Contents:

• Welcome
• What's New
• GrandMaster Update

Welcome!

August 2006 - Welcome to the latest edition of The Payroll News. As always, please feel free to forward this newsletter to your friends and associates who are interested in keeping up with the latest changes in the Payroll industry. Or better yet, subscribe them for free using the Tell Others About Us link.

Listed here are recent changes in legislation on Federal and Provincial levels that may impact your payroll calculations. Please view the following list for changes that affect your region.

FEDERAL:

August 4, 2006 - Labour Force Survey - The July 2006 Labour Force Survey reports that employment was unchanged for the second consecutive month in July, as gains in full time were offset by similar declines in part time. A jump in the number of people entering the labour force in search of work in July pushed the unemployment rate up 0.3 percentage points to 6.4%, still among the lowest in 30 years. (Full Story)

August 2006 - An Analysis of Canada's Working Poor - HRSDC has released a study that discusses the pros and cons of the various definitions that have been used to investigate the phenomenon of working poverty in Canada. The study then uses data from Statistics Canada’s Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics to identify working poor Canadians and to shed light on many questions that relate to this population. (Full Story)

August 10, 2006 - Adult Learning, Literacy And Essential Skills Program (ALLESP) - The Adult Learning, Literacy and Essential Skills Program (ALLESP) was implemented April 1, 2006 to assist in the creation of opportunities for Canadians to acquire new working skills. By integrating three closely-related programs, Human Resources and Social Development Canada (HRSDC) has created a more coherent approach for the delivery of its adult learning and literacy activities. (Full Story)

June 2006 - The Extended EI Benefits Pilot Project - The Extended EI Benefits pilot project will increase Employment Insurance (EI) income support by providing access to five additional weeks of benefits to EI claimants, up to a maximum of 45 weeks of benefits. The Extended EI Benefits pilot project will continue to provide up to five additional weeks of EI benefits in 21 of the 24 EI economic regions originally included in pilot project no.6 (the Increased Weeks of EI Benefits Pilot Project). (Full Story)

June, 15, 2006 - Compassionate Care Benefit Expanded by Canada's new Government - Changes to take place immediately - The Honourable Diane Finley, Minister of Human Resources and Social Development, has announced that Canada's new Government has implemented regulatory changes that will immediately increase the number of people who can access the Employment Insurance (EI) Compassionate Care Benefit. (Full Story)

Alberta:

August 14, 2006 - Safety awards recognize Alberta employers - Hundreds of Alberta employers have been recognized for their exceptional workplace safety records and innovative practices over the past year. "I am very pleased to see that the number of employers who earned Best Safety Performer Awards this year increased by about eighty compared to the year before," said Human Resources and Employment Minister Mike Cardinal. "It goes to show the value of education and I hope other Alberta businesses will follow their fine examples." (Full Story)

July 25, 2006 - New strategy released to combat skill and labour shortage - The Alberta government has released its long-term labour force development strategy, which outlines a number of ways government and organizations can work together to meet skill and labour shortages and ensure the province remains globally competitive. "Without the right people with the right training in the right jobs, Alberta is not going to be able to manage its economic growth," said Alberta Human Resources and Employment Minister Mike Cardinal. (Full Story)

July 18, 2006 - Helping employers and employees understand Alberta's employment standards - Alberta's economy is hot and more people are working than ever before, but are they aware of their rights and obligations in the workplace? Alberta Human Resources and Employment helps Alberta workers and their employers better understand the standards set out in the Employment Standards Code such as maximum hours of work, overtime pay, guaranteed minimum wage and conditions around adolescent employment. (Full Story)

July 18, 2006 - RV offers tools to rev up your career - Careers in Motion, a mobile career centre, will to hit the road to bring job search and training information to Albertans. The new, high-tech RV replaces an older vehicle and gives Albertans, especially those in rural areas, better technology and more space to look for work and explore their career options. "Stepping inside the Careers in Motion RV can help Albertans take a big step toward reaching their career or education goals," said Mike Cardinal, Minister of Human Resources and Employment. "It's one of the unique ways government is helping to build Alberta's workforce." (Full Story)

British Columbia:

July 27, 2006 - WorkSafeBC projects decrease in average premium rate for 2007 - WorkSafeBC, is proposing a 9.8 percent decrease in the employers' average base rate for 2007. While the reduction reflects recent years' trends of stable injury rates and lower duration of injuries, it is largely due to very positive investment returns that enable WorkSafeBC to maintain lower premium rates for employers. The 2007 average published base rate is projected to be $1.71 per $100 of assessable payroll, compared to $1.90 in 2006. In 2000 the average published base rate was $2.31. (Full Story)

