Record of Employment Secure Automated Transfer (ROE SAT)

Designing a faster and more secure generation and filing of Records of Employment for Canadian employers

A Record of Employment (ROE) is a form that Wave issues for Wave Payroll users (Canadian employers) when they have terminated or placed an employee on leave. This form drives the Employment Insurance (EI) allocation for the employee experiencing an interruption in pay.

Wave's current Record of Employment (ROE) generation and submission process is operating under the wrong entity. It is also insecure, is a single point of failure and will be unsustainable as the Canadian customer base grows. 

MY ROLE

Product Designer

As the sole designer on the Payroll product team, I designed the end-to-end experience of Wave's ROE SAT product. I created a new ROE generation and submission process, delivered all functional prototypes for the product and led design and QA testing during engineering hand-off.

DURATION

Jun 2022 - Mar 2023

TEAM

1 Product manager
3 Engineers
1 Compliance analyst 

PLATFORM + CLIENT

Desktop, Wave Payroll

TOOLS

Figma

The current ROE application and submission process is time consuming and manual for Wave users and for Wave’s employees. By switching to ROE SAT, Wave will be able to: 

01

Operate under the correct entity

• Wave is currently operating under the old “Wave Accounting” payroll program account number
• To remain compliant, we should be issuing existing and future ROEs for our customers under the new “Wave Financial” account number
• Switching to ROE SAT wouldn’t require Wave to manually add every customer/business via ROE Web, which is registered to Wave’s old payroll program account number

02

Reduce time and manual work

• When it comes to receiving and submitting applications (RSAs) to ROE Web, this work has more than doubled (~110%) over the past 5 years
• In 2021 alone, Wave worked on ~2000 RSAs at an average pace of 5 mins per application, that’s about 125hrs/year = ~10hrs/month = ~2.5hrs/week submitting, triaging and approving RSAs, not including time spent on the phone with Service Canada, which can take upwards of 30 mins per call

03

Provide user autonomy

• Currently users give up their Primary Officer access to ROE Web, so that Wave can issue their ROEs on their behalf
• As a result users retain very little visibility or control over their ROE data before it is sent to Service Canada
• Any related ROE requests must be submitted by users through Zendesk Email - ROE requests have increased significantly (Wave received a total of 37 requests in 2018, and 319 requests in 2021)

We have an opportunity to bring Wave up to competitor standards, providing a faster, more secure and more automated ROE process saving both users and Wave support staff countless hours of work. 

THE CURRENT EXPERIENCE

Wave users retain very little visibility or control over their ROE data before being sent to Service Canada.

This means users rely solely on Wave for everything ROE related (i.e. copies, amendments) once they’re set up.

This is a time consuming process for Wave users and Wave employees, resulting in delays to employee Employment Insurance benefits claims (the primary reason why ROEs are issued). 

Data driven design solutions  

Wave uses Service Desk to track ROE related requests.

According to our data:

• 27% of total ROE requests were amendments (meaning a user has noticed an error in their ROE form such as incorrect employee name, address, reason code for leaving, etc.)
• 25% of total ROE requests were copy requests (users wanted to request a copy of their ROE forms)

Based on the data, I wanted to address our users' needs by implementing: 

• Previewing of their ROE forms before submission. This would help set the user up for success as they have an opportunity to review and make any changes to their forms before submission (consequently reducing the amount of ROE amendment related requests)
• Downloading of their ROE forms once they've been processed through Wave and Service Canada

These proposed solutions would help save time for both our users and Wave employees. 

IDEATION PROCESS

Designing a new user flow 

In this new user flow, a user is now able to edit their employee information as well as download a PDF draft of their ROE form.

UNDERSTANDING SCOPE

Project constraints

By surfacing a draft PDF of a user’s ROE before submission, users are able to catch any concerns or issues with information on their ROE forms much earlier in the process rather than later. This will reduce the amount of reach out to Wave's customer support team when it comes to requesting amendments for ROE forms. 

Once a user's ROE form is fully processed, they will also be able to download the final version of their form in-app as opposed to reaching out to Wave for their own copies.

Taking into consideration the scope and time limitations of the project, I leveraged a draft PDF flow that was already existing in-app for users downloading their T4 or T4A tax forms. Because we were able to leverage an already existing flow, the implementation time was much faster and less of a learning curve for the engineering team. 

USER TESTING

Validating & iterating

In order to validate the proposed design solutions, the designs went through various internal user testing sessions within the Payroll team, which included stakeholders such as product, engineering, and compliance. 

Conducting UI testing

I began the testing process with a thorough analysis of the user journey and design specifications that came along each point of the journey.

I created test scenarios and developed a structured framework that described the flow and associated UI, UX details to look out for. 

Throughout the testing process, I maintained clear documentation of any identified issues. While collaborating closely with my team members, including developers, product managers, and compliance analysts, I effectively communicated my findings and proposed actionable solutions.

BUSINESS IMPACT

Not our first ROE-deo

Since ROE has launched Wave has had:

2 hrs saved per week on applications

Since launch, 1,500 SAT applications auto-approved

99% reduction in support requests so far

Since launch, only one support request has been received

850 forms filed through SAT

Processing increase of approximately 40%

96% accuracy and compliance for ROE processing

Filing errors reduced by approximately 20%

Conclusion

Today Wave is able to:

• Immediately approve users and get them onto ROE service instantly, reducing our users' wait time from as long as 6 weeks

• Electronically submit ROEs to Service Canada and receive a response within minutes, bringing the processing time of an ROE from several days to less than 24 hours in most cases (this is important because a delay in ROE submission can cause a delay in an employee's employment insurance payments)

• Provide users with a copy of their ROE in-app, removing another manual process and reducing customer support volume

By doing this work, we are setting ourselves up for success in the future by ensuring that as we scale, we are able to keep up with our regulatory demands.