Secondment agreement

This section describes the roles and responsibilities of the various parties involved in processing a secondment agreement.

On this page

• Process description
• Employee responsibilities
• Manager (home and host) responsibilities
• Human resources (home and host) responsibilities
• Finance (home and host) responsibilities
• Trusted source responsibilities
• Pay Centre responsibilities

Process description

A secondment is a temporary move of an employee to another department or agency in the core public administration and other organizations for which the Treasury Board of Canada is the employer.

As a lateral movement, a secondment allows an employee to perform the functions of a position that already exists or to take on a special project in another organization. The employee maintains his or her substantive position in the home organization, and is paid by the home organization. A secondment agreement indicates acceptance of this arrangement and must clearly state that the employee returns to their substantive position on completion of the secondment.

Employee responsibilities

Employees are responsible for signing the secondment agreement.

For overtime requests, the employee is responsible for completing the extra duty pay or shiftwork report and authorization of the extra duty pay form (accessible only on the Government of Canada network).

For leave requests, the employee is responsible for completing the leave application and absence report (accessible only on the Government of Canada network).

Manager (home and host) responsibilities

Managers from the home (seconded out) and host (seconded in) organizations are responsible for advising human resources of the secondment by following organizational procedures.

Section 34 managers are responsible for:

• signing the secondment agreement
• advising finance to ensure the transfer of all salary payments between the home and host organizations

Overtime and leave

The delegated host section 34 manager must authorize overtime or leave and forward the authorization to the delegated home section 34 manager.

Human resources (home and host) responsibilities

Human resources in the home organization are responsible for:

• completing job and personal information rows in the Human Resources Management System in a timely manner and verifying that these data are accurate
• sending the secondment agreement through a trusted source to the Pay Centre by encrypted email, fax or mail to the Pay Centre Mail Facility, including a completed pay action request form  

Human resources in the host organization are responsible for:

• preparing the secondment agreement
• entering the information in the Human Resources Management System

Finance (home and host) responsibilities

Finance in the home and host organizations are responsible for reconciling interdepartmental settlements for salary payments.

Finance in the home organization are responsible for Section 33 authorization of the transaction in Phoenix.

Trusted source responsibilities

Upon receipt of the secondment agreement, the trusted source is responsible to authenticate signatures on paper requests before they are transmitted from departments to the Pay Centre, including:

• the section 34 signature for all requests affecting financial results or the manager’s budget
• the human resources delegated signature for all requests (excluding requests directly from employees)

Pay Centre responsibilities

The Pay Centre is responsible for:

• checking the trusted source list
• making changes to union dues, where required

If there is a change to an employee’s bargaining status, a bargaining agent identification notice of change form must be completed and sent to the union(s) involved.

If there is a delay in changing an employee’s bargaining status, the Pay Centre is responsible for:

• sending, by encrypted email or fax, a requisition for payment form (accessible only on the Government of Canada network) to inform finance that a payment must be made to the bargaining unit
• recovering amounts owing from the employee (refer to CD 2012-006 Recovery of union dues