St Joseph’s College needed a partner who was experienced with school-specific requirements, capable of consolidating HR and payroll processes within one system and minimised manual calculations.
Closer collaboration within the St Joseph's College People & Culture team with a smooth data flow of data and a single view of records from multiple systems.
The entire process from hire to retire is captured and automated within Aurion, including onboarding and offboarding tasks determined by the employee journey to minimise processing time.
Calculate and manage term/non-term time automatically in the system without the need for external spreadsheets or systems to reduce risk and inaccuracy.
St Joseph’s College (Joey’s), located in Hunter’s Hill Sydney, is an independent Catholic school who have been leaders in Australian secondary education for more than 140 years.
In 2020, Damien Lumby joined Joey’s as their Head of Operational Transformation to support them on their journey to modernise their people and payroll functions. This included the search for a new HR and payroll solution provider which understood the intricacies schools encounter in managing their workforce. Joey’s needed a partner who was experienced with school-specific requirements, capable of consolidating HR and payroll processes within one system and minimise manual calculations. Some of the common challenges faced within the schools sector that Joey’s needed to address included: performing calculations outside of the system, legacy technology, term/non-term time complexities, employees that held multiple roles at the same time, and manual processes which could be replaced with business process automation within the software platform.
Joey’s discovered all of this and more with Aurion, a comprehensive HR and payroll solution with a strong understanding of the challenges faced by schools. By partnering with Aurion, Joey’s became equipped with a solution that goes beyond payroll. Armed with the knowledge of the complexities schools often faced with HR and payroll is what set Aurion apart from other vendors, particularly the multi-employment component and term/non-term time configurations. Damien remarked. “The multi-employment set up was one of the key selling points that stood out to us about Aurion, it is something that every school needs but it is difficult to find a provider that does it well. We found that with Aurion.”
Through incorporating Aurion, the People & Culture team (including HR, Payroll, Risk and Compliance departments) at Joey’s are able to foster closer collaboration and communication through the unification of using a single end-to-end system. This newfound synergy has not only enhanced transparency across functions, but has also empowered the teams to work together towards a common goal. The use of Aurion has allowed for the increased visibility of information and data across both teams to simplify processes. By having an all-in-one solution for multiple teams that manage HR and payroll tasks, there has been an evident increase in the accuracy of data and reporting. In addition to also removing the need to replicate data between the previously separate Recruitment, Onboarding and Payroll Systems. As an effective solution for Joey’s to unite their HR and payroll teams, Aurion has allowed for what used to be tedious and manual data replication tasks to be transformed into a seamless, automated business outcome, leading to the improvement of organisational efficiency and more importantly a reduction in data related risk.
Integrating HR and payroll functions through Aurion has been a game-changer for Joey’s. It was a non-negotiable to find a solution provider which could facilitate the smooth data flow between different departments, and Aurion made that happen. Through the various integration capabilities of the Aurion software, Joey’s have been able to consolidate what used to be three separate HR systems to now integrate into the one Aurion system, allowing for a single view of records. Additionally, the integration capabilities of Aurion have allowed Joey’s to streamline their Payroll Journal to General Ledger process, taking advantage of the highly configurable cost allocation functionality within Aurion. The entire process from hire to retire is captured and automated within Aurion, including onboarding and offboarding tasks determined by the employee journey. These are some of the few tasks that Joey’s have integrated with Aurion to save their teams time and increase accuracy.
The automation capabilities of Aurion has seen processes now seamlessly incorporated into a single, unified database. A common complexity seen in the school sector is calculating and managing term/non-term time. Previously at Joey’s, these calculations were manually calculated outside of the payroll system and required a significant amount of time to complete. With Aurion, these calculations are automated to be done inside the system with no need for external spreadsheets, while also removing paper processing for each pay run. By automating term and non-term time calculations, Joey’s has seen the reduction of risk and inaccuracy while saving their team time.
The implementation of our Employee Self Service (ESS) and mobile app has empowered the diverse workforce within Joey’s to manage, submit, view and edit payroll and personal information directly. Ultimately saving the People & Culture team in Joey’s that previously processed these requests manually, giving back time to focus on more critical people and payroll tasks.
