The challenge

New Zealand’s leading national healthcare employer was in the middle of one of the biggest workforce transformations the country had ever seen. Around 76,000 employees from 20 District Health Boards were being brought together into a single national entity.

The scale was unprecedented. Hundreds of roles needed to be created and allocated across multiple redeployment waves. Hiring managers needed instant access to candidate pools. And a lean shared-services team had to process hundreds of appointments every week – all while keeping essential health services running without disruption.

Manual processes just wouldn’t cut it. To make this transformation work, we had to build a solution that could handle the scale, pace and sensitivity of redeployment at the national level. That’s where PeopleScout came in.

The solution

Our longstanding partnership with the business meant we could design a fully digitised redeployment solution from the ground up.

Creating a smarter redeployment model

The first priority was replacing manual effort with something far more scalable. Bulk job uploads meant hundreds of roles could be uploaded automatically via Excel in each wave, removing the need for time-consuming manual entry.

From there, we built a redeployment model that gave the right people access to the right opportunities. Public and private listings supported a targeted “More to Less” approach, allowing specific employees to be invited to apply for roles. Wave assignment grouped employees into cohorts, giving them controlled access to private job boards where only eligible staff could browse and apply.

And because visibility was critical, real-time dashboards gave project teams a live view of staff logins, applications and exit requests across the workforce.

Making selection simpler

Once applications closed, the challenge shifted. Hundreds of hiring managers needed fast access to candidate pools, without creating delays or adding administrative pressure.

So we equipped them with online tools and data exports that made it easier to assess candidates against six defined criteria, rank them and move selections forward with minimal manual intervention.

Digitising approvals and onboarding

And we didn’t stop at selection. The appointment and onboarding process was digitised end to end, making it faster and far easier to manage at scale.

The shared services team could initiate appointment forms online, which then moved through multiple approvers via simple one-click email links – no complex logins or system navigation needed.   Once approvals were complete, offers were automatically released through the onboarding portal. Candidates were notified straight away and could accept or decline using integrated digital signatures. And once accepted, signed agreements and SSO credentials for the new organisation were generated automatically. Simple as that.

Results

The impact was hard to ignore.

We digitised redeployment for 76,000 employees – saving hundreds of thousands of dollars and removing hundreds of hours of manual work every week. Automated communications kept hiring managers, shared services teams and candidates informed throughout the journey – resulting in quicker decisions. And teams had the visibility they needed to keep things moving at the scale they needed –  without losing fairness, control or continuity of care.