July 26, 2006 - New Employment Program Means More Job Success - The new $35-million BC Employment Program has been successfully launched by the Ministry of Employment and Income Assistance. This means 15,000 income assistance clients in British Columbia will have an even better chance of finding and keeping a job this year. "We’ve taken a great employment program and made it even better." said Employment and Income Assistance Minister Claude Richmond. (Full Story)

June 27, 2006 - Government Boosts Disability Fund To $25 Million - More people with disabilities will have access to the supports they need to participate in the workplace thanks to a $5-million boost to the $20-million Disability Supports for Employment Fund, announced Employment and Income Assistance Minister Claude Richmond today. "There are many talented and skilled British Columbians with disabilities who want to work and many B.C. employers who are looking for good qualified employees," said Richmond. (Full Story)

Manitoba:

August 10, 2006 - Workers Compensation Board Coverage Extended By Provincial Government - Labour and Immigration Minister Nancy Allan announced today that the province is extending the number of industries covered by the Workers Compensation Board (WCB), effective Jan. 1, 2007. The changes follow a comprehensive public review of the Workers Compensation Act which recommended that coverage of workplaces be extended after consultation with affected industries. (Full Story)

July 2006 - WCB Issues Year-to-Date Injury Statistics - The Workers Compensation Board of Manitoba (WCB) tracks a number of measures which show the volume of injuries being reported to the board. The WCB has released the latest report showing the total number of reported injuries as well as time loss and no time loss injuries. A breakdown of the total injuries by industry and a chart of the number of claims awaiting adjudication are provided. (Full Story)

June 26, 2006 - Obligations to Re-Employ - In 2007, new laws on reemploying injured workers will be implemented. Re-employing injured workers as soon as they are medically able to return to work benefit severyone. And in the vast majority of cases, injured workers return to work with the same employer within a few days or weeks. Effective January 1, 2007, employers who have 25 or more full-time or regular part-time workers will be required to reemploy injured workers who have been in their employ for at least 12 continuous months prior to their injuries.(Full Story - PDF)

New Brunswick:

June 28, 2006 - New Brunswick's small-business tax rate lowered - Small businesses in New Brunswick will continue to pay the lowest income taxes in the country when the rate decreases to 1.5 per cent on July 1, Finance Minister Jeannot Volpé has announced. As well, the income threshold will increase from $450,000 to $475,000, making it the highest in the country. The final phase of this three-year plan will be implemented on July 1, 2007, when the provincial small-business corporate-income-tax rate will be reduced to one per cent. The income threshold will increase to $500,000. (Full Story)

Newfoundland and Labrador:

August 1, 2006 - Government expands partnership to support newcomers and immigrants - Paul Shelley, Minister of Human Resources, Labour and Employment, today announced new funding for the Association for New Canadians (ANC) through the department’s immigration capacity building initiative. The funding expands the AXIS (acquiring experience; integrating skills) program to aid more clients. AXIS helps newcomers with internationally acquired education and skills training better integrate into the local labour force. The program provides participants with job search techniques and access to work placements. (Full Story)

June 23, 2006 - Workers compensation review report released for public comment - Paul Shelley, Minister of Human Resources, Labour and Employment, today released Finding the Balance: The Report of the 2006 Statutory Review Committee on the Workplace Health, Safety and Compensation Act. In November 2005 a committee was established to conduct the five-year, statutory review of the workers’ compensation system as per Section 126 of the Workplace Health, Safety and Compensation Act. The committee submitted their report to government on May 31, 2006. (Full Story)

Nova Scotia:

July 19, 2006 - New Protection for Retail Workers - Changes to the Labour Standards Code proclaimed today, July 19, mean retail workers in some sectors will be protected from having to work on uniform closing days. One effect is that grocers operating a retail sales area greater than 4,000 square feet must offer their employees the right to refuse to work on Sundays and holidays. The new rules, which take effect today, also provide exemptions for classes of business similar to those contained in the Retail Business Uniform Closing Day Act. (Full Story)

July 10, 2006 - Government Moves to Protect Workers' Rights - The province introduced a bill today, July 10, to provide enhanced protection for certain classes of retail workers. "A key amendment to the Labour Standards Code will protect retail employees from being forced to work if employers traditionally prohibited from operating on Sundays decide to open," said Minister of Environment and Labour Mark Parent. The bill will use a two-step approach to protecting the existing rights of retail employees not to work on Sundays. (Full Story)

Nunuvut:

