Remediation to former employees set to begin this year, CPO says
Health NZ chief people officer Andrew Slater said the organisation plans to finish the Holidays Act remediation payments to current employees in 2024/25, as he highlighted the challenges of completing the task.
"We plan to complete Holidays Act Remediation payments to our current employees in 2024/25," Slater told The New Zealand Herald. "The first payments to former employees will likely start in 2024 and continue into 2025."
According to Slater, this is in line with their Memorandum of Understanding with unions and the Labour Inspectorate in 2020 that states they have to pay current employees in each payroll first, then former employees.
The Holidays Act Remediation programme refers to Health NZ's initiative to compensate former and current employees who have been paid incorrectly as a result of Holidays Act 2003 compliance issues.
"Nationally, we have about 90,000 current employees and 130,000 former employees covered by the Holidays Act remediation project, for the period from May 1, 2010, to the present day. Not everyone is owed a payment – some people have been paid correctly for their leave," Slater said as quoted by The NZ Herald.
So far, the Health NZ CPO said $246.5 million had already been paid to 34,000 current employees in Auckland, Counties Manukau, Waitematā, and four former shared services – Health Alliance, Health Partnerships, Health Source, and Northern Region Alliance.
Challenges to remediation payments
Slater's remarks came after The New Zealand Herald reported on the frustrations of former employees of the Taranaki health board regarding the progress of the Holidays Act remediation.
Slater said there are various factors that make paying all current and former employees challenging, such as the complexities of the Holidays Act, the size of the workforce, the variety of employment arrangements, as well as the state of their payroll systems and processes.
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"Project teams around the country are working hard to review thousands of individual pay and leave records, re-configuring our payroll systems, and calculating remediation for our current and former employees," Slater said.
"We appreciate the patience of people who are awaiting payment and we recognise the tireless work of our project teams to finalise payments."
'Complex' Holidays Act
Health NZ is just one of the many agencies that have become victims of the "complex" Holidays Act, which Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden said has "struggled to keep up with working arrangements."
The minister announced in March that reforming the Act is among her priorities this year, with the goal of ensuring that the changes to the legislation are "workable and are a material improvement on the status quo."
As part of the planned reforms, the Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment selected in September 100 organisations and individuals to participate in targeted consultation for the proposed changes.