HR Systems Programme projects

The funded projects listed below are being, or will be, delivered in collaboration with IT Services, and are governed by the HR Systems Steering Committee.

Projects underway

Title Description
Aim/overview

To deliver a comprehensive workforce management solution within PeopleXD that enables the recording and management of:

  • leave and sickness absence;
  • timesheet submission and processing for casual staff and variable hours employees; and
  • rostering (GLAM only initially).

NB: The leave, absence and timesheets pilot concluded in 2022, with five departments/units now managing leave and absence and/or timesheets via PeopleXD, as early adopters.

Scope

The project will:

  • roll out timesheet functionality (for hourly paid staff) and leave and absence management University-wide;
  • review feedback and resolve identified issues from the pilot, and develop additional user support and training materials;
  • explore automated HR Self-Service account creation;
  • pilot the Rostering functionality with GLAM;
  • review University processes and policies to standardise, align with market standards, and maximise the PeopleXD investment.
Benefits
  • Enable departments to retire manual, error-prone processes
  • Maximise existing investment in PeopleXD, achieving licensing savings of at least £100k p.a.
  • Enable one self-service location for staff and managers around people management
  • Increase visibility and reporting ability of people data 
  • Mitigate against violation of employment law and potential fines
Latest update

The project team have engaged with departments to understand the impact of the new system features, and develop a comprehensive rollout plan based on these conversations.

Leave and Absence and Timesheet functionality is being rolled out in ‘waves’ of ~25 departments at a time, from October 2024 onwards. HR administration leads are being contacted individually to confirm the rollout timeline for your department/area of responsibility. 

Please visit our dedicated webpage for the rollout details: https://hrsystems.admin.ox.ac.uk/preparing-for-the-workforce-management-...

Additionally, work to fix and document existing and missing processes is ongoing, as well as identifying and progressing system enhancements.

Timelines Rollout, undertaken in waves, commenced in October 2024, with second wave rollout planned for Spring 2025.
Contact(s)  workforcemanagement.project@it.ox.ac.uk
Title Description
Aim/overview

This project aims to support the strategic objectives to:

  • improve the end user experience by making new/current services accessible, seamless, usable, flexible, and appropriately feature rich; and
  • increase the availability and reliability of services.
Scope

The project will:

  • replace current software with GDPR compliant "off-the-shelf" Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution for remote and on-site DSE assessments;
  • extract staff data from PeopleXD to ensure data quality and security; and
  • enable analytics reporting on uptake and assessment results.
Benefits
  • Enable evidencing compliance with DSE regulation, thereby mitigating risk of HSE improvement notices or legal action
  • Improved capability in identifying and acting on results of self-assessments.
Latest update

The project team are currently in the 'scoping' stage; defining high-level requirements, and undertaking initial engagement with stakeholders, and potential solution options.

Timelines The current phase aims to run from Michaelmas term 2022 -  Hilary term 2024
Contact(s)  tbc
Title Description
Aim/overview

This project aims to implement a new occupational health management system, Cority.

This will support the strategic objectives to:

  • improve the end user experience by ensuring that staff and students are supported in their day-to-day activities by making new/current services accessible, seamless, usable, flexible, and appropriately feature rich; and
  • increase the availability and reliability of services.
Scope

The project will:

  • implement Cority Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) system;
  • enable integration with other University systems to extract people-data to ensure quality and security of data; and
  • migrate the data from the existing system, Cohort, and decommission the current system.
Benefits
  • Ensure system and processes remain supported, and system is reliable due to moving to the latest and supported platform
  • Provide reliable management information, in an efficient manner with less manual processing, to provide UOHS and HR greater ability in data-driven decision making.
  • Improved data management and data quality with up to date people-data supporting the University in meeting regulatory requirements.
Latest update The project is in the definition stage. A test environment has been implemented and UOHS requirements have been reviewed and ‘to-be’ processes are being drafted and reviewed. The business case and funding request for delivery are being prepared.
Timelines The definition stage is targeted to be complete in Trinity 2024, with delivery to take place in Michaelmas 2024.
Contact(s) Project Manager: Helen Harbour (helen.harbour@it.ox.ac.uk)
Business Change Manager: Lindsey Hale (lindsey.hale@it.ox.ac.uk)
Title Description
Aim/overview 

To deliver a comprehensive solution within PeopleXD that enables the recording and management of: 

  • Career Development Reviews for researchers (CDRs) 
  • Professional Development Time  
Scope 

This Digital Transformation project supports our institutional commitments to the national Concordat to support the Career Development of Researchers by enabling CDRs and professional development time for researchers* in PeopleXD.

The project will: 

  • Roll out CDR forms and professional development time recording University-wide. 
  • Address feedback from early adopters and improve user support and training.
  • Review and standardise CDR processes to align with Concordat and funding requirements while maximising PeopleXD's functionality. 