August 4, 2006 - More data on Nunavut Labour Force Now Available - Statistics Canada is releasing for the first time data collected by the pilot Nunavut Labour Force Survey. The data series, covering the 10 largest communities in the territory, starts in January 2004 and will be released on a monthly basis. The figures released today are the most current information available on Nunavut’s labour force, and will provide valuable insights for governments, Inuit organizations, private businesses and the public on territorial labour market trends. (Full Story)

Ontario:

July 31, 2006 - OWSIB Releases Preliminary Aggregate Premium Rate for 2007 - The WSIB has announced the 2007 preliminary aggregate premium rate for Schedule 1 employers. The WSIB plans to maintain the aggregate premium rate for 2007 at $2.26 per $100 of insurable earnings. This is unchanged from the 2006 aggregate premium rate. This decision comes after careful financial analysis, and numerous meetings and discussions with employers, workers and their representatives. (Full Story)

July 28, 2006 - McGuinty Government Takes Action To Reduce Young Worker Injuries - The McGuinty government is turning to young people and experts for help in reducing injuries and deaths on the job among youth who go directly into the workforce from school, Labour Minister Steve Peters announced today. "Serious and fatal injuries are most common among young people under 25 years old who go right to work after leaving school," said Peters. "We have excellent prevention programs for those still in school, but we need to figure out how to reach the others. We must do more to create a culture of prevention." (Full Story)

Saskatchewan:

July 31, 2006 - Northern Overtime Exemption - August Meetings - Public and stakeholder consultations on the Northern Overtime Exemption began August 8th in La Loche. The consultations are a critical part of the work being done by Regina Northeast MLA Ron Harper to examine the impact of the overtime exemption currently in place for Saskatchewan's North. Harper will consult with northern representatives including workers and businesses, First Nations and Métis leaders and community groups, during August and September. (Full Story)

July 11, 2006 - Saskjobs.ca Hits Record Job Postings - Job postings on SaskJobs.ca have doubled in just two months, with over 11,000 positions posted at the end of June. A campaign to promote SaskJobs.ca was launched in May with newspaper ads, billboards and a letter explaining the benefits of the site sent by Advanced Education and Employment Minister Pat Atkinson to over 32,000 employers across the province.
(Full Story)

The current release of GrandMaster Suite (5.22) incorporates a number of changes to make it even easier to use the program and perform your payroll tasks. Program changes since our last Payroll News issue include:

• Import options now display clearer import results message - When you imported employee pay data using the Import Pay Hours or Import Pay Adjustments options a message would appear upon completion of the import process indicating the number of employee records imported. With this release we have enhanced this message to provide the total number of records imported along with the total amount and total hours or units. This change will make it easier to reconcile your import data.
• EFT processing now supports percent of net pay - We have added the option to allocate a percentage of employee net pay amounts to bank accounts one and two. You may now select to deposit a fixed amount or percentage of the employees net pay to a bank account. This change will also allow you to use either option in either combination as long as you have bank accounts defined to handle possible overflow amounts.
• The Employee Profile Report now includes the employee TD1 exemptions - The Employee Profile Report has been enhanced to include the employee federal and provincial personal exemption amounts.
• Payroll Condition Group now allows Initial Hire Date as a date option - With this release we have added the option to build your employee group based on the Initial Hire Date setting. In some cases your employees may have an Initial Hire Date that precedes the actual Start Date making this option a necessary tool for reports.
• The Customized Payroll Report now includes an Active Employees Only option - We have added the option to include Active Employees Only to the Customized Payroll Report. This option is useful when you do not require data from the entire payroll database and only wish to see results for those employees who currently have Active status. Note: When using this option you must be aware that you would not be able to reconcile employee data where data from non-active employees is necessary.
• Statutory Holiday Report enhanced to allow Category sort - With this release the Statutory Holiday Report now supports sorting by Category. Further, the report has been modified to exclude Terminated employees and salaried employees.
• Rate Table rate resolution functionality enhanced - We have enhanced the functionality of the rate tables to allow you to resolve rates by the employee's Initial Hire Date. Prior to this release the rate table would resolve a rate by the employee's Start Date only when resolving by date. This changes is useful when you have employee's who have been affected by layoff situations but the union contract dictates that their pay rates resolve to their Initial Hire Date rather than the Start Date which would vary when layoff periods occur.
• Cheque date now appears on Journal Entry Report - With this release we have added the display or print of the Cheque Date in the report header of the Journal Entry Report. The date shown will be the Cheque Date from the End Sequence selected for reporting.
• Option to suppress printing of dollar sign on cheques added - We have added the option to suppress the printing of a dollar sign when printing your employee pay statements with the "Statement with Cheque" option. This new option is located on the Cheque tab and is entitled "Do Not Print Dollar Sign on Cheque". When this option is selected the dollar sign will not print on the employee cheque portion. This option is not the default setting and must be selected prior to printing the statements. It became necessary to include this option due to the upcoming changes to cheque forms as per the CPA standard.
• Import of employee data now supports the import of Provincial PD1 and Payroll Status - We have enhanced the Import Employee's process to provide support to the import of the Provincial PD1 Amount and the employee's Payroll Status. This change allows you perform a mass update import to amend an employee's PD1 amount or Payroll Status. When amending the Payroll Status you must include the appropriate date in the import file. Therefore, if you are setting an employee's status to "T" (Terminated), "L" (On Leave), "O" (Laid Off") or "F" (Final Pay) you must also include an End Date for the import to be successful. Note: The valid Payroll Status options that may be included in your import file are "A" (Active), "T" (Terminated), "L" (On Leave), "O" (Laid Off") or "F" (Final Pay).
• Deduction Calculation Code 138 added - With this release we have added Deduction Calculation Code 138. The calculation method has four parameters and uses a selection list. The parameters are Fixed Amount Below, Fixed Amount Above, Threshold Below and Threshold Above. The calculation allows you to select the earnings to base the calculation upon and if the earnings selected are equal to or below the Threshold Below setting the Fixed Amount Below will be used as the deduction. If the earnings are equal to or greater than the Threshold Above setting the deduction take the Fixed Amount Above.
• Employee Profile Report now supports sort by Employee and Badge numbers - The Employee Profile Report has been enhanced to include sort options by Employee number or by Badge number. Prior to this change the sort options included an Employee number sort that was actually sorting by the Badge number. When the report was printed the output appeared to be sorting incorrectly. Further, there was an option to print the Number on the report but when selected it would only print the Badge number and not the Employee number. This has been changed to include both the Employee number and Badge number as report fields.
  

