As the holiday season approaches, many parts of the organization slow down for a bit of a breather before the New Year, but not the Human Resources and Payroll departments. Year-end triggers a flurry of important tasks for HR and Payroll teams. Here’s a quick checklist to help you plan your year-end so you can get through it with confidence.

Put Your Plan Together

• Communicate vacation policies or restrictions so employees and managers can plan ahead.
• Remind employees to check and use their vacation balances.
• Encourage employees to verify and update information such as addresses, and life changes that relate to pay and benefits.
• Review any HR/Payroll regulatory changes that come into effect in the New Year and identify any impact and required revisions to your people policies or collective bargaining agreements.
• Prepare for external regulatory audits by making sure your record retention policies and practices are being followed.
• Complete an internal year-end records audit.
• Prepare for performance discussions and set your team targets and goals for the coming year.

Payroll To-Do List

• Review upcoming federal and provincial tax and legislative changes that impact Payroll and develop a change management plan to communicate any changes that will affect staff.
• Download the current year-end resources available through the Canadian Payroll Association (CPA).
• Balance and reconcile all third-party regulatory remittance accounts to prepare for your year-end submissions.
• Review vacation accrual balance reports, and communicate to employees, managers and HR teams.
• Communicate with employees about where and when their T4s and New Year TD1s will be available.

Recruitment Readiness

• Confirm your recruitment and training budget for the upcoming year.
• Generate any Human Capital Management (HCM) reports you need for your overall workforce strategy.
• Review upcoming leaves, retirements and new headcount to build your hiring plans.
• Review attrition trends for the previous year, including retention and turnover rates and reasons.
• Take a look at your employer brand – are you showing up competitively versus other employers?
• Review and update your careers website.
• Analyze your applicant tracking – is the system friendly and efficient for both candidates and your recruitment team?
• Clean up old postings on internal and external job boards.
• Work with your hiring managers to update job profiles and descriptions for the coming year and make sure that they stand out against your competition.

Benefits Tasks

• Review your experience rating and target loss ratios with your broker or provider.
• Draft questions about benefits plan satisfaction to include in your employee feedback survey.
• Reach out to your coverage provider(s) or broker to see what the current trends are in your industry.
• Communicate enrolment or renewal periods to employees, especially where premiums are impacted.
• If you offer employee choice benefits such as flexible spending accounts or health care spending accounts, be sure you communicate allocation instructions as early as possible.
• Remind employees to use up any balances expiring at year-end and to submit all their receipts by the deadline in your plan contract.
• Evaluate your benefits processes: are employees satisfied with the enrolment and administration tools you offer? Could you offer more personalization to your employees with a flexible benefits plan?
• Generate benefits costing reports to analyze your program and plan for changes in the next year.
• If you offer RRSP plans to your employees, remind them to make their final contributions well ahead of the deadline at the end of February.
• Spend some time reviewing the latest market trends, such as virtual care or new workplace wellness initiatives.

Get Strategic

• Review compensation guidelines and industry and market trends to prepare for annual merit increase discussions.
• Put your annual company holiday calendar together early, noting statutory holidays, planned closures and compliance deadlines for the year.
• Review and update all HR policies and communicate your processes for weather-related closures, after all we are in Canada!
• Communicate key deadlines for any mandatory policies or training, such as Respectful Workplace, Ethics and Integrity, etc.
• Review the HR function – could a shared services model help your team be more strategic?
• Gather the people data you will need to retain to for audit and internal requests purposes, including employee data reports, year-end reports and headcount reports.
• Audit and clean your employee data as required. If this is a big job, consider how you might automate it in future.
• Take your teams out for lunch or bring in some holiday treats to recognize them for their hard work.
• Make a hot cup of tea and put your feet up – you deserve it!

 
Learn about how TELUS Employer Solutions can help you stay on top of things all year long.
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