Changes to the Financial Incentives Plan
March 31, 2003, Updates and Clarifications Added April 24, 2003
The tentative agreement for renewing the Incentives Plan has been approved by Treasury Board ministers and the Group Executive has ratified it on behalf of members; it comes into effect on April First. The following paragraphs are a summary of what was achieved.
IPTD sector
Most provisions remain unchanged for this sector. The deductible activities have been somewhat clarified. Provisions regarding access to incentives by interpreters have been substantially modified however. For example, to avoid useless administrative compilations, interpreters interested in participating in the incentives plan will have to express their interest at the start of the earning period and only these individuals will be see data compiled for them with regards to the Plan. Moreover, the source of texts which will be made available to interpreters was detailed in the following order of priority: Committees, Parliamentary Documents and decisions from the Immigration and Refugee Board (what are commonly called "Devinat" texts). The time devoted to translating IRB texts will be calculated according to provisions relevant to the Operations part of the plan and this time will be deductible for the IPTD part. Texts translated for the Documents section or for the Operations sector must not require revision. The employer will make every reasonable effort to give interpreters the opportunity to dictate those texts, but interpreters might have to type them.
Finally, interpreters who will have expressed an interest in participating in the Plan but who will not ask for supplementary texts in translation during the first month of the earning period will be excluded from the IPTD plan for the rest of the relevant period (except if they were away during this first month).
Operations Sector
The basic formulas for this part of the Plan have been completely changed. Until now the starting parameter was the total salary of the employee, from which were repeatedly deducted many arithmetical corrections: the total deductible activities, leave and training time above a certain deductible, a lump-sum deduction of 7%, etc.
Parties decided instead to calculate the threshold based only on the time devoted to billable activities: translation, billed revision or others. The time written on the translation service request will be used for this calculation. For example, if a translator devotes two hours to translating a text billed at five hours to the client, the salary used to establish the threshold will be equal to two hours, but the pro-forma revenues credited to the TR will be of five hours. Of course, if the spread is too high (for example if a TR says it took half an hour to translate a text that the employer had estimated at fifteen hours) it is possible that some questions will be asked.
This means that all the time devoted to other activities, meaning those that do not generate revenues, is "pre-deducted", for lack of a better word. For example, should a TR be assigned for nine months to a project that generates no revenue, should then take one month of holidays or other leave and devote the remaining two months entirely to translation or to billed revision, only this two-month period will count for calculating the threshold. The "negative" effect of holidays will thus disappear since translators will not have any catch-up to do. Until now, a TR had to reach a "deductible" of 30 days before leave started to be deducted from the threshold; from now on, all leave will be pre-deducted. Any TR who uses up at least 30 days of paid leave in a year (as is the case for the majority of the TR population) will thus get a minimum 13,6% pre-deduction, on top of another pre-deduction of 5% corresponding to paid holidays; such pre-deduction of leave did not exist in the previous version of the Plan. As for time devoted to non-revenue generating activities it will also be automatically deducted from the amount of salary used for calculating the threshold since it will not find its way on any translation service request.
Since all the time not devoted to billable activities is automatically deducted, we eliminated all provisions relating to deductible activities, the leave deductible, the 7% lump-sum deduction and other correction factors because they are no longer relevant.
The formula defining the multiplier used to calculate the threshold from the relevant salary as described above was completely transformed. From now on, it will be based on totally different parameters as compared to now. Because of the inner workings of this formula, it will be the interest of the TR population to aim at the highest possible collective total of billed days since that would reduce the value of the multiplier.
Since the threshold formula has completely changed and that the salary variable is now totally different (in general it will be lower than before), comparing the previous multiplier to the new multiplier will be a totally futile exercise since they do not bear any relation one to the other. As an analogy, we could say that one is expressed in Celsius and the other in Fahrenheit
We also added a "anti-inflation" correction factor to the threshold formula. It is made up of two elements. First, if a pay increase is negotiated during the lifetime of the Incentives Plan memorandum, the threshold would be decreased in the same proportion, which will compensate for this pay increase. On the other hand, an increase in the rates billed to the clients by the Operations sector will bring an upwards correction. These two corrections aim at keeping the threshold in constant salary dollars from the start of 2003. Since there is every indication that the next changes to the Bureau billing rates will be the last ons that it will be possible to have the clients accept for a few years, it seems probable that the only correction factor that will apply is the one related to pay increases, meaning a downward correction.
