Payroll employees can use their position to make meaningful improvements to payroll financial wellness programs. This could be through influencing senior management decisions on related initiatives or offering their time and expertise to employees, including:

• Helping employees understand their pay slips;
• Promoting workplace benefits related to financial wellness;
• Promoting financial literacy education initiatives in the workplace;
• Providing insight to help build and improve on existing financial wellness programming; and
• Acting as champions for new financial offerings within the workplace to help improve such programming.

Why employees need to understand their paycheques and how payroll professionals can help

Understanding what’s on your paycheque is a critical part of personal budgeting. People need to understand their pay slips beyond gross pay and net pay. It’s particularly important to understand withholdings, to ensure they are paying enough taxes. Employees should also understand what an “H” or “S” on their pay slip means – whether they are receiving hourly or salaried wages. It’s also important to understand vacation pay, sick pay, holiday pay, overtime and reimbursement for work-related expenses, such as mileage.

As best practice, employee onboarding should include a payroll employee explaining their paycheque, including their Canadian Pension Plan (CPP), Employment Insurance (EI) and federal and provincial tax deductions. Payroll employees should also walk staff through other deductions like insurances, RRSP and company-wide pension plans, unions dues and charitable donation deductions (if applicable).

By opening the door to questions when a new employee begins working and by establishing an open-door policy for pay-related questions, an organization creates a corporate culture in which important financial matters can be better understood. Staff will not be afraid to ask questions and, in turn, improve their financial literacy.