Canadian Payroll Reporter

2 Canadian HR Reporter, a Thomson Reuters business 2014 News September 2014 | CPR September 2014 | CPR New requirements to ensure applicants have sufficient skill set: VP of education at the CPA The CPA is preparing an application process and guidelines for the new experience requirement, using the CPM application process as a model. from EXPERIENCE on page 1 sociation's Payroll Compliance Legislation course, which is the first core payroll course required for the certification. Steven Van Alstine, vice-pres- ident of education at the CPA, says the new requirement has ap- plicants show they have hands- on experience to do payroll. "We want to ensure that they have the skill set to run the an- nual payroll cycle for an organi- zation. That involves making the remittances, doing the year-end reporting and processing the payroll on a period-by-period basis." The new experience require- ment will improve the quality of students graduating from the PCP program and show employ- ers individuals with a PCP cer- tificate have both the education and experience to work without needing a lot of training, he adds. "We have an education advi- sory council. What we worked with them on last summer was to talk about a lot of other profes- sional bodies having experience requirements as part of their cer- tification programs or designa- tory programs." The CPA will apply a weight- ing factor to the one-year expe- rience requirement in recogni- tion of the fact many people who work in payroll spend their work- day on other tasks as well. "Research (the CPA has done) shows that a lot of individuals may be doing payroll only part of the time. About 45 per cent of the organizations say that payroll is done by one person in the orga- nization and they may also have other roles. They may be doing accounts payable, accounts re- ceivable, office management re- sponsibilities, that sort of thing," Van Alstine says. "We want to ensure that a per- son is doing payroll all the time in order to get this one year require- ment. For example, if somebody does payroll only a portion of the time then there's a calcula- tion to show that they have got the one-year experience require- ment that we are looking for. If somebody only touches on that once a week, it really isn't a good demonstration that they would have a one-year experience re- quirement." The weighting factor will be based on the number of hours a week an individual is doing pay- roll tasks. Based on a 35-hour work week, the CPA uses the fol- lowing example to show how the weighting factor will work: If an individual spends 20 of the 35 hours a week on pay- roll-related tasks and he or she has been in the position for 16 months, the individual would have nine months of payroll ex- perience (20/35 x 16 = 9.14). The CPA will count only completed months, with no fractions, deci- mals or rounding permitted. The experience component may be new for the PCP, but a similar one has been in place for the Certified Payroll Manager (CPM) program since 2011. It has been well received by busi- nesses, students and instructors, he says. A key difference between the two experience requirements is the one for the PCP is needed to graduate the program, while the one for the CPM is a prerequisite for enrolling in that program. New students registering for the CPM must have a minimum of two years of experience being responsible for an organization's payroll function. Applicants must have obtained the experi- ence within the past five years. The beginning of the time- frame for obtaining the experi- ence requirement will depend on whether students are taking the PCP part time or full time. "For the part-time student, the clock starts ticking from the point at which they take their first payroll compliance legisla- tion course. As soon as they start that course, they have a five-year window in which to complete the academic requirements and the one-year weighted experience requirement," Van Alstine says. "Quite often individuals who are doing it part time are work- ing as well, so they have an op- portunity to get that experience. The students that are in full-time study don't have as much of an opportunity to be working in the payroll field, so their clock starts ticking when they finish the last payroll course, which is Payroll Fundamentals 2." Individuals who completed the education requirements (or who will before the end of the year), but have not yet applied for their Certification Declaration must do so by the end of Decem- ber or will be required to meet the new experience requirement. The Certification Declaration essentially confirms the indi- vidual understands the ongoing requirements for obtaining and maintaining certification with the association. Individuals who already have their PCP will not be affected by the new requirement, provided they maintain their certification. Van Alstine says last year, 2,000 individuals obtained a PCP cer- tification. He says the CPA is prepar- ing an application process and guidelines for the new require- ment, using the CPM application process as a model. The PCP and CPM experience components are part of changes the CPA is making to enhance its program. In 2013, it raised the pass mark for the programs' courses from 60 per cent to 65. Van Alstine says the associa- tion is also considering imple- menting a final, comprehensive exam for students. Currently, the association requires exams for each course, but does not have one exam that covers all of the course content together. He adds a comprehensive exam would be another way to ensure graduates fully under- stand the payroll process. He notes some testing the CPA did a couple of years ago on recently certified graduates showed some did not retain the knowledge they learned in the payroll courses. Van Alstine says this was par- ticularly the case for individu- als who took the PCP courses through private career colleges rather than public post-sec- ondary institutions or online through the CPA. At the private career colleges, students study a payroll course intensely for four weeks, compared with 13 weeks for those taking it online or 14 weeks for those enrolled at public post-secondary institutions. "Their ability to retain the knowledge, I think, is impacted by the speed with which they are learning all of this curriculum," he says, adding educational con- sultants who studied the issue said the duration of the courses was not a determining factor of success, but did have an impact. Van Alstine notes students in the career colleges may also have been hampered by the fact they were much less likely to have actual payroll experience than those who took the courses on a part-time basis online through the CPA or through a public post-secondary institution. Adding the experience com- ponent to the certification pro- cess is one way to ensure that all graduates have the necessary payroll skills, he says. "We are trying to take these steps to ensure that when people are saying that 'I've got my PCP' it stands for something. So we are trying to raise the pass mark, we are trying to put this experi- ence requirement in. And then I think the final step is going to be a comprehensive exam where they are tested on the full body of knowledge." More information about the CPA's certification pro- cess is available at: www.payroll.ca/CPA/cert/en/ Certification/Certification_-_ M a i n . a s px ? h ke y = 3 a a 8 3 9 b 3 - 1c03-4e97-811c-56156c4b6f72.

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