You can now reach us by phone 10am to 2pm
We're trialling switching our phones back on. Our payroll advisers will be able to take your calls from 10am to 2pm for the rest of this week, and all going well, for the remainder of the lockdown. If you are not able to reach your payroll adviser immediately by phone, your call will divert to someone else who can either help you themselves or arrange for your adviser to call you back.
We've worked really hard to make this possible*, and that's included taking advice from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner about what we need to do to ensure your school's privacy and security is maintained.
Our payroll advisers will be taking your calls from their homes, so we've given them some strict guidelines so they can be helpful to you, without there being any privacy breaches caused by their side of the conversation with you being overheard by the other people in their home bubble.
We've asked them not to use full names in a phone call. When they are verifying a staff member with you, they will confirm only the person's first name and MoE number. They won't use your school's name in the phone call, and they won't refer to anyone's IRD number or bank account number out loud. If you need to discuss these things, you can still do so by email.
If you're working from a home bubble where other people can hear you, we suggest you keep to these guidelines too. And of course, don't ever share your authorised MoE number with anyone.
We hope this helps as you gear up for this remote learning start to Term 2.
All the best everyone.
*We even sought special permission for two of our team to drive around the Wellington region dropping off headsets and other techy bits to our team of dedicated payroll advisers (using safe delivery practices of course).