Cura Day Hospitals Group: Scaling workforce across 39 hospitals

Cura Day Hospitals Group is the leading Australian provider of private day hospitals and short stay surgical facilities, headquartered in Brisbane. Backed by ICG, Cura operates 39 hospitals nationwide, supporting more than 1,100 specialists, 2,200 employees, and 231,000+ patient admissions annually.

Cura delivers care across multiple specialties including Ophthalmology, Orthopaedics, Gastroenterology, ENT, Plastics, Urology, Vascular, and Gynaecology, with a strong focus on clinical excellence and specialist partnerships.

With continued growth through acquisitions, Cura has expanded its national footprint while maintaining a clear focus on consistent patient outcomes and workforce experience. As the organisation scales, workforce operations become increasingly central to delivering high quality, reliable care across the network.

Challenges

Managing workforce complexity and compliance at scale

Cura’s rapid growth introduced increasing operational complexity. Each facility operates with its own local leadership, workforce mix, and historical employment conditions, which can create variation across awards, enterprise agreements, and pay practices.

Key challenges included:

• Managing multiple modern awards and enterprise agreements (EBAs)
• Supporting legacy employment conditions from acquired facilities
• Managing employees working across multiple facilities with different rules and pay structures
• Scaling consistent governance across a multi-site, clinically driven workforce

As Financial Accountant Jodie Duncan explains: “With more than a dozen enterprise agreements in place, the complexity has increased significantly through each acquisition.”

For Cura, compliance is business critical. The clinical workforce introduces intricate pay and entitlement requirements that demand precision and consistency, including:

• Pay progression based on hours worked
• Award and EBA increases layered over local conditions
• Cross-site employment under different EBAs
• Continuous updates driven by EBA renegotiations

As the organisation scaled, Cura also saw an opportunity to reduce administrative effort and reliance on manual intervention. “Across more than 2,000 staff, manual handling created a significant administrative burden. For a hospital with 120 staff, that equates to approximately 240 timesheets per fortnight requiring manual calculation and review,” says Jodie.

Solution

A scalable, standardised workforce operating model

Following its 2024 implementation of UKG Pro Workforce Management (WFM), Cura partnered with WFM Hub to establish a structured operating model designed to support growth, acquisition integration, and consistent workforce governance.

Each new facility is onboarded through a repeatable, controlled process, supporting speed to value while maintaining standardisation and compliance.

As Jodie explains: “Each time we acquire a new hospital, we’re required to onboard a new company. UKG provides consistency, and WFM Hub configures everything correctly to ensure our staff are paid accurately.”

Technology and expertise working together

UKG Pro Workforce Management enables:

• Automated time and attendance
• Rules based compliance across Awards and EBAs
• Accurate handling of complex clinical pay structures
• Real time labour visibility
• Mobile access for employee and manager self service

WFM Hub provides:

• Specialist configuration for complex pay rules
• Structured onboarding for new facilities
• Parallel pay validation to reduce risk
• Ongoing optimisation and advisory support

“The greatest advantage is having UKG and WFM Hub experts who understand both the system and the Awards’ rules. That gives us confidence we’re compliant,” says Jodie.

Driving adoption to unlock value

For Cura, success depended not only on technology, but on introducing change in a way that respected the realities of a clinically focused, time constrained workforce.

Cura adopted a phased approach designed to build confidence and embed sustainable usage across sites:

• Stage 1: Foundation
  Mobile access, single sign on, and time capture
• Stage 2: Self service
  Leave visibility and mobile leave requests
• Stage 3: Optimisation
  Shift visibility, communication, and shift management

As HR Manager Trina Jobberns explains: “Our staff operate in a fast-paced clinical setting, so we take a considered approach to change. It is important any new systems are introduced in a way that supports adoption without disrupting their workflow.”

By reinforcing value at each stage, Cura built trust and supported adoption across its workforce.

Results

A controlled, compliant, and scalable model for growth

• Operational efficiency at scale: Automation has streamlined payroll and administrative processes, significantly reduced manual effort and improved operational efficiency across all facilities. Paper-based timesheets have been eliminated, calculations standardised, and processing cycles accelerated.

  Jodie explains the impact: “Previously, processing payroll for one of our larger hospitals, would take more than a day. Now, our payroll team can process up to five payrolls in a single day, so we’ve definitely saved time.”

• Embedded compliance and governance: Compliance is now systematically embedded into workforce operations, with consistent application of Awards, EBAs, and specialised nursing pay rules across all sites. This reduces reliance on manual interpretation and improves auditability and data integrity at scale. “Compliance is non-negotiable. Having confidence that the system is applying the rules correctly is critical,” says Trina.
• Real-time visibility and a mobile-enabled workforce: Workforce management now extends beyond the desktop, enabling real-time visibility and access across all locations. Employees and managers can access schedules, leave, and time data through mobile and self-service tools, improving responsiveness and reducing administrative effort. As Jodie notes, “Once implemented, staff will be able to see their schedules, apply for leave, and access everything in one place. This will make a real difference.”

Built for continued growth

Cura Day Hospitals Group runs a standardised, scalable workforce model powered by UKG Pro Workforce Management and WFM Hub, enabling growth without added overhead. 

“We are aiming for all of our facilities to be onboarded to UKG, with full confidence that everything, from the mobile app to the pay rules, is working exactly as it should,” says Jodie. With repeatable onboarding and consistent processes, Cura maintains control, compliance, and visibility. 

As Trina adds, “We’re a lean corporate team supporting a large workforce. The UKG and WFM Hub partnership plays an important role in supporting consistency across our operations.” 

This model provides a foundation for scalable operations, supporting continued growth while maintaining consistency in workforce governance, compliance and service delivery across the organisation.