About us
Built by people who have run staffing themselves
Aroha Connect is workforce management software. It exists because the people behind it were running casual staffing on spreadsheets, phone trees and a wall planner, and got tired of finding out about an expired certificate the morning it mattered.
That operation still runs — as Aroha Consulting, a separate company. It is the reason the compliance logic in this product is field-tested rather than imagined, and it is worth explaining properly rather than leaving you to work out why two companies share a name.
Two companies
Which one is which
Related, but genuinely distinct. One is software you run yourself. The other is a staffing company some of our customers also work with — and the difference matters enough to put it in a table rather than a paragraph.
The software
Aroha Connect
A platform your organisation runs itself. You use it to source, schedule and manage your own temp and casual workforce, track compliance, capture timesheets and produce invoices and payroll exports. It never employs, supplies or vets anybody — your team does that, with the software keeping the record straight.
- Built and owned by Atlantys
- Sold as software, on a subscription
- Used directly by schools, stores, sites and care providers
- Not a staffing agency, recruiter or labour supplier
The staffing partner
Aroha Consulting
A separate company that provides casual staffing on the ground, and has done for years. It runs its own operation day to day using Aroha Connect — which is how the platform got tested against real bookings, real compliance deadlines and real people not turning up, long before anyone else relied on it.
- A separate business, engaged separately
- Provides casual staffing as a service
- An Aroha Connect customer, like any other
- Available as an introduction if you want one
The short version: Aroha Connect is the software you use. Aroha Consulting is a staffing company you can also engage, separately, if you want one. Buying the software does not involve Aroha Consulting in any way.
Where it came from
The product is the operation, written down
Aroha Consulting placed relief staff into early childhood centres. The work itself was straightforward; the administration around it was not. A sick call at 7am meant ringing down a printed list. Practising certificates lived in a filing cabinet and an inbox. The 20 half-days a teacher with an expired certificate is allowed to relieve was a number somebody was supposed to be keeping in their head.
None of that is unusual. It is how most casual staffing is still run, and it works right up until the morning it does not — when the certificate you thought was current expired in March, or two centres both booked the same reliever, or a funding return asks you to reconstruct who worked which room in week four.
Atlantys built Aroha Connect against those specific failures. Not a generic rostering tool with a compliance module added later, but a system where the compliance rules of a particular industry are the load-bearing part. Then it went straight back into the operation it came from and got used on real bookings.
That is the whole credibility argument, and it is worth being precise about what it does and does not mean. It does not mean Aroha Connect supplies you staff — it never has and does not now. It means the people who designed the software had already lived the problem it solves, so the details that only show up in practice are in the product rather than on a roadmap.
Features that only exist because someone got caught
- The 20 half-days counter, because it is impossible to track by hand across a year
- Expiry alerts that fire early, because finding out on the day is finding out too late
- Lapsed documents removing someone from the pool automatically, so the safe outcome is the default
- Timestamped cancellations, because a dispute about who cancelled what is otherwise unwinnable
We ran this operation on a spreadsheet and a phone for years, so we knew exactly which bits would break. Now we run the whole thing in Aroha Connect for Early Childhood, Schools & our Hospitality client. The difference is that nothing depends on someone remembering. If we need a staff member at 6am, I don't need to call 10 people.
How we build it
What the product is built on
Four things that decide what gets built, what gets left out, and how we talk about what it does.
- Field-tested, not theorised
- Every workflow in the product answers a problem someone had at 7am with a centre about to open under ratio. The 20 half-days counter, the expiry alerts, the timestamped cancellation record — none of those came from a feature workshop.
- Honest about the boundary
- Software cannot make you compliant and cannot conjure a scaffolder who does not exist. We say so on the page rather than in the fine print, because a buyer who discovers the limit after signing is a buyer we deserved to lose.
- AI-native from the start
- The assistant integrations were not bolted on after the fact. Aroha Connect connects natively to Claude, Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT, so a shift can be posted from whichever assistant your team already has open.
- Grounded in Te Ao Māori values
- Aroha — care, and doing right by people — is not decoration on the name. It shows up as quality, partnership and integrity in how the product treats the workers whose documents and hours it holds, not just the employers who pay for it.
Where we are now
From ECE outward
Aroha Connect started in early childhood education, which is still the deepest part of the product — ratios, qualified-staff percentages, practising certificates and RS7 evidence are modelled properly rather than approximated.
From there it extended into three industries with the same underlying shape: a casual workforce, a compliance regime with real consequences, and a shift that has to be covered today. Retail and hospitality, construction and aged care each got their own configuration rather than a shared generic checklist, because a Site Safe card, a duty manager's certificate and a practising certificate are not interchangeable.
The platform currently operates in New Zealand. That is deliberate — the value is in how specifically it handles New Zealand compliance, and a system built for five countries at once could not hold that detail.
Where it is used
- 150+
- centres and clients using Aroha Connect to fill their temp staffing needs
- 60%
- less admin overhead reported after moving off spreadsheets and phone calls
- 4
- industries configured: education, retail and hospitality, construction and aged care
The questions this raises
Two companies with one name invites a reasonable amount of confusion. Here is the plain version.
Is Aroha Connect a staffing agency?
No. Aroha Connect is a software platform. Businesses use it to manage their own temp and casual workforce — sourcing, scheduling, timesheets, invoicing and compliance tracking. It does not employ workers, does not supply labour, and is not a recruiter. When you fill a shift through Aroha Connect, you are filling it from your own pool of people, and the employment relationship is between you and them.
What is the relationship between Aroha Connect and Aroha Consulting?
They are two separate companies that share a name and a history. Aroha Consulting provides casual staffing as a service and has run that operation for years. Aroha Connect is the software platform, built by Atlantys, and it grew directly out of the problems Aroha Consulting hit running that operation on spreadsheets and phone calls. Aroha Consulting uses the platform every day, which is why its compliance and workflow logic is field-tested rather than theoretical. If you buy Aroha Connect, you are buying software and nothing else — Aroha Consulting is not part of it.
Can I use Aroha Connect and work with Aroha Consulting as well?
Yes, and some organisations do. They are two separate arrangements: a software subscription with Aroha Connect, and a staffing engagement with Aroha Consulting. If you want both — the platform to run your own casual bank, plus a staffing partner for the gaps you cannot cover yourself — say so and we will introduce you. If you only want the software, that is the normal case and nothing changes.
Who builds and owns Aroha Connect?
Atlantys, a New Zealand company building software, AI automation, marketing automation and products. Aroha Connect is its workforce management product. Atlantys owns and develops the platform; Aroha Consulting is a customer of it, not an owner of it.
See how fast your next shift could be filled
A 20-minute walkthrough of the software, set up around your industry and your compliance requirements. No obligation.