Government of Canada makes progress in exploring new human resources and pay system

The Voice of Canada News:

The Government of Canada remains committed to resolving outstanding pay issues for public servants, while moving toward modernizing processes and systems to improve the overall human resources (HR) and pay experience for employees.

Honourable Jean-Yves Duclos, Minister of Public Services and Procurement, and the Honourable Anita Anand, President of the Treasury Board, provided an update on the Government of Canada’s efforts to develop and test an improved, integrated HR and pay system for the federal public service.

The government has been exploring options to transition to a new system that meets the needs of its employees. Since 2022, Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) has been testing Dayforce, the human capital management platform provided by Dayforce, Inc. (formerly known as Ceridian), against the complex HR and pay landscape that currently exists across federal departments and agencies.

Testing has demonstrated that Dayforce is a technically viable option for the next modern HR and pay system. However, to ensure best results, improvements to the way the federal public service manages HR and pay processes will be required. This includes simplifying and standardizing processes across departments and agencies, consolidating employee records, and ensuring government-wide readiness and capacity prior to launching a new system.

Over the coming months, the Government of Canada will continue to expand testing and design the system to its specific needs, while exploring options for simplifying HR processes and procedures. A final recommendation on the way forward for HR and pay is expected later this year.

In parallel, the Government of Canada continues to work hard to stabilize and improve current pay operations and address outstanding transactions. We have recently hired 450 compensation agents, and we are working on leveraging artificial intelligence to help agents process transactions more quickly. This work remains critically important to the 420,000 current and former employees who depend on accurate and reliable pay.

Quotes

“Public servants deserve to be paid accurately and on time for their work. We are continuing to take action to ensure that we are improving current pay operations, while also moving toward a system that meets the needs of the Government of Canada now and in the future. Exploring a new, modern and effective system is an opportunity to reimagine how services could be delivered in a fully digital environment.”-The Honourable Jean-Yves Duclos
Minister of Public Services and Procurement

“The government will always take steps to ensure that all public service employees are paid accurately and on time. We will continue working with all partners, including bargaining agents, to simplify human resources and pay processes to ensure that all efforts contribute to the success of a new employee-focused human resources and pay system.”-The Honourable Anita Anand, President of the Treasury Board

Quick facts

• The current pay system is used to deliver pay to an average of 420,000 current and former employees bi-weekly. In 2023, this represented approximately 13.1 million payments, totalling approximately $36 billion.
• Complexity of the Government of Canada HR and pay environment includes the challenge of applying almost 150 different collective agreements representing employees from over 100 departments and agencies.
• As announced in 2018, the purpose of exploring a new HR and pay solution is to assess the viability of using a digital solution that is mobile and accessible and will be built on the foundation of users’ needs and modern people management processes.
• The initiative is incorporating lessons learned from the previous pay system implementation and recommendations intended to guide future projects of similar size and scope. In particular, recommendations around stakeholder engagement and governance were guided by Lessons Learned from the Transformation of Pay Administration Initiative (Goss Gilroy report).
• The Dayforce application is a commercial off-the-shelf global software-as-a-service HR and pay solution.
• Since the start of the testing phase, we have engaged with 4,750 participants from 50 Government of Canada organizations, including employees, managers, HR professionals, compensation advisors and administrators who would use the new solution.
• In May 2023, the Prime Minister announced the creation of the Enterprise Pay Coordination Office within PSPC. Its mandate is to lead, coordinate and implement the development of an integrated, enterprise strategy on HR and pay moving forward.