News in Brief

OTTAWA — Average weekly earnings of non-farm payroll employees were $932.69 in March, up 0.7 per cent from $926.13 in February, Statistics Canada reports. Statistics Canada revised the February numbers from the previously reported $925. On a year-over-year basis, weekly earnings increased 3.1 per cent in March.

The increase in weekly earnings during the 12 months to March reflected a number of factors, including wage growth, changes in the composition of employment by industry, occupation and level of job experience, as well as average hours worked per week. Non-farm payroll employees worked an average of 33 hours per week in March, the same as in February and just slightly more than the average of 32.9 hours in the previous March.

Year-over-year earnings of non-farm payroll employees increased in all provinces, with the biggest growth in Alberta, Newfoundland and Labrador, British Columbia and Quebec. The smallest growth was in Saskatchewan.

Payroll most likely area of finance to be outsourced: Survey

MENLO PARK, Calif. — Within a company’s finance department, payroll is the function most often outsourced, a recent survey found.

Staffing firm Robert Half and the Financial Executives Research Foundation surveyed almost 1,600 finance and accounting department executives in Canada and the United States for their annual benchmarking study.

The survey found 47 per cent of both Canadian and U.S. companies outsource payroll. The next most commonly outsourced function in finance is tax, with 37 per cent of Canadian employers and 42 per cent of U.S. employers outsourcing it.

Payroll outsourcing is common for both large and small companies. The survey found 73 per cent of firms with annual revenues of $5 billion or more outsourced payroll. In businesses with revenues of less than $99 million, close to 52 per cent outsourced payroll.

Outsourcing of payroll was less common for firms in the middle. Thirty-eight per cent of firms with revenues between $100 million and $499 million outsourced payroll, compared with 29 per cent in firms with revenues of $500 million to $999 million and 32 per cent in businesses with revenues between $1 billion and $4.9 billion.

The study says the focus on payroll and tax for outsourcing "reflects the effort by finance departments to reallocate resources toward activities that deliver higher value to the organization and away from manual, time-consuming activities."

The survey also found 66 per cent of Canadian companies and 59 per cent of U.S. companies still reconcile accounts manually. The study says this strains both a company’s staff and its resources.

Overall, the survey found accounting and finance managers in Canada work about 46 hours per week and non-management employees work about 40 hours per week. This compares to 47 hours per week for managers in the U.S. and 42 hours for non-managers.

The study is available at http://s3.amazonaws.com/DBM/M3/2011/Downloads/RH_FERF_Benchmarking2014.pdf.

Survey finds many workers avoiding vacations

MENLO PARK, Calif. — Almost 40 per cent of workers in the United States do not use all of their paid vacation time, a recent survey shows.

The survey, conducted by staffing firm Robert Half, asked 436 office workers whether they typically use all of the paid vacation days their employer provides. Thirty-nine per cent said they do not, while 58 per cent said they do.

Of those who do not take all of their vacation time, 38 per cent said they were saving the time in case they needed it, while 30 per cent said they had too much work to take vacation. Other reasons for not taking vacation included employees not liking to take time off, fear that mangers would be unhappy and employers not giving employees vacation time.

Paul McDonald, senior executive director of Robert Half, said vacations are important for employees and their employers. "All work and no play doesn’t just lead to burnout — it also erodes creativity," he said. "Supervisors should encourage their teams to take a break and recharge, especially their top performers, who are often the most aggressive vacation savers and most susceptible to burnout."