We also amended the calculation of the maximum incentive. Even though we changed the way it is expressed, this maximum will remain in the same order of magnitude as before. The sharing proportion will be based on the same variables as before, but will be readjusted at the end of the fiscal year according to the real data and will not be based solely on estimates as was the case until now.
Of course, the main question every one will ask is "is it more or less advantageous than before"? It all depends on your individual situation, since the threshold calculation is now based precisely and only on the time each person devotes to billable activities, the result is highly individualized and sets aside all measures based on averages or on standardised corrections.
The simulations we made from real cases concluded that for some people the difference will be negligible, for others the incentive will be higher and for others it will be lower. The explanation is simple: people who used to perform very few non-revenue generating activities, much below the 7% lump-sum while still reaping the advantages of the lump-sum, will stop benefiting from this automatic deduction; on the other hand, people whose level of non-revenue generating activities was well above the 7% lump-sum but who could not deduct this overshoot will no longer be penalized.
Because of the pre-deduction effect described above and considering non-billable time wil not be used for setting the threshold, the salary variable used for threshold calculations will be lower than before, by a proportion that will compensate for the multiplier being higher because of the new definition.
We also relayed to the employer a suggestion made by a section steward to help people assess the consequences of the amendments made to the Plan: including on monthly reports received by employees the amount of incentives earned to date. The employer has confirmed this new line will be added to reports, thus allowing each person to keep track continuously of the exact impact of his individual work pace in the new Plan.
One sure advantage is that discussions regarding what must or must not be deducted will disappear, as well as cases where TRs found themselves "trapped" because they accepted being assigned projects that were not generating revenues but which consumed a good deal of their time, well above the 7% lump-sum; there will also be fewer operations to perform in order to calculate the incentive. But we must warn that those allergic to the form used to compile activities should not celebrate too soon: even thought such a compilation will stop being required for purposes of the Incentives Plan, there is a good chance the employer will keep on using it to gather the data necessary for its analyses of "organisational performance".
The union bargaining team for the incentives was made up of Suzanne Dumas, Luc Gervais, Marc Grenon, Marc Gourdeau, André Picotte, Michel Roy and Luc Pomerleau.
March 31, 2003, Updates and Clarifications Added April 24, 2003
The tentative agreement for renewing the Incentives Plan has been approved by Treasury Board ministers and the Group Executive has ratified it on behalf of members; it comes into effect on April First. The following paragraphs are a summary of what was achieved.
IPTD sector
Most provisions remain unchanged for this sector. The deductible activities have been somewhat clarified. Provisions regarding access to incentives by interpreters have been substantially modified however. For example, to avoid useless administrative compilations, interpreters interested in participating in the incentives plan will have to express their interest at the start of the earning period and only these individuals will be see data compiled for them with regards to the Plan. Moreover, the source of texts which will be made available to interpreters was detailed in the following order of priority: Committees, Parliamentary Documents and decisions from the Immigration and Refugee Board (what are commonly called "Devinat" texts). The time devoted to translating IRB texts will be calculated according to provisions relevant to the Operations part of the plan and this time will be deductible for the IPTD part. Texts translated for the Documents section or for the Operations sector must not require revision. The employer will make every reasonable effort to give interpreters the opportunity to dictate those texts, but interpreters might have to type them.
Finally, interpreters who will have expressed an interest in participating in the Plan but who will not ask for supplementary texts in translation during the first month of the earning period will be excluded from the IPTD plan for the rest of the relevant period (except if they were away during this first month).
Operations Sector
The basic formulas for this part of the Plan have been completely changed. Until now the starting parameter was the total salary of the employee, from which were repeatedly deducted many arithmetical corrections: the total deductible activities, leave and training time above a certain deductible, a lump-sum deduction of 7%, etc.
Parties decided instead to calculate the threshold based only on the time devoted to billable activities: translation, billed revision or others. The time written on the translation service request will be used for this calculation. For example, if a translator devotes two hours to translating a text billed at five hours to the client, the salary used to establish the threshold will be equal to two hours, but the pro-forma revenues credited to the TR will be of five hours. Of course, if the spread is too high (for example if a TR says it took half an hour to translate a text that the employer had estimated at fifteen hours) it is possible that some questions will be asked.
