Inland Revenue sheds 770 jobs in 2.5 years - 730 more to go

Thursday, 22 November 2018

Inland Revenue chief people officer Mark Daldorf says the number of 'full-time equivalent' staff employed by Inland Revenue fell by 770 between March 2016 and September of this year.

Inland Revenue has shed the equivalent of 770 full-time jobs over the past two and a half years, the department has revealed.

The job cuts mean Inland Revenue is now about half way towards meeting the bombshell target it set in March 2016 of cutting about 1500 jobs – more than a quarter of its workforce – by 2021.

Chief people officer Mark Daldorf said the department employed 5138 full and part-time staff at the end of September.

That is down by 651 on the total number it employed in June 2016. The drop in the total headcount and the number of 'full-time equivalents' IRD employs don't tally exactly because of a change in the mix of full-time and part-time staff.

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The PSA negotiated an improvement relationship with IRD following industrial action earlier in the year.

Inland Revenue made 149 staff redundant in February, but Daldorf said the majority of the cutbacks had been achieved through 'natural attrition'.

That occurs when staff resign, retire or come off fixed-term contracts.

More than 500 Inland Revenue employees are currently on fixed-term contracts, compared to only 113 at the start of 2016, and Daldorf said it continued to expect to avoid 'large numbers of redundancies'.

The staffing changes are being driven by Inland Revenue's $1.5 billion to $1.8b Business Transformation project, through which Inland Revenue aims to simply the tax system at the same time as replacing its core computer systems.

Shay Peters, the New Zealand head of recruitment company Robert Walters, believed the majority of staff who had left Inland Revenue had not struggled to find other work.

'Inland Revenue typically employs individuals of a relatively high calibre. I do get the sense most have been re-absorbed into the labour force,' he said.

'You would notice in Wellington, which is such a small labour market, if there were a lot of people coming out of Inland Revenue who couldn't find work.'

But he speculated some former staff who were towards the end of the careers could have fared less well.

The Public Service Association said in a statement that the union was being kept 'fully engaged' by Inland Revenue under a new 'management of change' clause it negotiated during bargaining earlier this year.

Daldorf said the first stage of Inland Revenue's restructure had focused on 'frontline' and customer-facing staff, and the second stage, which would be spread over two years, would involve support staff.

It is understood the department has this week been consulting with staff in its 'information technology and change' team about possible changes to their roles.

Commenting on the changes as a whole, Daldorf said an important focus had been supporting and encouraging staff to prepare for different work and ways of working 'as many of them have been and will be moved into new roles here at Inland Revenue'.