Email botch reveals which Health NZ staff were affected in restructure

Tuesday, 17 December 2024

Health New Zealand accidentally revealed which staff’s jobs were affected in its latest restructure - after impacted workers were identified by being cc’d in on an email.

On Friday, employees were told they might receive a calendar invitation to let them know if their jobs were proposed to be ‘impacted’, or ‘significantly affected’.

In a process error, staff who were ‘impacted’ were cc’d into the same calendar invitation, exposing to employees, who was, and wasn’t in that group.

The employees were from the Community and Mental Health team, which is part of the Planning, Funding and Outcomes (PFO) team which has 200 roles proposed to go.

Staff who were impacted were those with minor proposed amendments to their roles, which could include a role title change, or a shift in management.

A Health NZ spokesperson told The Post “we have apologised to staff for a process error with a calendar invitation that was sent to some staff in relation to the current Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora consultation process.”

They said there was no error with the invitation sent out to staff who were significantly affected, which means disestablished.

Health Minister Shane Reti said that while he understood how the situation could be distressing, it was “an operational matter to take up with the author and with Health NZ.”

On Friday, the Public Service Association announced that Health NZ was proposing to cut another 300 roles, on top of the 1500 that were already proposed last month.

While the PFO team would shoulder 200 of those proposed cuts, the other 92 would be from the Procurement Supply Chain and Health Technology Management business unit.

Health New Zealand’s chief executive Margie Apa said, “I acknowledge the significant impact these changes have on the lives of our people, as we reset our organisation to get back to budget and move resources and decision making closer to local communities.”