Labour cost index in the private sector Instructions for responding

Transcription

1 Labour cost index in the private sector Instructions for responding Service industries Dear data recipient, The statistical data are returned through the electronic data collection system, which can be accessed from The enterprise-specific user ID and password needed for returning the data are available in the accompanying letter.

2 Contents of the instructions: Labour cost index in the private sector... 3 Services... 3 Who does the inquiry concern?... 3 Contact persons... 4 General instructions for electronic data collection... 4 Instructions by question... 5 Specification of part-time employees... 5 Statistical reference period Paid service relationships at the end of the statistical reference period Working hours a. Definition of working hours b. Number of working hours... 6 Hours worked... 6 Paid hours Wage and salary costs a. Wages and salaries subject to preliminary withholding tax in total b. Of which pay for extra and overtime work c. Performance-based bonuses d. Other extraordinary or one-off pay (e.g. holiday bonus) Percentage share of social insurance contributions (=tariff) in the wages and salaries sum... 9 Providing additional information Frequently asked questions Appendix 1 Questionnaire... 13

3 3 Labour cost index in the private sector Services Who does the inquiry concern? The target of the inquiry is enterprises or other corporations as legal units. Each affiliate of a group responds separately. The sample has been drawn from the Business Register. Data on each quarter must be submitted by the end of the month following the quarter. This form is used in those service industries where pay is typically based on monthly pay. The inquiry covers all activities of enterprises apart from agriculture, forestry and fishery. If the enterprise has significant activities in several industries, the data are requested concerning the industries named on the form. Employers are requested to report data on the number of paid employees, number of hours worked, and on wage and salary costs and social insurance contributions for the whole enterprise or for a specified industry. The data concerning the number of employees are requested for the last pay period of the quarter. The data asked about labour costs and the number of hours worked should relate to all pay periods that ended during a quarter. The inquiry concerns labour costs incurred from the use of the enterprise's personnel with an employment relationship. The answer should also cover The enterprise's paid top management, Part-time and fixed-term employees, Students, trainees and those employed with subsidised measures who receive pay, and Whole personnel of enterprises that hire labour (not the so-called user enterprise). The inquiry does not concern The personnel who do not have an employment relationship with the enterprise (entrepreneurs, hired personnel and freelancers, fee recipients in consulting and other tasks), and Those working mainly abroad or in enterprises registered abroad. (E.g. employees on secondment are not included in the inquiry if their income is not taxed in Finland based on the so-called six-month rule.) In addition, costs of social insurance contributions determined based on insurance pay are not reported. The costs and the number of hours worked should correspond to one another. Under number of working hours report the hours for which main compensation is paid during the quarter in question. If it is not possible to report the number of hours worked (paid/worked) for some special groups (e.g. top management, those paid on commission), the costs of these groups should also be excluded from the answer.

4 4 Contact persons Please supply the data on the electronic web form for which the enterprise-specific user ID and password pair are given in the accompanying letter. Where necessary, the enterprise can also request a separate Excel or paper questionnaire from Statistics Finland for responding. Inquiries related to the data content and electronic data collection for the labour cost survey and orders of forms can be addressed to the contact persons found on Statistics Finland's data collection pages: tvkindeksi@stat.fi The instructions for the inquiry are available at: General instructions for electronic data collection Logging in to the service and data delivery The statistical data are returned through the electronic data collection system, which can be accessed from You log in to the service with the user ID and password pair supplied in Statistics Finland's accompanying letter or with Katso identification. If necessary, the login identifiers can be requested from contact persons. You can select Finnish or Swedish as the language of the service on the login page. Write the user ID and password in the fields reserved for them and press Continue. Providing contact information The details of the person filling in the inquiry should be given on the form (name, telephone number and address). We will contact that person if the information given appears unclear. Please note that it is mandatory to give contact information. Providing enterprise information The enterprise's pre-filled information should be checked and corrected if needed. The name of the enterprise's contact person is filled in the enterprise's contact person field. If the Business ID changes if the legal activity of the enterprise ends, but the activity continues in a new enterprise the new ID can be reported in the New Business ID field. List of industries If the enterprise operates only in one industry, the data concerning the whole enterprise are reported on one form. The list of industries includes the enterprise s industries in which it operates according to Statistics Finland s Business Register. If the enterprise has significant activities in several industries, it should respond separately for each industry specified on the form. The link next to the industry description leads to the industry-specific form.

