Te Papa is New Zealand’s national museum, renowned for being bi-cultural, scholarly, innovative and fun. Te Papa’s collections span five areas: Art, History, Pacific, Māori, and Natural Environment. The exhibitions are interdisciplinary and interactive, and have dynamic events and education programmes. Te Papa also has thriving commercial enterprises, including a publishing division, conference operations and retail stores.
Supporting growth
As a Crown Entity, Te Papa must generate around 50% of its income from sources outside government funding, so other income streams come from the Function and Conference Centre and Te Papa’s retail division, consisting of shops, the car park, two cafes as well as Tours and Exhibitions.
Over time these business units have grown exponentially, and the need for new rostering and payroll systems soon became apparent. The existing systems were both out of date and fragmented; with different rostering systems for each division leading to inaccurate timesheets, double handling of data, multiple inefficiencies and unnecessary extra costs.
A tried and true solution
Jade Star Payroll and Self Service were already successfully installed at Te Papa so a decision to select and implement Jade Star Rostering was made.
Jade Star Rosters was trialled on the Visitor Services team (Tour Hosts) first before being rolled out to the rest of the organisation.
The Visitor Services team is a complex team who work on a 7 day, 5-week rotating roster. For each two-week pay period, full-time staff often work variable hours over and their paid 80 hours of rostered shifts. Some staff work for different departments at different rates, and some have special ‘grandparented’ collective agreements that date back to before Te Papa opened. In addition to full-time staff, there are also Casual and Permanent part time staff.
Overall these factors resulted in a large project being put together to ensure award interpretation was correct. Complex Time and Attendance rules had to be formulated, along with a user-friendly, readable roster system.
“It was a long journey to get to the point of 'Going Live', said Joanne Kwok, former Jade Star Administrator at Te Papa.
"There have been many challenges. Jade HR changed hands twice through the project, so our team had to build new relationships with new team members and management fairly frequently. A turning point came when Fusion5 bought EmpowerHR and really took ownership of the project. Face to face meetings with the Developers at critical stages of the project were arranged. The Fusion5 team have been very good at communicating and when issues are raised they have ensured prompt attention. The Infusion helpdesk has been a fantastic resource as it enabled the easy tracking of progress.”
A great outcome
“Patience, listening and feedback amongst the project team including Fusion5 has assisted in managing the change greatly. We now have a solution that has been accepted and our users over time will become proficient using it,” said Kwok.
Key benefits realised include:
- Efficiency savings and risk mitigatio
- Improved consistency
- Better Management of Public Holidays
- Improved Award interpretation
- Better Management of Costs
