How to add employees to your plan

As a plan administrator, you are responsible for adding employees to your plan as they become eligible. This guide will walk you through the steps of adding new employees, ensuring they can start contributing to their retirement plans as soon as possible.

How to add employees

You can add employees in one of two ways:

• Add employees individually directly in the Employer Dashboard (best for one-off changes)
• Bulk upload employees using an Excel file (best for multiple changes at once)

Both methods trigger enrollment invitation emails and update your employee list.

Add an employee individually

You can add employees one at a time directly in the Employer Dashboard—no file upload required. This option is ideal for one-off changes and includes real-time validation to help you catch errors before submitting.

1. Log in to the Employer Dashboard and go to the Employees tab.
2. Click Add New Employee.
3. Enter the employee’s information:
   • First name (required)
   • Last name (required)
   • Email address (required)
   • Group (required, if your organization has multiple groups)
   • Employee ID (required only if this setting is enabled for your plan)
   • Date of hire (optional, for record-keeping only)
4. Review and resolve any inline validation errors.
5. Click Add employee to submit.

Following these steps, a confirmation banner will appear, the employee will shows up in the employee list immediately, and  an enrollment invitation email is sent right away.

Plan-specific fields

DPSP

If you select a DPSP group, you’ll see a DPSP vesting field:

• The vesting period is pre-filled based on your plan settings and can’t be edited per employee.
• Vesting can be overridden later at termination.

DC (DCPP)

If you select a DCPP group, you’ll be asked to provide employment jurisdiction details:

• Employment jurisdiction — province drop down selection
• A checkbox for Employer under federal jurisdiction (this removes the province dropdown)

Bulk upload employees (file upload)

If you need to add or update multiple employees at once, you can still use the bulk upload flow.

1. Log in to the Employer Dashboard and go to the Employees tab.
2. Click Bulk Update.
3. Download the employee Excel template (or your most recently submitted file).
4. Populate the required fields:
   1. First name
   2. Last name
   3. Email address
   4. Employee ID (if enabled for your plan)
   5. Group (if applicable)
   6. Employment start date (optional)
5. Upload the completed file and review the summary.
6. Click Submit and wait for the success message.

Note: If your organization uses Employee ID as the unique identifier for payroll uploads, make sure the correct ID number is entered for each employee. Avoid using personal identifiers, such as Social Insurance Numbers, as employee IDs.