*The Charter only covers staff who are employed by the University. Researchers employed by colleges (eg Junior Research Fellows) should speak to their college about what is provided for them. For Oxford’s Concordat commitments, researchers are defined as individuals who:

  • Have research as their primary responsibility (ie employed specifically for this purpose)
  • Are employed on fixed-term or open-ended, externally-funded contracts
  • Are in posts on grades 6–9 (inclusive) under PeopleXD staff classification codes 'AP' or 'AR'. 
Benefits 
  • Enable departments to retire manual processes 
  • Maximise existing investment in PeopleXD and utilise HR Self-Service capabilities
  • Enable one self-service location for researchers around people management 
  • Increase visibility and reporting ability of people data  
  • Fulfil our institutional commitments to the national concordat to support the Career Development of Researchers 
Latest update 

The project team is in the process of engaging with departments to understand the impact of the new system features, and develop a comprehensive rollout plan based on these conversations. 

CDR and professional development functionality is being rolled out in ‘waves’ of departments, from November 2024 onwards. HR administration leads are being contacted individually to confirm the rollout timeline for your department/area of responsibility.  

Please visit our dedicated webpage for the rollout details: https://hrsystems.web.ox.ac.uk/preparing-for-my-development-rollout-in-peoplexd

Timelines  The current delivery stage is planned to run from November 2024 until February 2025. Implementation will be undertaken in 'waves' throughout this period. 
Contacts Business Change Manager: Sarah Willcox-Jones (sarah.willcox-jones@it.ox.ac.uk

 

Expand All

Title
Description
Aim/overview
This project aims to improve the people data availability for HR and other key staff groups, whilst enabling the right support for ensuring data accuracy.
This will support the following strategic aims:
  • IT P31 - Accuracy, completeness, compliance, availability of data;
  • IT P32 - Clear data governance, easy to use tools & technology, appropriate levels of support are in place;
  • IT P34 - Sharing & publication of datasets and outputs from research;
  • People Priority 13. Embed a supportive, inclusive culture, increase diversity of staff, implementing Athena Swan, Race Equality Charter, etc.
Scope
This project will:
  • provide a suite of self-service dashboards for key stakeholders, pulling near-real time data using the data warehouse and PowerBI;
  • introduce further process improvements that focus on error prevention rather than corrections, as identified in Data Quality & Assurance Phase 1;
  • rollout an innovative user support tool (Whatfix) to improve data accuracy at point of entry in PeopleXD; and
  • assess the suitability of the PeopleXD organisational chart functionality.
Benefits
  • Reduced manual effort for users and in HR Analytics team producing reports and responding to data errors;
  • Reduced risk of failing to identify potential staffing issues, or making poor strategy/policy decisions, due to lack of available data;
  • Improved service resilience & capability from time saving.
Latest update
  • The Organisation Chart functionality has been reviewed. We are looking at how best to implement and benefit from the product.
  • WhatFix content has been built and awaiting review and decisions around implementation.
  • Requirements gathered for the Payroll Costing Report.
  • Documention of the requirements for the staff movement and staff requests dashboard to be delivered via the Data Warehouse and PowerBI
Timelines
Trinity 2023 - Hilary 2024
Contact(s)
Project Manager: Rachel Midgley (rachel.midgley@it.ox.ac.uk)

Whatfix is a ‘Self Help’ tool which provides interactive system instructions for PeopleXD, reducing the need to navigate away from PeopleXD to find relevant guidance. Following the team's analysis of HESA data quality issues, we have identified the top areas of PeopleXD and the associated user processes, where we will initially create Whatfix content.  Content will be published following a staged approach based on system area and priority.

Title Description
Aim/overview

This project implemented a central management system for recording mandatory training, which is capable of:

  • reporting on due, overdue and completed mandatory training; and
  • providing real-time staff data by use of integrations with PeopleXD.

This supports the strategic objectives to:

  • improve the end user experience by ensuring that staff and students are supported in their day-to-day activities by making new/current services accessible, seamless, usable, flexible, and appropriately feature-rich;
  • review and improve current arrangements to support the personal and career development of all staff.
Benefits
  • Provide an effective means for managing mandatory and compliance-related training for staff.
Latest update
  • Currently meeting with departments to understand 'business' needs
  • Defining deliverables
Timelines Delivered: January 2024
Contact(s) N/A
Title Description
Aim/overview
  • Prototype of dashboard visualisations created using data from both
  • PeopleXD and Financials
  • Determine standard tools to establish University-wide consistency
  • Recommend activities or decisions to resolve identified issues
Benefits
  • Improved efficiency by reducing the time and cost of finding, gathering and preparing data for PowerBI and dashboard
  • Increased consistency and clarity of reports and dashboards (via using centrally provided data sets) should help decisionmakers gain the confidence they need more quickly
Latest update • The project closes in April following completion of final data logic
changes and a user review of the remaining dashboard reports.
• Supporting documentation, lessons learnt and guidance is being coordinated
with the data governance and finance teams and ownership of
SUPPORTING THE STRATEGIC PLAN supporting processes have been agreed.
Timelines Trinity Term 2023: Initiate project and secure funding.
Initial scoping dicussions, understanding stakeholders, need
and agree ownership and requirements.
Michaelmas Term 2023: Delivery of prototype
visualisations, lessons learnt and recommendations
documentation.
Hilary Term 2024: User Review Dashboards. Time extension
to complete Financials Data Logic changes
Contact Project Manager: Chris Maidlow

Details coming soon