Important notice to employees: New Phoenix Retro Redesign Automates Late Transaction Processing

November 3, 2020 - Defence Stories

Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) has recently launched the Phoenix Retro Redesign capability, which is a new retroactive payment process that further automates the payment of late transactions and results in more timely payments for the majority of employees. The first effects of this capability will be noticed on the 10 November 2020 pay (pay date advanced due to statutory holiday). The aim of this communiqué is to present the benefits and limitations of this new capability.

Employee Benefits

For the majority of employees, the new retro redesign processes will:

• further automate late HR/Pay transactions (e.g. actings, promotions, leave without pay, overtime, new rates of pay as a result of collective bargaining);
• quicker payments for late transactions such as actings that will now be processed in one payment and will consist only of the difference between substantive and acting pays and benefits employees by:
  • no longer having to wait two pay periods to receive payment,
  • a quicker processing time even when manual intervention is required;
• enable automatic payment/adjustment for employees owed a maternity/parental top-up resulting from a recently signed collective agreement
  • (exception for employees who are in an acting position which will require manual intervention);
• enable automated prorated rate of pay based on the number of days worked for employees paid based on a monthly or hourly rate
• offer a new employee view page through Phoenix Self-Service with detailed information about retroactive payments including, but not limited to:
  • specific details for individual and collective bargaining retroactive payments and adjustments,
  • a break down by pay period and fiscal year, and
  • an option to export pay information to Excel for further analysis; and,
• generate a one-time pay adjustment resulting from recent mass retro lump-sum payments from the 2014 and 2018 collective agreement implementation
  • Employees will see a pay adjustment on their 10 November 2020 pay, if they :
    • received a mass retro lump-sum payment in the last year; and
    • had a transaction entered late into Phoenix that affects their rate of pay (e.g. an acting or late promotion).

Limitations

While the Retro Redesign process will work for approximately 82% of DND employees, in certain circumstances, it will not work automatically for the administration of certain benefits and deductions (e.g. bilingual bonus, retention allowance, union dues) and not for every transaction type. The DND Compensation Team, in collaboration with the Pay Center will continue to work together to process all transactions requiring any kind of manual intervention, including transactions for employees in the following groups:

• Firefighters (FR) with irregular schedules (e.g. acting on shift work)
• Heating, Power and Stationary Plant Operations (HP) with irregular schedules
• General Labour and Trades (GL) who are in receipt of supervisory differential
• General Services – Food Services (GS FOS) with irregular schedules (e.g. acting on weekend shifts)
• all employees on a compressed work schedule
• all part time employees

You can find more details about the new process and the new Phoenix view page in the attached resources:

• The “Changes to how retroactive payments are processed” info page provides an overview of the benefits and changes that employees will see.
• The “Consolidated view page for employees” visual aid explains the new View Detailed Retro Payments view page in Phoenix.

Employees impacted by these limitations are invited to contact HR Connect (1-833-747-6363) for their pay questions; we are here to help.  Alternatively, you can also contact the PSPC Pay Center at Client Contact Centre online or at 1‑855‑686‑4729.