Special Morning Session: Action Plans For Federal Employers Who Have (Or Will) Miss Important Deadlines

If you are a federally regulated organization in Canada and you have missed the deadlines for achieving pay equity there are consequences! Administrative monetary
penalties and fines, compliance orders, commission audits, investigations, reviews, imposed
timelines, reputational damage, legal actions from employees who file complaints, ongoing
monitoring by the Commission.

The deadline for posting a draft pay equity plan for employee comment is July 5, 2024.

The deadline for posting your final plan is 60 days later, September 3, 2024.

Compensation adjustments must be made immediately unless an employer qualifies for phased-in increases, or obtains extra time to increase compensation.

This all -new timely, Infonex morning session will provide specific guidance and information on communicating with the Commission to minimize potential serious negative repercussions and consequences and negotiate realistic new deadlines.

Topics Will Include:

What To Do If You Need Additional Time To Finalize And Post Your Pay Equity Plan

• Applying to the Pay Equity Commissioner for an extension of time to post a pay equity plan.
• Criteria the Commissioner will use to assess your request.

You Need More Time To Phase In Increases In Compensation

• Applying for an extension of time to phase in increases in compensation.
• Demonstrating extreme financial hardship is a high threshold to cross.

This session will highlight the dramatic ricochet effect of the new proactive pay equity regime on everything you do – from the way you identify job classes and value work, to the way you calculate total compensation and select your job evaluation methodology, to the way you approach collective bargaining and more. It will include:

• Fundamental changes in the way you approach compensation issues.
• The need to see the big picture to understand how to perform every step in the pay equity process.
• Impact on employer obligation to produce and post a pay equity plan.
• The information that must be included and the information that must be shared in the design and creation of the plan.
• The challenges ahead.
• Impact on how employers and unions will negotiate in this new space.

This session will provide you with a deep and fundamental understanding of the new philosophy, principles and foundations that underpin the federal Pay Equity Act. This understanding will guide and help you with implementation.

• What the Pay Equity Act attempts to achieve, over and above Human Rights Code Compliance.
• Why the move to proactive pay equity?
• What has changed?
• New philosophy.
• Historical developments crucial to your basic understanding of the new regime.
• The pay equity exercise: Who and what is involved?
• Deadlines and considerations for developing a plan to meet statutory obligations.
• The thorny question of determining who is an employee.
• When are you part of a “group of employers”?
• Establishing committees and determining who can be on a committee.
• Key considerations in planning and analyzing compliance with the Pay Equity Act.

Job classes are a critically important foundation in pay equity and job evaluation and should be considered a strategic decision as the structure of job classes will drive the size and complexity of implementation as well as potential financial outcomes.

• Choosing your method.
• How big or small should your classes be?
• Job class design.
• Group level – the need for agreement.
• Simplifying a complex process.
• Job descriptions, job titles and generic profiles.

• What must be included?
• What can be excluded?
• Unique considerations for public and private sectors and family-owned business.

You only get one chance to make your case and the recent denial of Treasury Board Secretariat’s application to the Commission for authorization to have more than one pay equity plan underscores the fact that this will be an uphill battle. Reasons why Treasury Board’s application and other submissions have been denied.

• Lessons learned.
• Arguments that failed and why.
• What might work?