Feedback from our work with Melissa Beck – Team Leader, Education Payroll Limited
Channel: StateServicesNZ
Date: 2016-07-07

The Continuous Improvement team within the State Services Commission supports agencies to build operating models that put their customers at the front and centre of their work.

The Continuous Improvement recently finished working with Education Payroll Ltd, the successor to Novopay, transforming its service to schools. 

View the feedback from Melissa Beck, Team Leader, Education Payroll Limited.

TRANSCRIPT:
In the old system, it was sometimes quite challenging working with the schools, and we weren't in a position to be customer focused all the time.  When we were talking to the schools we didn’t always have all the information in front of us and we weren't always able to answer all the queries that the school was asking.
We were functionally split so we were only focussing on 1 or 2 demands each and that is what we would do day in and day out.  We were quite output driven so we had targets and KPI's [Key Performance Indicators] that we had to meet every day.
We also have time for problem solving so we collect a lot of data in the system on what kind of demands we're getting. The team then gets together regularly to go through the data and use it as part of problem solving to improve the system.
So one example of that would be we have started re-designing a couple of our forms, and that was based on data that we were getting in that the form was being returned a lot of the time back to the school for more information and we got together with the team and we went out to schools, got feedback from them, and we are redesigning it more against demand.
The demand is what comes in from the school administrator, its what the customer is asking us for. So how I work with my team currently is from a point of understanding, so its really important for us to understand the wants and the needs that are coming in from our customer. And that enables us to make changes to our system to provide a more effective payroll service.
The difference that we are seeing with the school administrators is huge, the feedback that we are getting is that they have a lot more time at the school, they are not spending as long on payroll, which is really great so they can spend more time supporting the other areas of the school, supporting the teachers and the support staff.
There's a lot more personal responsibility in our work, and we are creating really positive relationships with the school administrators. This makes it really easy for us to get up in the morning to come to work when we know we are making a positive difference on the other end
So, the reason I like this approach is that you don't go into it with the answers, you might have preconceived ideas of what could be right for your company and for the system, but until you get really into it and start understanding the wants and the needs from your customers, you don't really know.

ENDS