Service Canada defines the Record of Employment (ROE) as the “single most important document used by employees to apply for Employment Insurance (EI) benefits. Service Canada uses the information on the ROE to determine whether a person is eligible to receive EI benefits, what the benefit amount will be, for how long the benefits will be paid and to ensure that no one misuses EI funds or receives benefits in error.”
What does it mean for the employer?
As an employer, the most common reasons for issuing an ROE are if Service Canada requests a copy or if there is an interruption in an employee’s pay period. An interruption in pay period often happens because they quit or were laid off, but it sometimes arises during a situation defined as the seven-day rule.
The seven-day rule occurs when an “employee’s salary falls below 60% of regular weekly earnings because of illness, injury, quarantine, pregnancy, the need to care for a newborn or a child placed for the purposes of adoption or the need to provide care or support to a family member who is critically ill, an interruption of earnings occurs.”
There are exceptions to the seven-day rule if you are an employee with a non-standard work schedule (e.g. health care workers, firefighters, real estate agents).
A commonly missed reason for issuing an ROE is when the pay period type changes. When your business or organization changes its pay period type, you must issue ROEs for all employees, even though the employees are not experiencing an interruption of earnings. For details, see the note under Block 6, pay period type.
Additionally, if you are switching payroll providers, you must have your previous payroll provider issue ROEs for every employee at the company. Your new payroll provider will not be able to issue ROEs for the time they were not your provider.
For more information, see the resources below.
How do you issue an ROE?
To issue an ROE by paper, employers must communicate with the Employer Contact Centre.
To issue an ROE electronically, you must create an account with My Service Canada and follow the procedures on ROE Web.
Alternatively, if you are a Humi payroll customer, your ROEs can be automatically generated and submitted on your behalf.
Resources
How to complete the Record of Employment
Employment Insurance - Overview of the Employment Insurance procedures.
CLEO - Official information about EI from Service Canada.
Did you know as a Humi payroll customer, your ROEs can be automatically generated and submitted on your behalf?
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Avi is a Payroll Product Manager at Humi. When he's not reading up on payroll news, you'll find him at the gym taking on the next fitness challenge.