5 5 Instructions by question Storing of data Specification of part-time employees Statistical reference period Data concerning labour input and costs are transferred to Statistics Finland s system by pressing the Save button. If some essential information is missing, a notification about this appears at the bottom of the form when saving. However, the notification does not prevent from saving the data. The system gives a notification on the success or failure of saving. After saving, you can go back to the previous page or leave the service. It is not possible to save the data if text data have been entered in a numerical field. The person filling in the form must press the Save button around every 60 minutes so that the session/connection will not break unexpectedly. Data on the number of personnel, working hours and labour costs are requested on the enterprise/industry's whole personnel and separately for parttime employees. Those wage and salary earners who do not have a full-time employment contract are counted as part-time employees. Data on part-time employees must be specified regardless of the number of part-time employees. If there are no part-time employees in the enterprise, fill in 0 (zero) in the mandatory fields for part-time employees. The inquiry concerns labour costs paid during a quarter, working hours on which pay is based and the number of employees at the end of the quarter. The data should be reported for all pay periods ending during the quarter. If data concerning the whole quarter are not available, data can also be reported for a shorter period than that. The statistical reference period can also start during the previous quarter, but the statistical reference period has to end before the beginning of the next quarter. If pay periods of different length are used for some employee groups, data are reported according to the primary pay period. The statistical reference period covered by the reporting should be specified on the form.

6 6 1. Paid service relationships at the end of the statistical reference period 2. Working hours 2a. Definition of working hours 2b. Number of working hours Report here the total number of wage and salary earners targeted by the inquiry (the definition on page 3) and from this specified the number of parttime employees. The number of paid employees with employment relationships at the end of the statistical reference period is reported here. Those on unpaid leave or lay-off period of over two weeks are not taken into consideration. Under the definition of working hours, report how working hours are defined either hours worked or paid hours. The number of hours worked should be reported when the enterprise is able to follow changes in the number of hours worked by means of working time reporting. Then hours worked is chosen as the definition basis for the working hours. If the number of hours worked is not available, report data on the number of paid hours and select paid hours as the definition basis for working hours. Report the number of total working hours (full-time + part-time employees) and the number of working hours separately for part-time employees according to the selected definition basis. The number of hours worked or paid is reported in full hours. Hours worked Hours actually worked refer to working hours employees have spent at their actual duties. Hours actually worked also include the time spent in personnel training. For monthly-paid employees, hours worked can be determined by deducting paid and unpaid absences from the theoretical working time and by adding overtime work to it, that is, theoretical working time (number of wage and salary earners * number of working days * length of a working day) + extra and overtime work unpaid absences = paid hours paid absences = hours worked General days off falling on working days are equal to working days (see under paid hours on the following page). The number of working hours in a working day can be calculated by dividing regular weekly working hours by the number of working days in a week.

7 7 Hours of overtime and extra work are hours for which monetary compensation has been paid and which have not been taken as leave. Standby hours are not included in overtime hours. In performance-based work (piecework contract, paid on commission), the number of hours worked should be estimated based on the theoretical working time. Paid hours Paid hours must include both paid hours worked and hours of paid leave (so-called hours not worked). The decrease in paid working hours caused by lay-offs must be taken into account when reporting paid working hours. Hours of paid leave include, for example: Paid annual leave, Leave in lieu of holiday pay, Mid-week holidays on working days and other general days off *), Paid sickness and accident leave, Paid child birth and child care leave, Paid leave granted due to personal reasons, Lengthening of paid leave given as compensation for Sunday work (not the whole lengthening), and Days off granted to shorten working time regardless of whether paid as part of hours worked or hours not worked. Hours of paid leave are determined for working time normal for the field, for those doing daytime work usually for weekdays. If the person's regular weekly working time is 37.5 hours, the length of a paid week of absence is determined as 37.5 hours and the length of a day absent is 7.5 hours. *) These are New Year's Day, Epiphany, Good Friday, Easter Monday, May Day, Ascension Day, Midsummer Eve, Independence Day, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day. 3. Wage and salary costs Data in item 3 are reported in full euros. 3a. Wages and salaries subject to preliminary withholding tax in total Report pay and bonuses including benefits in kind paid in accordance with Section 13 of the preliminary tax withholding act. Wages and salaries reported include the pay paid for the labour input in the period concerned, the pay paid retrospectively for other than the above reported labour input and that paid one-off or at regular intervals. Wages and salaries subject to preliminary withholding tax comprise labour costs incurred from exercising of incentive stock options, for example. The data are reported for all pay periods that ended during the quarter. 3b. Of which pay for extra and overtime work Report here the pay for extra and overtime work included in wages and salaries subject to withholding tax paid by the enterprise during the reference

