August 2022 bulletin

News and reminders

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Save the date for our next HR Systems briefing, which will take place on Tuesday 27 September from 13:00 - 13:50.

Whilst we usually aim to schedule these within the no user input period, this particular session will take place in the following week, to enable the Payroll team to join us. Look out for a calendar invitation which will be sent to all system users soon.

As a result of a recent minor system update, the DOB field has been removed from the duplicate employee check screen in People Management.

We would like to remind users to search thoroughly to check whether a staff record already exists, and search separately on at least two of the following criteria: first name, surname and NI number.

We have queried this with our supplier and will keep you informed of any further updates.

Check our System Issues page regularly to stay up to date with the latest issues and fixes. Recent updates include information relating to:

  • Recording or editing immediate previous employment history; and
  • Gmail accounts not receiving automated system issued emails, particularly affecting applicants

The University has changed external auditors for 2021/22 from KPMG to Deloitte. This may result in some additional work as they familiarise themselves with the University and its systems and processes.

Deloitte will be carrying out their annual final audit of the University during the eight weeks from 5 September 2022. As part of this audit, Deloitte will want to take a sample of PeopleXD data relating to starters, leavers, amendments to standing data and payroll changes in order to check it to back-up documentation which is often held in the departments. They will also review any material redundancy packages.

Deloitte have the right under their audit terms with the University to ask for this information as it could impact on the accuracy of the financial statements; they also have a confidentiality agreement with the University. HR officers are asked to respond promptly to all queries asked by a member of Deloitte, who will all have a ‘deloitte.co.uk’ email address.

The audit will be a blend of face to face (approximately 2 days a week) and remote; so this may mean we need to set up some Teams meetings to go through information and use ‘shared screen’ for Deloitte to see some information.

We will try and to obtain in advance the departments that Deloitte intend to pick their sample from, so we can pre-warn you of the need for information and provide details of the auditor who will be in contact. Information should be sent securely to Deloitte to comply with GDPR.

Any questions or concerns about this audit should be directed to Charles Morgan, Payroll Manager, or Ben Heath, Director of Technical Accounting and Reporting.

The first pilot edition of the ‘Data Update’ news round-up is now available, highlighting some of the key work happening across the University to embed the Data Strategy and improve data quality and business intelligence. This first edition includes an article by our Interim Head of HR Analytics, Mandy Zaccheo about the team’s first dedicated data project. You can also:

  • find out what we mean when we say ‘data quality’;
  • see how you can make a difference;
  • discover some of the improvements already happening; and
  • learn how Power BI can help you present your data or use shared data more easily.

Payroll corner

A new version of the casual payment spreadsheet is now available from the Casual Payment Process | Finance Division (ox.ac.uk) webpage. Please ensure you delete any locally saved copies of the previous version, and use the new version for any future submissions.

Update from the HR Analytics team

 

Report name

Action required

Required for

HRINFO01 Data Validation

in conjunction with

HRINFO01 Qualifications and Subjects

Across the University there are currently 155 Staff Classification errors in the HRINFO01 Data Validation report output. Although this is a 34.9% decrease on last month please continue to prioritise clearing these errors. Then clear all the other validation errors.

The HR Analytics Team will follow up all instances of missing or inconsistent staff classification, NHS Contract Details UDF and Clinical Sub Specialties UDF, FTE and Employee Sub Status.

Guidance:

REF

HESA

Medical Schools Council Survey

Athena SWAN

Financial year end reporting

HRINFO20 Casual Worker Data Quality Validation 2021-22

Clear staff classification errors then the other error types.

Guidance:

HESA

HRINFO21 Vacancy and applicant data quality reports:

Step 1 Advertised Vacancy Validation

Step 2 Applicant Status Validation

 

Clear Step 1 errors before Step 2 errors.

Guidance:

HESA

Athena SWAN

Race Equality Charter

For guidance on making the indicated changes to clear the data anomalies highlighted red and amber in the report please refer to data quality in the first instance.

If you need assistance making data changes or running any of the above reports contact HR Systems Support hr.systems@admin.ox.ac.uk or tel: 01865 (2)87900.

Contact the HR Analytics team on hris.dataquality@admin.ox.ac.uk if you have any queries relating to these reports; give the Person Reference number and Appointment ID or Vacancy ID and Applicant ID.

A new Person UDF 'Discipline taught/researched' has been created to store Academic Discipline taught and/or researched subjects. This information is required for the mandatory annual HESA staff return for a subset of staff, where the Sub Category is AT, AC, AP or AR (see the Staff Classification Guide).

All existing data in PeopleXD has been transferred from the 'Learning and Development' area of People Management (where it was previously recorded) to the new UDF. This includes mapping to a new set of subject/discipline categories which also can be found here.

The HRINFO01 Data Validation Qualifications and Subjects has been updated to pull the information in from the new UDF.

Our webpage guidance has been updated to reflect this change.

Action required

  1. Note the new location for recording Academic Discipline and follow the updated Scenario Factsheet (p4).
  2. If you have not done so recently, please run the HRINFO01 report and clear any errors with the message “Academic Discipline UDF is missing”. We need the best dataset possible for this year’s HESA return so please complete this task by 31 August.

 

For further guidance or help please contact hris.dataquality@admin.ox.ac.uk.

Reward updates

As communicated in the University Bulletin and Staff Gateway, the 2022 national pay award for all non-clinical staff has been approved for implementation in the University. For full details, please refer to the updated circular, now available on the HR Support website.

Please remember to access the updated version of the casual payment spreadsheet from the Payroll website and to delete any locally saved copies.

If you notice that your Staff Request has been completed, but you haven’t received an authorisation email, please contact HR Systems Support. These emails are generated automatically by PeopleXD and the Reward team does not have access to them. If the Staff Request process has not been fully completed, HR Systems Support will prompt the Reward team to complete it.

New/updated documents and reports

We are continually making updates and improvements to our guidance materials. Please always access guidance directly from our website, to ensure you have the most up to date version. If you spot an error or would like to request an update, please email hr.systems@admin.ox.ac.uk with the relevant details.

The following guides have recently been updated:

Guidance What’s changed

Add and manage personal details How-To Guide

Removed section ‘Academic teaching and/or research subjects’.

New starter UDFs Scenario Factsheet

Added a new section for completing the new UDF – ‘Academic teaching and/or research subjects’.

Reward and Recognition Scenario Factsheet

Updated to reflect that the effective date (which should be recorded for Recurrent Excellence awards) should be 1 August for the current scheme (and not 1 April).  Refer to the HR Support website for full details of the scheme.

This month's deadlines

Monthly payroll dates are now available from the This month's Payroll deadlines webpage.

Please bookmark this page, which is updated monthly.