Tech key to payroll remediation at Health NZ

NEWS - eHealthNews editor Rebecca McBeth

Technology is playing a critical role in completing Holiday’s Act remediation with millions paid out to Health NZ | Te Whatu Ora staff after five years of work.

Hawke’s Bay has become the eighth district to complete the complex process, distributing $15.2 million to 4,120 current staff. 

Group manager payroll and HR services Anna Sefuiva tells eHealthNews there were two potential approaches to the remediation project. 

“You either remediate within your payroll system or you remediate outside your payroll system and then bring your remediated data back into your payroll system, which is the option that Hawke's Bay chose,” she says. 

This method involved using a third-party tool to process 716,000 lines of payroll data from 2010 to 2024, enabling accurate calculations of owed payments.

Sefuiva explained that there was a nine-day cutover process to bring the remediated data back into Hawke’s Bay’s system and the process relied on close collaboration with the data and digital team.

“We move the data from the test environment into the production environment, bring parts of the remediated data back into the payroll system, and reconnect all interfaces to ensure everything is working,” she explains. 

The remediation project also involved correcting system configuration issues, which had led to ongoing payment errors. 

“The configuration of the payroll systems drives payments and entitlements, and if you do not have that configuration correct, then there is an ongoing impact on payments,” Sefuiva says.

The payroll system has been reconfigured and enhanced with new components to handle the complexity of Health NZ’s workforce, including compliance with the Holidays Act and collective agreements. 

"We developed some new pieces of technology which are now built into our core system,” she says, adding that Hawke’s Bay benefited from learnings from other districts that had completed similar remediation projects. 

Hawke’s Bay is the eighth payroll nationally to have the payments processed to current staff with Auckland, Counties Manukau, Waitematā and four former shared services (HealthAlliance, Health Partnerships, Health Source and Northern Region Alliance) also completed. 

Sefuiva explained that each payroll system was unique due to historical differences in configuration and while the remediation does not standardise all systems nationally, it will mean consistent payroll outcomes across Health NZ.

“While we have national solutions for what we want the end result to be, they need to be applied to each payroll system independently and tested independently,” she says.

“What we have now is standard ways of paying people. The codes may not be the same, but the outcome of pay will be the same.

 “The team and the vendors have worked really hard and really well together to be successful,” Sefuiva says. 

Health NZ aims to complete payments to all current employees by July 2025, with the first payments to former employees scheduled for early 2025. 

The national health organisation inherited a complex environment of around 20 payroll systems, some legacy or out of support, that were in use at the former DHBs and agencies and that now sit behind work to remedy Holidays Act anomalies.

In April, Ministers approved drawdown of $25 million intended for the Hira programme to be redirected to payroll stabilisation.

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