New Queensland Health payroll bungle exposed

Queensland Health has no idea how much it has overpaid hospital workers across the state in another payroll bungle that may stretch back eight years, it can be revealed.

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Queensland Health has no idea how much it has overpaid hospital workers across the state in another “jaw-dropping” payroll bungle that may stretch back eight years.

The Courier-Mail can reveal the department is now auditing staff employed from 2014 to 2021 to figure out how much it has wrongly paid out and to how many workers, admitting last night it is still in the dark on the total scale of the problem.

A Queensland Health statement said the department had “identified some historical payment errors impacting day workers” that “were the result of historical changes” in the legacy payroll system.

Queensland Health Minister Yvette D'Ath. Picture: Zak Simmonds

It said the payroll system was “updated in January 2022 to ensure it was configured to payday workers correctly from that point forward”.

It did not believe “there have been overpayments to staff that will require recovery”, the statement said. ­However, a leaked email seen by The Courier-Mail said that overpayments were occurring after that date as sources said they continued for months after QH identified problems.

“In February 2022, it was identified that day workers employed under the Award who work outside of 6am to 6pm Monday to Friday are incorrectly receiving payment for afternoon or night shift allowance at 15 per cent of their ordinary rate of hours that attract shift allowance,” the email from the acting ­director of Operational Services said.

“An audit will now be conducted across the whole of Operational Services to identify those who are set up incorrectly in the payroll ­system … the maximum backdated corrections will be 24 January 2014.”

The Courier-Mail has been told that issues came to a head at one major South East Queensland hospital last year as some staff began receiving extra money in their pay packets that colleagues working the same afternoon shifts were not.

A source said differences in pay between colleagues were as much as $500 a ­fortnight and problems continued sporadically throughout 2022.

The memo sent to all staff and a slew of managers in June last year stated that some staff were “set up incorrectly in the payroll system”.

A Queensland Health memo sent to all staff at a major hospital about workers “set up incorrectly in the payroll system”.

The union representing the affected workers – Australian Workers’ Union – has been told that staff would not be pursued to repay the ­financial windfall. “We have been actively working with the department to have these matters resolved as quickly as possible so that member confidence can be restored,” AWU state secretary Stacey Schinnerl said.

“Any time errors occur in payroll, it has the potential to cause great concern and worry among employees – our members have found themselves in this situation through no fault of their own,” she said.

“On this basis, it’s entirely appropriate that where overpayments have occurred – that the department do not seek to recover such payments,” Ms Schinnerl said.

The latest pay debacle is reminiscent of the 2010, years’ long scandal in which thousands of QH staff were underpaid, overpaid or not paid at all when IBM was contracted to replace the organisation’s payroll system.

A KPMG audit into the failed system in 2012 found that QH had overpaid staff $112.3m – $16.5m of which was repaid and $3.3m waived, leaving $9lm outstanding.

The audit also estimated the total cost to taxpayers to upgrade the failed system would ultimately cost $1.25bn.

Opposition Health spokeswoman Ros Bates said Queensland Health needed to be upfront with Queenslanders about the cost to ­taxpayers.

“The fact we could have another payroll bungle like this is absolutely jaw-dropping given the Palaszczuk Labor government appalling record on things like this,” Ms Bates said