In Employee News 28, issued on 3 November, we advised you that we were aiming to go live with our new Oracle Fusion HR and Payroll system in February 2026.
A significant amount of preparation work has been undertaken to design, build and test the new HR & Payroll system. We also communicated that there would be significant restrictions on the current and new systems over December and January, during what is known as the ‘cutover’ period, to achieve the February ‘go live’ date.
Taking on board the feedback in relation to the timing of the restrictions in advance of the Christmas period and the significant volume of work that would also need to be undertaken by those teams involved in the implementation during that period, we have taken the decision to push our ‘go live’ date back until later in 2026.
This will give us additional time to ensure all the preparatory work is effectively concluded and further robust testing across both current and new systems can be undertaken. It will also enable us to provide an increased period of notice in advance of the system restrictions leading up to and during the ‘cutover’ period.
Interim Overtime arrangements
The interim overtime arrangements that have been introduced will continue. These mean that we have one overtime claim process, which reflects the arrangements within the new system and will ensure that overtime is paid more quickly than the previous range of approaches.
You will be aware that the deadline for overtime claims for the December pay dates is this coming Friday (28 November). If we had been progressing with the February ‘go live’ date, the deadline for overtime claims for the January pay dates would be 10 December, however, we are now able to extend this deadline date to Friday 19 December. This extension means that a further nine days of overtime claims can be processed for the January pay dates.
The overtime deadline dates for the first part of 2026 and until we ‘go live’ with the new HR & Payroll system will be issued in the next week, so that everyone is clear on the dates we are working to.
Next steps
The project team is working up a revised implementation plan for the new HR & Payroll system to allow for additional testing and the new timeline for implementation will be shared early in the new year.
The Oracle Fusion HR and Payroll system webpage on the Employee Zone will be updated to reflect this, and if you have any questions, that are not addressed through the FAQs on that page, please raise these with your line manager in the first instance.
Thank you,
Angela Fegan
Executive Officer, Customer Services & Organisational Development
