Te Whatu Ora redundancies to begin

The fate of 1600 health sector staff will begin to crystallise next week, with Te Whatu Ora bringing the axe down on three backroom departments first.

“It will be a challenging week for some, so please ensure you support your colleagues,” acting chief executive Dr Nick Chamberlain told staff in an email sent this week, which The Post has seen.

The restructure looks to delete masses of executive leaders: more than 270 second-tier leaders were swept up from 29 separate agencies in the health reforms a year ago. It wants to land on about 110 second and third-tier leaders.

A clinical staffer in a desperately under-resourced hospital department in Wellington said Te Whatu Ora could certainly stand to lose a few middle managers. “All they ever seem to do is go to meetings and have little focus groups and come up with stupid definitions for things.”

The staffer said some refer to managers as cockroaches “because they seem to survive nuclear disasters and come out OK”.

Staff in finance, commissioning and service improvement and innovation teams will be the first to be handed final decisions – which could mean a letter of redundancy.

But chief people officer Andrew Slater would not provide a number on how many staff in those departments would be axed, “until the change process is finished”.

Five permanent appointments were made in the commissioning leadership team at the end of June, including directors in primary and community care, Māori health and funding and investment.

Once the commissioning decision document is shared next week, the appointments mean the organisation can move more quickly into recruiting for other affected roles, which would speed up certainty for everyone, Slater said.The restructure affects at least 10 business units – including people in management and leadership roles, or in back-office roles such as HR.

More than 13,000 submissions were made on the proposal, released late March, which lead to delays to the original timeline of decisions. Amid the restructure, the agency has come under fire for its reliance on external consultants – in some cases paying contractors $580,000 to fill two temporary roles for nine months.

Slater said Te Whatu Ora intended it was only using consultants in limited circumstances, such as for specialist expertise or independent review and advice. “As the restructure progresses and we can start making permanent appointments, our use of temporary people is also reducing. “

Cost savings were also being found through leveraging the size of Te Whatu Ora, with discounted mobile and digital data pricing, cheaper insurance levies and sourcing clinical supplies at national levels rather than local ones, Slater said.

Although the jobs of frontline staff were protected, the organisation would need to be careful it didn’t make cuts that affected understaffed clinicians indirectly, health systems expert, Professor Robin Gauld said. “There could be an impact in terms of behind-the-scenes support, and that could actually impact them quite heavily. It might make them ... 15% less efficient.”

Gauld is based at the University of Otago, where hundreds of jobs are also on the chopping block. He said restructures tended to drive away productivity and staff.

“It takes a bit longer to get things down ... People tend to depart. As soon as you mention downsizing, people start looking elsewhere. And there's often the risk that the people you most don't want to lose go.”