By Freya Purnell
A year after its go-live date, Queensland Health’s troubled SAP HR/payroll system has been stabilised, Queensland Minister for Health Geoff Wilson claimed in a statement this week.
Improvements rolled out over the past three months have reduced staff payroll enquiries by more than 80 per cent, reduced the number of staff receiving incorrect pay by 90 per cent to 243 and cut the number of those receiving no pay at all to 31.
The original implementation, which combined SAP with WorkBrain rostering software, was carried out with the assistance of IBM, but the problems resulted in some of the department’s 80,000 staff being underpaid and or not paid at all.
The fallout from the problems saw the resignation of a number of senior bureaucrats, a reversal of the shared services strategy and a number of reviews of the system launched.
In June 2010, the Queensland Auditor-General delivered a comprehensive report into the payroll system, identifying seven recommendations.
Wilson said the government immediately committed to implementing these recommendations as well as taking up additional measures, and in late November, it had also unveiled a comprehensive 18-month blueprint for finalising the payroll improvement project by mid-2011.
“This included the introduction of a localised payroll model, a review of the one-size-fits-all shared service approach and a review of payroll software – all to be delivered by the end of 2010.”
Wilson said work on this blueprint is now well underway, and has already generated positive results. These include the delivery of a localised payroll model and a personalised service for those experiencing payroll problems in October 2010, the delivery of a comprehensive review of the whole-of-government shared service approach, conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, in November, and the release of an Ernst and Young review of payroll software.
In the three months since the release of the payroll blueprint, improvements to the system had delivered results including:
• Staff payroll enquiries down by more than 80 per cent since the system went live, to fewer than 500 calls from 80,000 staff;
• The outstanding adjustments backlog has been eliminated;
• The number of staff seeking interim payments who received an incorrect pay was down by more than 90 per cent to 243 in January;
• The total number of staff reporting no pay was down to a fraction of one per cent – approximately 0.04 per cent in 31 in the last cycle out of 80,000 staff.
Wilson spoke frankly in the statement about the impact on staff.
“Our staff have been through a very difficult time – it is never good enough if even one employee doesn’t receive the wages they are entitled to,” Wilson said.
“I know 2010 was a tough year, but I want to reassure our staff that 2011 will be different. That’s why we will not rest until we have an efficient and effective payroll system in place for our staff. My job is to see this through and I will.”
