Tāmaki Health, one of New Zealand's largest private healthcare providers, has moved its human resources processes to the cloud, opening pathways to integrating AI and other digital tools as it works to enhance workforce planning and provide a better employee experience across a complex, multi-site network. THE PROBLEMPreviously, many of Tāmaki's people processes were "manual, fragmented, or managed outside," Lisa Ryan, chief people, culture and capability officer at Tāmaki Health, told Healthcare IT News. Recruitment approvals involved emails, manual forms and data entry; hierarchy and position information required manual maintenance; and reporting often required significant intervention to correct or reconcile data.Besides affecting recruitment, the previous processes also limited the visibility into vacancies, workforce structures, employee records, training completion and compliance information. These, the HR chief said, risked delaying the onboarding of new staff and made it difficult to ascertain staffing needs across the network. "Our previous [processes] made workforce planning more reactive than strategic," she observed.PROPOSALTāmaki serves about 365,000 patients across 52 clinics, with a distributed clinical and non-clinical workforce of more than 1,000 caring for around 5,000 people each day. As demand for primary and urgent care grew over the years, its legacy HR, recruitment and learning systems were "no longer scalable enough for the size and complexity" of the network, according to Ryan. After a careful audit of their requirements, the HR executive said, they realised the organisation needed an HR platform that "could give us a single source of truth for workforce data, improve recruitment and onboarding, strengthen compliance visibility, support employee and manager self-service, and provide a foundation for future workforce planning and AI-enabled insights.""We also needed a system that we could use for talent management, storing licences and qualifications information, as well as offer the ability to manage leave requests and balances, workforce rostering and timecards."MEETING THE CHALLENGETāmaki then decided to replace its legacy system and move its HR processes to a cloud-based human capital management application from Oracle. Oracle Cloud HCM, part of the Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications Suite, was selected "because it offered an integrated, cloud-based solution across core HR, recruitment and learning, with the ability to scale as our organisation grows," Ryan explained.RESULTSThe most visible outcome of the cloud migration – managed by Deloitte New Zealand – has been reduced hiring timelines, which now take about three weeks from months in many cases. There are also improvements across the employee lifecycle, particularly with onboarding new staff.Tāmaki also observed that automated workflows and in-system approvals have reduced duplication and manual handling. "Our internal measures show time-to-hire has reduced by around 50%, while digitised forms and employee self-service have saved approximately 30% of administration time across relevant HR and payroll processes," Ryan shared."Recruiter capacity has also improved, with recruiters now able to manage approximately 25 or more active roles, compared with around 18 previously, supported by improved requisition and candidate management."With the cloud-based system, the organisation also enhanced employee record accuracy, contract generation, compliance reporting and visibility of workforce information."Just as importantly, hiring managers are more directly involved in the process, and candidates experience a more responsive and professional recruitment journey," Ryan added. MOVING FORWARDWith a foundational cloud platform, Tāmaki's focus now is "building on that single source of workforce data to support better workforce planning, clinician retention, operational efficiency, and a stronger employee experience across our network," Ryan said.The organisation is expanding its human capital capability through rostering, time and labour, absence management, workforce compensation, talent review and succession planning. Ryan also noted "significant opportunity" in AI-driven insights and automation to better support people in their roles. "For us, AI is about reducing administrative burden, improving access to information, and helping our teams work more efficiently so they can spend more time on patients and each other."According to the HR chief, Tāmaki is taking a "thoughtful and responsible" approach to exploring AI and similar technologies. It aims to ensure that the right foundations – such as data quality, governance, privacy, and clinical safety – are in place before scaling AI capability further.