Systemic underpayment destroying universities’ reputation

Built as an all-inclusive industry-specific offering, SaaS Plus delivers all aspects of TechnologyOne’s enterprise solution, including implementation, running, support and upgrades for a single yearly fee.

TechnologyOne’s Human Resources and Payroll (HRP) solution takes the risks of non-compliance, overpayment, underpayment and late payment out of the equation for the university sector, says Peter Nikoletatos, the company’s higher education expert

With missed wages and superannuation payments close to $400m since 2009, underpayment is widespread in the higher education sector and a damning indictment of the current governance model.

Australian universities employ more than 130,000 people in a range of academic and professional roles. Two-thirds of these are casuals due to the irregularity of “teaching time”, broken down into trimesters and ­semesters and are often the worst ­affected by job insecurity and underpayment. Australia’s changing employment laws and entitlements and varying commencement dates only add to that complexity.

But as each underpayment revelation tarnishes the name of yet ­another institution, the overseas vendors providing the payroll solution – often with limited understanding of Australia’s tertiary sector and its complex award interpretations and compliance requirements – are clearly unable to apply learnings and subsequent upgrades at pace with ­industry challenges.

Embracing Australian-made ­solutions is key to addressing this systemic underpayment issue. But the clock is ticking. While universities are working to repay those affected, the damage is already done.

Whether it be because of missed superannuation returns or the stress of working without job security during a cost-of-living crisis, thousands of talented professionals have left the sector to find more stable, better-paying roles. This a devastating loss from a reputational perspective but the consequences of driving passionate employees away from education will have a profound impact on academic outcomes, student experiences and staff workloads – creating an even more vicious cycle of attrition and poorer learning outcomes.

If only there was a trusted and innovative Australian-made alternative that universities could turn to. A ­solution built on decades of investment in the higher education sector and a billion’s worth of investment in R&D. A solution that can be implemented in record time to quickly address this systemic underpayment issue.

TechnologyOne’s Human Resources and Payroll (HRP) solution is just that. It takes the risks of non-compliance, overpayment, underpayment and late payment out of the equation. By freeing up time otherwise spent manually calculating entitlements and entering numbers, finance teams can maximise the ­accuracy of payments, while minimising compliance risks.

The solution seamlessly integrates across HR, payroll and fin­ance, meaning universities have a single source of truth across their entire system. But we know typical digital transformations in education often span three to five years and take staff away from their day-to-day role for months or years. This is time and resources most institutions do not have. So we set out to put an end to the three greatest impediments to investing in digital transformation – time to value, cost and complexity.

At TechnologyOne, we call this Solution as a Service, or SaaS Plus, and it reinvents the implementation process to reduce costs and risk and rapidly accelerate time to value. Built as an all-inclusive industry-specific offering, SaaS Plus delivers all ­aspects of TechnologyOne’s enterprise solution, including implementation, running, support and up­grades for one single yearly fee. But most importantly, it drastically reduces implementation timeframes and costs while improving customer ­satisfaction.

By establishing continuous feedback loops, refining implementation methodologies and leveraging our three decades of experience in higher education, our pre-configured HRP solution automates and productises common business functions, meaning it can be implemented in a fraction of the time of a usual IT ­implementation, reducing efforts by up to 80 per cent – resources and funding that universities can invest into other initiatives.

A SaaS TechnologyOne implementation used to take six to nine months, and now with SaaS Plus we have seen this driven down to just 16 weeks. But making the impossible possible is in our DNA and we won’t stop there. Our vision is bold: ­implement a core ERP in 30 days by 2030.

As the University Accord recommendations stated, the desire is to have 80 per cent of the nation’s workforce expected to need tertiary qualifications by 2050. Higher educators should be deploying their most passionate staff on providing our workforce with the knowledge and skills to ensure Australia’s resilience and prosperity, not managing complex software implementations.

Peter Nikoletatos is TechnologyOne higher education expert.