Unions key to payroll success, says NSW Health

CLOSE collaboration with key union groups helped drive the success of an ambitious payroll systems upgrade at NSW Health.

Farhoud Salimi, corporate IT director, e-health, NSW Health.

CLOSE collaboration with key union groups was one of the driving forces behind the success of an ambitious payroll systems upgrade for 140,000 employees at NSW Health.

NSW Health is in the final stages of a multi-year project to upgrade to a new version of Oracle’s payroll platform.

It has 3000 awards and 27 different types of customers -- making for a very complex environment, said NSW Health corporate IT director, e-health, Farhoud Salimi.

The payroll upgrade, part of Oracle’s e-business suite 12, has been implemented across core local health districts and health agencies to replace legacy systems.

The Health Ministry, Ambulance Service NSW and Cancer Institute -- an addition to the original scope -- will migrate to the new platform in the next few months.

The upgrade has several remote access features, including the ability to check leave balances and access payslips online.

The project has largely run smoothly due to several factors, including involving several unions from the outset, Mr Salimi said.

“We were constantly engaged with all the unions with regards to the differences (between the old and new payroll system).

“They were heavily involved in it from the beginning.

“We worked closely with them to work through any issues they had,” he said.

Mr Salimi said a significant amount of time was spent on change management and training.

“No matter how well the system’s built, if people don’t know how to use it (there’s was no point).”

He said strong communication, change management, and stakeholder engagement were key attributes to the project’s success.

“When you have 27 (different types of) customers you have to take them on a journey individually.

“One model doesn’t fit all,” Mr Salimi said.

He believes NSW Health’s approach to the project helped it avoid Queensland Health’s $1.2 billion payroll disaster where thousands of workers were underpaid, overpaid or left unpaid.

“In terms of volumes we’re bigger than Queensland Health although the complexity of awards is the same,” he said.

While Queensland Health had decided on a big bang approach for its payroll implementation, NSW took a different route.

“Queensland Health went first (with its payroll upgrade) and decided to go big bang.

“The approach we took ... was actually to slow down and do a fair amount of testing and parallel pay runs to make sure the payrolls ran accurately,” Mr Salimi said.