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Statutory Holiday Pay, in plain English.
Statutory holiday pay is the wage an employee receives for a public holiday they do not work, set by provincial employment standards legislation. Most provinces calculate it from average earnings over a defined period before the holiday rather than from a standard day's pay. Employees who work the holiday are generally owed premium pay plus the holiday entitlement. Workzoom calculates the averaging window from actual pay history on the employee record.
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How Statutory Holiday Pay works.
The calculation is an average, not a fixed day. Provinces define a lookback window of earnings and divide by a set number of days, which means the same employee can be owed different amounts for two holidays in the same year depending on the hours they worked before each one. Eligibility rules add another layer: several jurisdictions require the employee to have worked their scheduled shifts immediately before and after the holiday. Which holidays are statutory also varies by province, so a national employer runs different calendars simultaneously.
Where Statutory Holiday Pay goes wrong.
- Paying a flat eight hours is the default error, and it under- or overpays depending on the employee's recent hours.
- For part-time and variable-hours staff the gap is largest.
- The second trap is the holiday calendar itself: assuming a federal list applies everywhere leads to missed entitlements in provinces that recognize holidays others do not.
- 2000 Running payroll since Workzoom has run Canadian payroll for 26+ years.
- Canadian hosting on AWS available
- Trusted in production County of Renfrew, Silvera for Seniors, and Cable Bahamas. Built for 50 to 5,000 employees.
In the product
How Statutory Holiday Pay runs on Workzoom.
Statutory Holiday Pay is part of the Workzoom Payroll Suite. Workzoom runs HR, workforce, and talent on a single employee record across ten countries: Canada, the United States, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, Anguilla, the Cayman Islands, and the United Kingdom. Full gross-to-net payroll runs live in Canada, the United States, and the Bahamas. Pricing starts at $4 per employee per suite per month.
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