8 8 3c. Performance-based bonuses period. It is pay received by the wage and salary earner for work done outside regular working hours determined on the basis of hours worked. Regardless of the payment basis, the pay includes all pay items paid for extra and overtime work, also pay paid on the basis of work-related shift, Sunday or public holiday work. Pay is reported here for the working time for which the person is paid extra pay based on the number of working hours in the calculation period according to collective agreements. Working time compensated by leave is not counted in extra and overtime work. Report here the performance-based bonus and cash profit distribution included in wages and salaries subject to withholding tax paid by the enterprise during the reference period. Agreements are made about systems concerning performance-based bonuses at each enterprise. The basis for the performance-based bonus is generally financial result, realisation of the productivity or development targets. The bonus usually accumulates in longer periods than a pay period. It is based on other than one's direct work performance. 3d. Other extraordinary or one-off pay (e.g. holiday bonus) Report here extraordinary or one-off pay included in wages and salaries subject to withholding tax which was not reported above in 3c. These pay components are not typically included in the wage and salary earner's continuous remuneration paid for each pay period. Report in 3d. such as: Holiday bonus, holiday supplement, Cost caused by exercising of incentive stock options, Seniority increment or similar paid at irregular intervals, Allowance for leave in compensation for shortened working hours paid at irregular intervals, Fee or bonus paid at irregular intervals, but not performance-based bonus defined in 3c, Emergency call-out allowance, Pay related to ending of an employment relationship (pay for the period of notice without the obligation to work, redundancy pay), One-off component paid on the basis of the collective agreement, Initiative bonuses, Pay increase paid retrospectively from the previous quarter.

9 9 4. Percentage share of social insurance contributions (=tariff) in the wages and salaries sum In Section 4, report the share (=tariff) of social insurance contributions in the wages and salaries sum paid by the employer during the quarter in question. The share paid by the employee is not taken into consideration in the tariff. The tariff reported must cover the enterprise's statutory and voluntary social insurance contributions, that is, Statutory and voluntary employment pension contributions, Pensions paid by enterprises direct to their employees, Employers social security contributions, Statutory and voluntary accident insurance payments, Unemployment insurance contributions, Group life insurance contributions, and Costs from other voluntary insurance related to use of labour input. The enterprise must estimate the tariff as precisely as possible using the available data. The data can be reported separately for full-time and parttime employees as an average for the whole enterprise/kind-of-activity unit, and separately for part-time employees when they can be defined for parttime employees. The tariff estimated for the calendar year can usually be used for all quarters. If changes occur in the payment bases or costs (e.g. personnel structure) or tariffs, they should be taken into account when determining the tariff for a quarter. Because the tariffs of social insurance contributions vary by personnel group, the tariffs should be weighted by the wages and salaries sum weights for the tariffs of different personnel groups. The tariff of social insurance contributions is given at the accuracy of two decimals. Employment pension contributions For pension security managed through insurance companies, report here the prepayment percentage of employment pensions relating to employers confirmed for the enterprise. For pension funds and foundations, the advance percentage of the insurance premium is reported for the quarter in question. When determining this payment percentage, account has been taken of the customer rebate, payment category and temporary reduction of the disability pension contribution estimated for the enterprise. Refunds paid from previous years do not have an effect on advance payments. Employers share of employment pension contributions was per cent, on average, in Social security contribution The social security contribution of a private employer comprises of health insurance contribution. The employer's contribution was 0.86 per cent in Unemployment insurance contribution In 2018, employers unemployment insurance contribution is 0.65 per cent if the wages and salaries sum is not more than EUR 2,083,500. For sums exceeding this, the contribution is 2.60 per cent.

