Archived: Important message to employees regarding pay: January 27, 2017

On Wednesday, January 25, I provided an update on our progress in resolving public service pay issues.

Since our last update, we have continued to focus on addressing overpayment cases, eliminating our backlog and resolving priority pay issues as they are reported to us.

Processing your pay requests

Most of the pay problems employees are having result from late processing. Every day, the Pay Centre receives thousands of requests for changes to regular pay, such as a stop (in the case of leave or termination), a restart (in the case of a return from leave) or an increase (in the case of allowances, promotions or actings).

Since Phoenix was introduced last winter, we have been unable to consistently process them in a timely manner. In fact, we are only meeting our service standards (which are 20 days for most transactions) 20 to 30% of the time.

Our plan

Moving forward, prompt processing of pay requests will be our priority.

Our plan to get us there involves more capacity, technical enhancements and transparency.

We will soon begin reassigning compensation advisors to deal with incoming requests. This will allow us to process more requests so we can start bringing down wait times and clearing out late payments.

We are also in the process of implementing technical enhancements so we can process pay transactions more quickly. In addition, we are working with departments to identify opportunities for them to enter data into Phoenix that will further reduce processing times at the Pay Centre.

Starting the second week of February, we will post monthly information about pay performance online. You will be able to see how well the Pay Centre is progressing and meeting service standards.

Through this approach, you will soon see improvement in the speed with which you receive payments.

Thank you for your continued patience and understanding.

Marie Lemay, P.Eng., ing.
Deputy Minister
Public Services and Procurement Canada