Stats NZ have redesigned the way information is collected for their Quarterly Employment Survey (QES). As such, the previous QES report accessed via Pay Run > Standard Reports is no longer fit for purpose. To help you complete the new Stats NZ QES, we’ve made a Report Builder template - however due to the changes request by Stats NZ you will need to customise the report.
We’ve provided some detailed information below on what these changes are and what you need to do.
What is the Stats NZ Quarterly Employment Survey?
The QES is a sample survey of economically significant businesses in New Zealand. It is designed to measure employment levels, the average pre-tax earnings and the hours worked by paid employees. Results from the survey provide a valuable guide to the labour market and general economic conditions within New Zealand.
How is the data collected?
Each quarter, businesses from a range of industries and locations are surveyed. Each business is asked to provide details of the number of its full and part-time employees, and the hours and earnings of those employees categorised by gender. The reference period is the pay period ending on or immediately before the 20th of the middle month of each quarter i.e. 20 February, 20 May, 20 August and 20 November.
More information about the Stats NZ QES can be found here.
What has changed?
The redesigned QES includes new questions and changes to how the data is measured. The key changes to be aware of are:
- Employment information is collected at payroll or business level, rather than at location level (except for employee counts).
Previously, the QES collected all employment information for each physical location a business operates in. The redesigned QES will now collect employment information for each payroll the business has and the number of employees at each location a business operates in.
A “payroll” for a business may be defined as payrolls of different frequencies (or pay groups) within a business. For example, you might have a weekly pay group for waged employees, a fortnightly pay group for office-based salaried employees, and a monthly pay group for salaried management staff. This would be considered a three separate “payrolls”.
The good news is that there is flexibility for surveyed businesses to respond in a way that makes the most sense according to how you pay your employees. What is important is that all employees are covered within the overall response.
- Bonuses, commissions and other payments data to be recorded separately from ordinary earnings.
Information for ordinary earnings should no longer include bonuses, commissions or any other payments for the pay period e.g. backpay, redundancy, severance pay, retirement pay. Instead, there will be separate questions within the QES to record this information for these payments.
- Employment information collected for “another gender”.
The previous QES collected information categorised by male and female employees. The redesigned QES will introduce a third category named “another gender”. Stats NZ expect this category to be used for persons who do not identify as either male or female and/or anyone that has identified themselves as “Gender Diverse” on DataPay.
What do these changes mean for me?
To help you generate the data required to complete the Stats NZ QES accurately, we’ve created a new template QES report using Report Builder.
Our QES report summarises employment, hours and earnings details for a company, as at the pay date i.e. the pay period end date of the pay run the QES report is run against. Depending on how you wish to report this information based on your business structure, you may need to run the QES report for each pay group or “payroll”.
The template QES report contains the core information required to help you complete the questionnaire. However, as each company may treat components differently, you will need to customise the report based on the set up of your company. You only need to do this once.
Setting up your customised QES report
Step 1: Open the template QES report in Report Builder. If the report is not visible to you, contact the Support Team to get it assigned to your company.
Once assigned to your company, the report will show up in the 'Reports' section instead of 'Templates'.
The template report should look like this:
Step 2: Use the ‘Save As’ option under the Reporting tab to save the template QES report for each pay group at company level.
Step 3: Identify the components that would be classified as a bonus or a commission in your company. Drag each of these (the blue Payment Amount field) as a new column in the template report. To streamline the report’s output, consider ticking the “Hide column in results” box for each individual bonus and commission. For each new column you will also need to add the TOTAL aggregate value to match the other columns in the report.
Step 4: Add a calculated column named ‘Bonuses and Commissions’ to give you a total of all bonuses and commissions paid.
Step 5: Repeat steps 3 and 4 for components classified as 'other payments' e.g. backpay, redundancy, severance pay, and retirement pay. Remember to add a calculated column named ‘Other Payments’ to give you a total of all other payments paid.
Step 6: The Ordinary Earnings column includes all gross earnings for the pay period. You will need to exclude overtime payments, bonuses and commissions, and any non-taxable payments to get the correct Gross Total Pay value. You can do this by adding a calculated column to subtract the totals of these columns from Ordinary Earnings.
What else do I need to know?
You now have your own customised version of the QES report which you can run each time you are required to complete a QES.
Note: you will need to remember to add any new payments e.g. new bonuses to the QES report in future, where applicable.