues;
  • Established a dedicated HR-to-Pay multidisciplinary team to lead internal efforts, to actively collaborate with other departments and share lessons learned and best practices, and to participate in central agency-led committees and working groups; 
  • Provided two full time dedicated data analytics resources to the OCHRO Minister’s Pay dashboard team as well as access to systems, tools and additional analytical capacity here at Statistics Canada;
  • Offered a 300 seat Statistics Canada facility to PSPC to establish a satellite office as well as provided a list of over 100 Census resources to support pay workload;
  • Met Deputy Head Student Pledge.

As you can see, Statistics Canada is deploying significant efforts, has established a strong governance mechanism, and forged multidisciplinary teams that include human resources, finance, IT, as well as dedicated expertise in data analytics and live data cube capabilities to drive results. This has allowed us to actively manage workload and triage cases, based on solid evidence, priorities and risks.

The wellness of Statistics Canada’s employees is also of paramount importance. With an internal Compensation team located in 5 cities, we have been able to provide one-on-one client service to our employees and address questions and concerns quickly and efficiently. We also continue to provide timely communications with a focus on ensuring managers and employees understand available options and act quickly, should an employee face financial hardship due to a Phoenix pay issue.

The attached placemat highlights Statistic Canada’s actions to stabilize pay.

Statistics Canada remains committed to stabilizing pay within the agency and offer support across the Government of Canada. We will continue to actively engage both internally and with partners, particularly by sharing our data analytics expertise, user-centric service delivery model and compensation experience.

Thank you for the opportunity to share this information with you and I would be happy to address any questions that you many have or to discuss further at your convenience.

Yours sincerely,

Anil Arora
Chief Statistician of Canada

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