10 10 Accident insurance contribution The accident insurance contribution is determined as a share of the wages and salaries sum and the contribution varies based on the danger, or risk of work done in the enterprise. Accident insurance contributions also vary by insurance company, because each insurance company has its specific calculation bases. The average accident insurance contribution was 0.80 per cent of the wages and salaries sum in Group life insurance Providing additional information Group life insurance is managed in connection with accident insurance. The contribution varies by insurance company. In 2018, group life insurance contribution was, on average, 0.07 per cent of the wages and salaries sum. An example of calculating the tariff of social security contributions The tariff for an enterprise whose wages and salaries sum is EUR five million is formed as follows: The enterprise's costs in employees voluntary insurance were EUR 1,500, and the enterprise does not have an option scheme. Thus, the tariff of social security contributions was per cent according to the payment basis for Social insurance contribution Tariff, % Paid amount, EUR Employment pension contribution ,500 Social security contribution ,000 Unemployment insurance contribution ,372 Accident insurance contribution ,000 Group life insurance contribution ,500 Voluntary insurance contributions ,500 Total ,064,872 Report here in free-form text if some practice differing from instructions has been applied in giving the data. Other matters influencing the data are also reported here, such as: The number of hours worked in the enterprise is significantly lower due to lay-offs or dismissals, Changes in the number of personnel are significant, or Wages and salaries subject to preliminary withholding tax include sums not visible in the specifications. You can also give feedback on the content of the data or the form. If you have problems with saving, please contact our contact persons or by tvkindeksi@stat.fi.

11 11 Frequently asked questions 1. What to do when the enterprise closes operation or continues with a new Business ID? If the enterprise has closed operation, report the time of closing under Additional information. If the enterprise continues operation with a new Business ID, enter the new ID in the New Business ID field under Additional information. 2. How to reply hours worked and wages and salaries in the statistics, when hours have been worked during the reporting quarter but wages and salaries related to them are paid later? Hours worked are reported for the same period as wages and salaries. If hours worked in the previous quarter are paid during the quarter, both the hours and corresponding wages and salaries have to be reported. 3. How is seniority increment reported? If seniority increment is included in monthly pay, seniority increment need not be broken down. In other case, seniority increment is reported in 3d. Other extraordinary or one-off pay (e.g. holiday bonus). 4. Where are retrospective pay increases reported? Retrospective pay increases are specified in 3d. Other extraordinary or oneoff pay (e.g. holiday bonus). 5. Where are other retrospectively paid pay items reported? Other retrospectively paid pay items retrospectively paid overtime compensations or pay for overtime work are reported in 3a to 3c. 6. Where is advance holiday pay reported? Advance holiday pay is comparable to one-off pay items and is reported in 3d. Paid hours are not reported of one-off pay items. 7. Should persons aged under 17 and over 68, for example, be taken into account in the sum of social insurance contributions? Employment pension contributions are not charged from wage and salary earners aged under 17 and over 68. Unemployment insurance contributions do not, in turn, concern persons aged under 17 or over 65. These should be taken into account as a factor lowering the tariff when calculating the percentage share of social insurance contributions. 8. The percentage share of social insurance contributions is not saved even when pressing the Save button. Please note that the percentage share of social insurance contributions is reported in decimals and the separator used is a full stop, e.g In contrast, items 1 to 3 are reported as full figures. 9. How is leave in lieu of holiday pay reported? Paid leave in lieu of holiday pay reduces the number of hours worked, but has no effect on the number of paid hours.

12 How do I report on the form that a salaried employee's work on Easter Sunday is compensated next week with a paid leave of two days? In this situation, paid leave has increased due to working time arrangements. A leave of one day should be added to the number of paid hours of absence due to the compensation of overtime/sunday work. If overtime work or Sunday work is compensated with paid leave of corresponding length, this does not have an effect on statistical reporting - overtime work or paid leave is thus not reported. 11. How should working time bank hours and pay be handled? If compensations of hours in the working time bank are not paid during the quarter in question, the hours in the working time bank should not be visible in the statistics either. If extra hours worked are paid from the working time bank as a monetary compensation (e.g. at the end of the employment relationship), the paid monetary compensation should be included in the wages and salaries sum subject to preliminary withholding tax, and it should also be specified in 3g. Other extraordinary or one-off pay. 12. How is a synthetic option reported? A synthetic option is earned income and it should be included in the wages and salaries sum subject to preliminary withholding tax. In addition, it should be specified in 3f. Performance-based bonuses.

13 Appendix 1 Questionnaire 13