Another challenge commonly faced by schools which Joey’s has solved is the automated interpretation of the multi-enterprise agreement (MEA). Through the Aurion Timekeeper module, the award interpretation is now automatically calculated and payroll transactions are produced as a result. This has reduced the manual intervention and effort previously required to perform data entry and processing tasks, saving the team at Joey’s valuable time and providing comfort that employee entitlements can be calculated and paid accurately.
During their initial search for a new HR and payroll partner, the Project Control Group (PCG) responsible for partner selection noted that the annual licencing for Aurion was very cost effective for the amount of functionality on offer. When completing a cost-benefit analysis, the PCG noted, “The amount of functionality you get for the price point is very beneficial, and the cost for licensing in addition to implementation is far lower than most of the alternate corporate systems on the market.”
“We’ve replaced our systems for a lower licence fee, reduced our data handling risks whilst bringing higher levels of date driven automation to many high volume tasks.”
The all-encompassing nature of Aurion as an end-to-end solution from hire to retire, has seen incredible benefits for the People & Culture team at Joey’s. By consolidating all employee data into a single database has addressed their need to further improve upon data accuracy and efficiency.
Aurion goes beyond payroll; it provides schools like Joey’s with a comprehensive employee lifecycle management solution. Joey’s is leading a true transformation in the way that HR and payroll functions can be leveraged in the education sector.
Non-negotiables set by the Director of ICT at Joey’s included security and compliance components such as Single sign-on (SSO), identity management and multi-factor authentication (MFA). In addition to complying and exceeding these requirements, Joey’s provided positive feedback relating to the ability of Aurion to consistently demonstrate the security and compliance of our supplied people and payroll solutions. As an ISO-certified and ASAE-accredited software provider, Aurion was able to showcase the strong and robust security measures required to support the mission of Joey’s to adhere to the highest security standards. In initial consultation with the IT team at Joey’s, it was evident through the extensive documentation that Aurion prioritises compliance and security.
An example of the robust security and compliance protocols that is built in to the Aurion solution is user profiles, which determines what level of access each user has in relation to data within Aurion. This includes both approval levels and reporting to ensure strict controls are placed around what data can be viewed. Delegations of authority and segregation of duty allows Joey’s to ensure pay outcomes are auditable and follow the appropriate approval process in line with school policy.
Upon consultation with our team regarding the implementation process, it was clear to Joey’s that the Aurion implementation methodology and framework was well-considered, robust and well-articulated.
With over 35 years of providing people and payroll solutions, we have built upon the Prince2 and Agile frameworks to incorporate a methodology which is optimised for the implementation of payroll software. We work hard to guarantee that our project methodology and implementation process is the best in the business. This extends beyond our framework, to the team behind it and the people that work with our customers to make it such a success. We only engage implementation partners who are able to continue the streamlined and effective implementation experience that we deliver to our customers.
Our clear implementation path and resulting positive experience was a key driver for the selection and success of Aurion as Joey’s HR and payroll partner. By providing a guided implementation process, we were able to support Joey’s throughout their implementation journey while providing full transparency of the upcoming stages within each phase.
We have developed and optimised our implementation process over our 35 years of empowering organisations with people and payroll solutions. We have defined our processes using industry-standard quality processes and government frameworks which extend to: Prince2, ASAE3402 Type 2 Controls, ISO9001 and ISO27001 accreditations.
Learn more about why Aurion is the solution of choice for schools of all sizes. We take the complexity out of payroll for schools with our powerful and scalable solutions to make life work better for your team. Our experience and knowledge of the intricacies of payroll within schools has seen our customer base expand rapidly in this industry. Want to learn more about why so many schools choose Aurion to power their people and payroll? Get in touch with our expert team!
“We’ve replaced our systems for a lower licence fee, reduced our data handling risks whilst bringing higher levels of date driven automation to many high volume tasks.” - Damien Lumby (Head of Operational Transformation)
“Using Aurion Payroll and HR solutions with Self Service provides us with a host of essential employee management functions.”
Alana Hardin - Human Resources CoordinatorDiscover how Aurion can make life work better for your organisation with streamlined people and payroll solutions.
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Aurion acknowledges the Traditional Owners of Country throughout Australia. We pay our respect to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures; and to elders past and present.