This means that all the time devoted to other activities, meaning those that do not generate revenues, is "pre-deducted", for lack of a better word. For example, should a TR be assigned for nine months to a project that generates no revenue, should then take one month of holidays or other leave and devote the remaining two months entirely to translation or to billed revision, only this two-month period will count for calculating the threshold. The "negative" effect of holidays will thus disappear since translators will not have any catch-up to do. Until now, a TR had to reach a "deductible" of 30 days before leave started to be deducted from the threshold; from now on, all leave will be pre-deducted. Any TR who uses up at least 30 days of paid leave in a year (as is the case for the majority of the TR population) will thus get a minimum 13,6% pre-deduction, on top of another pre-deduction of 5% corresponding to paid holidays; such pre-deduction of leave did not exist in the previous version of the Plan. As for time devoted to non-revenue generating activities it will also be automatically deducted from the amount of salary used for calculating the threshold since it will not find its way on any translation service request.
Since all the time not devoted to billable activities is automatically deducted, we eliminated all provisions relating to deductible activities, the leave deductible, the 7% lump-sum deduction and other correction factors because they are no longer relevant.
The formula defining the multiplier used to calculate the threshold from the relevant salary as described above was completely transformed. From now on, it will be based on totally different parameters as compared to now. Because of the inner workings of this formula, it will be the interest of the TR population to aim at the highest possible collective total of billed days since that would reduce the value of the multiplier.
Since the threshold formula has completely changed and that the salary variable is now totally different (in general it will be lower than before), comparing the previous multiplier to the new multiplier will be a totally futile exercise since they do not bear any relation one to the other. As an analogy, we could say that one is expressed in Celsius and the other in Fahrenheit
We also added a "anti-inflation" correction factor to the threshold formula. It is made up of two elements. First, if a pay increase is negotiated during the lifetime of the Incentives Plan memorandum, the threshold would be decreased in the same proportion, which will compensate for this pay increase. On the other hand, an increase in the rates billed to the clients by the Operations sector will bring an upwards correction. These two corrections aim at keeping the threshold in constant salary dollars from the start of 2003. Since there is every indication that the next changes to the Bureau billing rates will be the last ons that it will be possible to have the clients accept for a few years, it seems probable that the only correction factor that will apply is the one related to pay increases, meaning a downward correction.
We also amended the calculation of the maximum incentive. Even though we changed the way it is expressed, this maximum will remain in the same order of magnitude as before. The sharing proportion will be based on the same variables as before, but will be readjusted at the end of the fiscal year according to the real data and will not be based solely on estimates as was the case until now.
Of course, the main question every one will ask is "is it more or less advantageous than before"? It all depends on your individual situation, since the threshold calculation is now based precisely and only on the time each person devotes to billable activities, the result is highly individualized and sets aside all measures based on averages or on standardised corrections.
The simulations we made from real cases concluded that for some people the difference will be negligible, for others the incentive will be higher and for others it will be lower. The explanation is simple: people who used to perform very few non-revenue generating activities, much below the 7% lump-sum while still reaping the advantages of the lump-sum, will stop benefiting from this automatic deduction; on the other hand, people whose level of non-revenue generating activities was well above the 7% lump-sum but who could not deduct this overshoot will no longer be penalized.
Because of the pre-deduction effect described above and considering non-billable time wil not be used for setting the threshold, the salary variable used for threshold calculations will be lower than before, by a proportion that will compensate for the multiplier being higher because of the new definition.
We also relayed to the employer a suggestion made by a section steward to help people assess the consequences of the amendments made to the Plan: including on monthly reports received by employees the amount of incentives earned to date. The employer has confirmed this new line will be added to reports, thus allowing each person to keep track continuously of the exact impact of his individual work pace in the new Plan.
One sure advantage is that discussions regarding what must or must not be deducted will disappear, as well as cases where TRs found themselves "trapped" because they accepted being assigned projects that were not generating revenues but which consumed a good deal of their time, well above the 7% lump-sum; there will also be fewer operations to perform in order to calculate the incentive. But we must warn that those allergic to the form used to compile activities should not celebrate too soon: even thought such a compilation will stop being required for purposes of the Incentives Plan, there is a good chance the employer will keep on using it to gather the data necessary for its analyses of "organisational performance".
The union bargaining team for the incentives was made up of Suzanne Dumas, Luc Gervais, Marc Grenon, Marc Gourdeau, André Picotte, Michel Roy and Luc Pomerleau.