Holiday Act Remediation for THINK Hauora

Kia ora, 

As you may have heard, many organisations across the motu have been reviewing how their employee’s holiday pay entitlements are calculated, due to complexities around the Holidays Act 2003. 

We’ve been working with Grant Thorton, one of New Zealand’s leading accounting firms and PayGlobal (our payroll software provider) to identify if this has been an issue in our pay systems. Grant Thornton have undertaken a health check audit, and we believe that some current and former employees holiday pay may have been calculated incorrectly - some with underpayments, and others with overpayments. 

It’s important to note that not all employees have been impacted, and if your holiday pay was overpaid, we won’t be asking you to repay this. For current or former employees who have been underpaid, we will take steps to correct this via a one-off payment in due course.

The Grant Thornton team are in the process of identifying which current or former employees are owed remediation payments and the amount. This remediation will cover a six-year timeframe in accordance with the guidelines issued by The Labour Inspectorate (part of the Ministry of Business Innovation Employment, or MBIE). We are not currently sure when the system corrections will occur for current employees and the six-year period for former employees will cease when you ended your employment with us.

If there is an amount owing to individuals, this will be affected by how long you’ve been with THINK Hauora, what leave you’ve taken, and the variability of your work pattern or the inclusion of things like overtime and allowances.  
 
There is still much work to be done to establish at an individual employee level who has been underpaid and who has been overpaid. We know you will be keen to understand how this matter may affect you, and we will keep all current and former employees updated over the coming months and as soon as we are able to provide you with specific and individual information we will. We just don’t have this level of detailed information yet.

We are committed to putting this right, and making sure all employees, both past and present, receive the correct holiday pay entitlements.

Thanks for your patience and understanding as we work through this. If you have further questions, please direct these to  holidaypay@thinkhauora.nz

 
Ngā mihi, 

Holidays Act remediation team 

Email: holidaypay@thinkhauora.nz