Ministry for Culture and Heritage Case Study
How Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage save time on data tracking and management.
Content
At Glance
| Company | Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage |
|
Locations
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Auckland, New Zealand
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| Employees | 157 |
| Product | BambooHR |
Key Deliverables Achieved:
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Greater visibility of employee and manager information |
Customisable profiles and historical tracking |
Reduced admin load through more automation |
About The Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage
The Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage lead the government work in the arts, heritage, broadcasting and sports sectors and provide their Ministers with advice on legislation, policy and sector development.
They work with national cultural agencies such as NZ On Air, Creative New Zealand, the New Zealand Film Commission and Te Papa Tongarewa. They administer their funding, monitor their activities and support appointees to their boards.
The Challenge
As a government agency, the Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage is frequently called upon to provide accurate and timely information—whether in response to Official Information Act (OIA) requests from the Government and Public Service Commission, or from its own employees and managers seeking details about employment and team structures.
Before adopting BambooHR, the Ministry managed employee records across multiple spreadsheets. This created significant challenges: employee histories and future employment details were difficult to track, as each spreadsheet was limited to a one-line-per-employee format. As a result, the HR team often had to manually search through past versions of employment contracts to find the information they needed—slowing down response times and increasing the risk of errors or omissions.
The Solution
In searching for a new HR system, the Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage identified two primary drivers. The first was user experience - ensuring the platform would be intuitive and easily accessible, enabling employees and managers to view their own records as well as team information across the entire employee lifecycle. The second was administrative efficiency - reducing the time spent on manual processes so the HR function could focus more on people management rather than administrative tasks.
The impact of implementing BambooHR was felt almost immediately. Even before the system was rolled out to employees, the HR team experienced significant efficiency gains. With all employee information centralised in one system, they were able to respond quickly and accurately to queries from staff and managers, eliminating the delays and duplication associated with their previous processes.
Outcome 1: People Tab
The HR team has customised the People Tab to consolidate all relevant employee information into a single view. This functionality enables them to quickly filter and identify specific groups of employees, verify employment statuses and access live profile data.
By using the system to track and manage employee job information and entitlements, the team can efficiently address employee queries - turning routine FAQs into a simple, streamlined process.
Outcome 2: Customisations and Email Alerts
Leveraging the flexibility of BambooHR, the Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage tailored the system extensively to align with their specific requirements, creating custom tables and fields to capture the information most relevant to their operations.
One particularly valuable customisation has been the “Upcoming Activity” table, which notifies the HR team of tasks and deadlines related to individual employees. This feature is supported by a customised email alert, ensuring that both the HR team and managers receive timely reminders based on key trigger dates.
Outcome 3: Reporting
By leveraging BambooHR’s custom reporting capabilities, the HR team gained immediate access to meaningful insights on employee activity and organisational trends.
These reports quickly proved invaluable and were soon extended to managers and people leaders, giving them tailored visibility into their teams and empowering more informed, data-driven decisions.
Outcome 4: HR Team
The HR team at the Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage have become super-users of BambooHR and are now extending this expertise to leaders and managers across the organisation.
This approach empowers staff at all levels to use the system confidently and independently, fostering greater autonomy and efficiency. The rollout has received overwhelmingly positive feedback, and the Ministry plans to continue expanding its use of BambooHR to unlock even more value.
The Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage is now setup for success!
"As a small organisation we were looking to improve the experience of our people. From applying for a vacancy to the transition to employee and beyond. At the same time, we needed to achieve meaningful administrative benefit and to not spend too much time learning how to set up or use our new system. BambooHR has quickly become an integral part of our small HR team and having immediate access to our people data helps us every day. We are building new reports, adding custom tabs and fields and have a whole list of functions and facilities still to implement so things are going to keep getting better for a while!"
- William Hope
