Audit of Compensation and Benefits, November 2014

Governance framework

C&B roles and responsibilities are well defined. The Centre of Expertise C&B, in National Headquarters, oversees the delivery of operational C&B services across the Department. The role of the corporate team, within the Centre of Expertise, is to provide expert advice and interpretation on a broad range of C&B questions, to develop tools as well as conduct monitoring activities. CBSCs are set-up in teams, and grouped by tier (enquiries, intake, processing, and consulting). The organizational charts have been updated to reflect evolving structures and the upcoming transfer to Miramichi within HRSB.

Staff were provided with training and tools to accomplish their tasks, however the training did not cover all aspects of C&B. CBSC staff informed the audit team that, when a situation which was not covered during the training arises, it is referred to the technical advisors and team leaders who are better equipped to find a solution and provide guidance.

During the interviews, management and staff in CBSCs stated that sufficient resources were in place to manage and deliver current C&B services workload. They also reported that the expected transfer to Miramichi,which will result in job losses, is causing a high turnover of staff and loss of expertise within CBSCs.

Control mechanisms

As per the TB Directive on Terms and Conditions of Employment, senior departmental human resources officials are responsible for ensuring that organizational structure, resources, systems, service standards and controls are in place to ensure that the terms and conditions of employment set out are administered in a timely and accurate manner in accordance with the appropriate authorities and that adherence to this Directive is monitored within their organization ^{Footnote 2}

The audit team determined that controls were designed effectively and are operating as intended for intake and processing to minimize the potential for error, abuse and fraud. However, there was no formal monitoring framework in place to guide C&B activities. In the absence of a formal framework, CBSCs and the Centre of Expertise developed their own monitoring approach. For example, the CBSC in Winnipeg used the Compensation Inventory Management System (CIMS) to establish an inventory of service requests to be processed and to manage the processing of these requests. CIMS provided the capacity to monitor service requests and workload.

Processing controls

HRSB has a variety of processing controls in place (e.g. checklists, review of PWGSC error monthly reports, analysis of CIMS report, development of macros) to detect, minimize and correct errors.

Peer verification was conducted on all C&B service requests before a request is closed. In the event an error by the processing agent was encountered, the verification agent returned the service request for corrective action through CIMS. This action automatically re-assigns the request to the processing agent. CIMS also includes a workload for each team within the CBSC that enables the team to quickly determine the outstanding work that requires processing.

Guidelines and timeframes

Adequate procedures and guidelines were developed by the Centre of Expertise C&B and were valued by CBSC staff. These procedures and guidelines were readily available on ESDC IntraWeb Compensation Advisor Corner.

HRSB also developed the C&B model under the ESDC IntraWeb iService Click-Call-Consult for all employees and cost centre managers providing them with multiple pointsof access (intranet, email, fax and mail) through which they could submit their C&B requests and questions. The model contained essential information to facilitate ESDC’s employees’ understanding of C&B processes.

Following the submission of a request, the system creates a ticket in CIMS which will be transmitted automatically to the designated team responsible for this type of request. Service requests sent directly by e-mail to CBSCs cause a delay in the process as the CBSC still needs to create a ticket on the employee’s behalf.

Service standards were established to identify maximum response times required to complete C&B transactions after the receipt of completed documentation. Service standards are aimed at achieving excellence in human resource management in an efficient, consistent and cost-effective manner. During the audit, these service standards were modified and updated to reflect the payroll process change of the payment in arrears.

Reporting and monitoring

The dashboard used by HRSB presented information on tickets opened and closed per quarter and general enquiries answered. In addition, the dashboard provided information about the type of service requests and general enquiries.

The Dashboard Quarter 3, 2013 report revealed that a high volume of TOS service requests received from cost centre managers and employees for the period from October 2013 to December 2013 were incomplete, inaccurate and/or late. In order to validate the above results, the audit team conducted an analysis of all TOS service requests received and compiled in CIMS for the same three-month period.

Of the 716 service requests, only 700 could be analyzed for Intake (16 requests were missing the Letter of Offer (LOO), or were duplicate transactions). Out of the 700 service requests, only 684 could be analyzed for Processing (16 requests were cancelled).

The analysis showed that, for the period from October 2013 to December 2013, 92% of the service requests initiated by cost centre managers for processing by intake agents were not submitted as per the CBSC Service Standards. However, notwithstanding the fact that requests were late and incomplete, processing agents still completed 73% of the service requests within the service standards. Many reasons contributed to creating delays that prevented CBSCs from achieving a higher percentage of requests being processed within service standards, these include recovery, overpayment, pending PWGSC update, pending correction in pay transactions, Workforce Adjustment files, pending client response, documents verification, clarification, and interpretation, etc. The following table provides more details.

Furthermore, the audit team reviewed LOO and determined that out of 700 service requests, 27% LOO were either signed after the start date and/or were dated after the appointment date. In addition, 56 Oaths or Solemn Affirmation ^{Footnote 5} were signed after the appointment date and 15 were not signed by the person administering the Affirmations.

The audit team also observed through the analysis of the Dashboard Quarter 3 report that 78% of the service requests were sent by email whereas the quickest way to get an answer is to use the "Employee Request" or "Manager Request" option under the IntraWeb iService Click-Call-Consult.

These results show that the Department has to take steps, prior to the transfer of C&B activities, to raise awareness and stress the importance to ESDC employees of submitting accurate, complete and timely service requests to minimize processing delays.

Therefore, the audit team suggests that an assessment of C&B activities that remain under ESDC be performed after the C&B transfer to Miramichi to determine the level of risk of the remaining C&B activities.