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obligation had not been met. It wasn’t because Bruce had failed, it was because Bruce had never been given the chance to prevent it. “ I’m going to make sure you get sorted, ” he told her. “ I will personally make sure .” There will be a review. A lessons- learned report. It will identify things that could have been done differently. What it probably will not say plainly is this: the HCM may be a perfectly capable platform. The same product is used successfully by large, complex organisations around the world. The question was never whether the software could do the job. The question was whether it had been configured correctly for this workforce, whether someone who truly understood the pay rules, the allowances, the complexities of this organisation’s payroll had been involved in shaping how the system was built and tested. That someone was Bruce. And nobody asked him. In Greek mythology, Cassandra could see the future with perfect clarity. Her curse was that nobody believed her. Bruce’s situation was worse. Nobody even thought to ask.
Under the Fair Work Act, employees are entitled to be paid correctly and on time, not approximately or eventually. And for Sandra, and hundreds of other employees, that obligation had not been met.
processed. Leave balances wiped to zero. Nobody could tell you exactly how wrong it was. Workers were calling with a vague, anxious sense that something had broken, without a clear picture of what or by how much. He was still at his desk late on a Thursday night when a call came through from an employee named Sandra. Sandra was crying before she had finished saying hello. “Bruce, I’ve got $80 in my account,” she said. “My rent comes out tomorrow. I’ve got two kids. I don’t know what’s happened.” Under the Fair Work Act, employees are entitled to be paid correctly and on time, not approximately or eventually. And for Sandra, and hundreds of other employees, that
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GLOBAL PAYROLL MAGAZINE ISSUE 26
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