Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I have questions for the Minister of Human Resources. I just want to talk a little bit about termination of employment within the GNWT because there have been some cases in the Inuvik region and in my community where people have retired or who have resigned from the job position and had trouble getting their ROEs, or records of employment. I would like to ask the Minister, in terms of getting a record of employment, what’s the process. Is there a timeline from when an employee is terminated from a position to the time they can actually get their record of employment to either seek income assistance or some other form of payment? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. Minister of Human Resources, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A record of employment is required after many situations. If an employee has interrupted earnings of over seven days, they are required to be provided with a record of employment. When an employee’s salary falls below 60 percent of their weekly earnings, they are supposed to be provided with a record of employment. When an employee declares bankruptcy, a record of employment is required, and there are a lot of other reasons why a record of employment is required.
The requirement is that a record of employment is provided within five calendar days of the last day of the pay period in which they are last paid for, so it’s five days from the end of that. I know the Member and I have had some conversations about this and had shared concerns of constituents that there is a bit of a backlog on the ROEs and we haven’t always hit our five days, and this is important. We have to fix this. The department is looking at their processes right now, trying to identify the barriers on these and barrier on making the five-day commitment, and we’re looking at re-engineering and some streamlining to fix this problem that the Member has brought to my attention. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The Minister did hit a few things on the head there in terms of some challenges that we have in getting these ROEs passed to government employees.
Can I ask the Minister what some of these challenges and barriers are? Would it be dealing with HR training, development? Do we need to put more training within our HR staff or is there more capacity that needs to be in that department such as more personnel to cover such processes? Can the Minister identify some of these barriers and whether or not our HR department needs more human resources themselves or more funding sources? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, at this time we hope that through the review of this process, we can identify and answer some of those exact questions. Right now we feel that we have enough positions established, but we also do have turnover and some vacancies within our own shop and it’s difficult to find people who are capable of doing this work.
One of the real challenges is just the sheer quantity of these ROEs that are required. Today there are about 382 that are required. Between April 1, 2012, and August 30, 2013, just by way of example, we processed 3,653 records of employment. If you break that down to the workday, that’s 10 ROEs a day that this unit is processing. When you actually consider that each ROE involves an audit of the file to verify all sick days, annual days, special leave days, make sure they’ve been paid what they’re supposed to be paid and that all that information is properly tracked so that we can provide an accurate ROE so that the individual can get EI, there is a little bit of time involved for each of these files.
But I get the Member’s point. We do provide training to our new staff that come in. They mentor and sit with experienced staff so that they can become familiar with the processes. Once again, those are the processes we have today and we’re looking at those processes to see if there’s any way to streamline and improve them so that we can meet our commitment of five days after the final pay. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That is a lot of ROEs that need to be addressed. I understand the Minister has talked about streamlining the process. I’d just like to ask the Minister, for somebody who needs an ROE and requests an ROE maybe for EI, is there any way for a person to get higher up on the list or more of a priority? Is there a process that this person could take, rather than having to wait a period of time to receive an ROE? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, one of the things I encourage all staff to do when they know they’re coming up to the end of their employment is obviously to have a discussion with the benefits officer. If they have a discussion with their benefits officer prior to their last day, they can usually streamline the process a little bit so that people know how urgent it is; this person isn’t going to be having a job, they’re going to be going on EI. I would encourage all employees of the GNWT, when they know that they’re coming up to their end date, to talk to their benefits officer so that we can get these dealt with in a timely manner and have the five-day turnaround so that they’re not affected for EI and other benefits. So, talk to your benefits officer. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final, short supplementary again, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I know this is my fourth question here, but one in particular was medical termination. When we do have a GNWT employee that does have medical illnesses and can’t continue with their job, can the Minister give me a timeline when somebody who is on medical, when they’re going through their termination, how long is that process to get a person terminated from the GNWT when they’re going through medical termination? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, that’s a very difficult question to answer because every situation is going to be different. Obviously, we want to work with our employees and find ways to bring them back into the workforce, rather than having to go to that final step of termination. So we tend to work with our employees, try to accommodate them where appropriate, reasonable and feasible. If all things fail and the person has to be terminated or let go based on their condition, we work with the employee to try and figure out the best way. But at the end of it, an ROE is still five days, so we still have to find a way to make sure that we can get those out within the five days of the last pay period that the employee is working on.
Once again, we’re reviewing the processes and trying to streamline them to make sure that we get these things out when they’re supposed to get out. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
