MORE SUPPORT FOR QUEENSLAND HEALTH STAFF

Queensland Health has moved to the next stage of implementing the Government’s response to the Auditor General’s report into the Queensland Health payroll system.

Deputy Premier and Minister for Health Paul Lucas said Queensland Health was on track to move to a local payroll model by September 2010.

“But in the meantime we are pulling out all stops to provide more support and more information for staff,” he said.

Mr Lucas said Queensland Health would roll out local payroll support arrangements at our major hospitals right across the State, and would double the size of the call centre.

“We want to ensure staff can get assistance at their workplace when they need it for simple matters and those staff who need more complex assistance can receive the one-on-one support that they need, through prioritised bookings with the payroll hub,” he said.

“This means that wherever a staff member works, they will be able to get the assistance they need.

“What’s more, staff in the expanded call centre will have access to the payroll system to expand the level of assistance they can provide to staff.”

Mr Lucas said this system would enable hard-working payroll staff to get on with the job of getting people paid, whilst at the same time, ensuring frontline health workers got the answers they needed about their pay.

“Queensland Health will also provide more resources to assist line managers with the additional load over the next three months,” he said.

“This will also be supported by a strong communications strategy to advise staff of the new arrangements.

“We want to ensure every staff member knows who they can contact locally and what their options are in terms of seeking assistance and advice.

“We want to make this as easy on our staff as possible.

“We understand the distress the new payroll system has placed on all of our staff and their families.”

All existing payroll hubs will move to the new model over the next three months, including the establishment of two new payroll hubs at Mackay and the Gold Coast.

“Further, as part of our commitment to ‘no financial disadvantage’ I can announce today that any staff who have been overpaid up to pay day of 30 June 2010 by an amount up to and including $200 will not be required to pay this back,” Mr Lucas said.

As of 30 June 2010, Queensland Health has advised approximately 22,000 staff have received payments which are in excess of the amount they earned during a particular pay cycle.

In some cases, overpayments were due to a fault in the payroll or human error; in other cases, overpayments have resulted from emergency payments to staff.

Of those, more than half (approximately 11,500) are small overpayments of less than $200.

“The cost of recovering those small amounts is not insignificant and in many cases that cost will outweigh the return to Government,” Mr Lucas said.

“This will be amount to a cost of approximately $1 million, less than 0.5 per cent of one fortnight’s pay run.

“In addition the recovery of very small overpayments adds significantly to the workload of our payroll staff, who are already working extremely hard to reduce the backlog of pay adjustments.”

Mr Lucas said Ernst and Young had also commenced their review into the software system, and work had begun to restructure the Corporate Services Division to reduce bureaucracy, localise service provision and ensure clearer lines of responsibility at executive level.

Mr Lucas said the Auditor-General’s report made it clear the decision by the project team to ‘go-live’ let down all of our hard-working staff.

“And I want to see it fixed.”

ENDS

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