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Visit CanPay's News page and view the latest Release Notes for a complete listing of program changes.

Link Opportunity! - If you are a CanPay customer wanting more exposure for your Website, please send us a 50-word description along with a copy of your logo. We'll add you to our Customer Links page and create a link directly to your website. It 's a great way to expose your goods and services to the community. Logos should be a maximum of 160 x 70 pixels and provided in the .gif or .jpg format. Send your e-mails to admin@canpay.com.

Hiring Co-Op Students: A Win-Win (Part 1 of 2)
Linda Plater

Your business has grown in leaps and bounds and you're no longer capable of doing it all yourself.

Sound familiar? It may be the right time to bring in staff, but you aren't ready to pay top dollar for an employee. Who can you call? Who would love an opportunity to gain legitimate work experience? Co-op students, that's who. And many students offer much more than general office skills.

Co-op students may bring a wide range of talent to small business. But how do you choose what type of student would suit your operation?

Hiring a co-op student into a firm lets an employer test and try talent with no long-term commitment. In most cases the cost of co-op student labour is nominal, if not free. Employers beware! Free is not always a great deal. Anyone who has ever hired the wrong person knows the cost associated with a mis-hire. Co-op hires are no exception. You may still be stuck with the wrong person for the duration of their term if you are not careful.

Tips to get you started on the Co-op track:

• Check the community colleges and university career centres to see if they offer co-op programs. For best results, employers should structure their requirements to match the co-op program's guidelines.
• Keep in mind most co-op terms last four months which coincide with a specific academic term.
• Define and detail the scope of work that your company needs to accomplish within a specific work term. Keep a back up list of tasks just in case your student ends up to be a high performer.
• Submit your work placement offer to the co-op placement centre.
• Interview and select your co-op. If you are lucky, your first choice employee will accept your work offer.
• Establish ways to minimize co-op errors and put methods in place to correct them as soon as possible.
• Limit co-op's access to mission critical information. Carefully gauge your employee's understanding of your business and their ability to be trusted with confidential information. Remember they will be gone in a short time and you don't want them to take all of your business secrets with them.
• Set the student up for success - Check their performance against your own clearly defined and explained expectations. The more specific you can be, the better. You want the co-op experience to be rewarding for both the student and your business.

Several universities and community colleges have developed a reputation for their superior co-op programs. Seasoned staff cultivate relationships with employers so that their students have work placement choices. You might try to develop a relationship with placement officers if you think co-ops are for you. Places to contact include universities, community colleges, and high schools.

Some high schools run co-op programs and their students usually work for free. Some college students are required to work for free and most university co-op programs pay the students a set rate depending on the school and the year the student is in. The pay range varies so make sure you get the correct information up front before you bring in your student.

Please return next month for the conclusion of this article.

Article courtesy of Canada One - The free online magazine for small businesses in Canada. www.canadaone.com