January 2022 bulletin

 

Important - for action/attention this month

Pay scales now automated in vacancies
Apprenticeship Agreement available in PeopleXD
Clear staff classification errors by Monday 31 January

News and reminders

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We are pleased to inform you that from the week commencing 31 January, in most cases, Recruitment Administrators will no longer need to manually enter grade and salary details within their vacancies in the ‘Vacancy Details – 2’ screen. Instead, once a grade is picked, the standard salary range for the selected grade will automatically populate within the Salary field (previously ‘Grade & Salary’).

This change will alter the format. The grade and salary will now display in number format only, as per the image below:

This change has been approved by the Recruitment Product Ownership Group (which includes the Head of Recruitment).

The job feed used by departments to display vacancies on their own websites has also been updated and departments may wish to check that everything appears as expected once this change is live. If you spot any display anomalies, please contact Tonya Iasisen-Kandola.

All the relevant guidance has been updated accordingly, including the Recruitment guidance on the HR Support web pages.

This change has been delivered as part of the POGs’ portfolio. If you’re interested in joining one of the POGs, please get in touch with Tonya Iasisen-Kandola.

In case you missed this news in our festive message last month, please note that the Apprenticeship Agreement is now available to produce in PeopleXD. To simplify the process of preparing these documents, the system version also includes the Apprenticeship Learner Agreement.

For queries related to the document, please contact the Apprenticeships Team. For system guidance, follow the How-to: Generate documents in PeopleXD guide.

We would like to draw your attention to three new webpages, containing resources for applicants and PeopleXD users:

FAQs and further help

https://hrsystems.web.ox.ac.uk/faqs-and-further-help

We have recently reviewed and updated our Common Queries webpage, which now has an improved layout, making it easier to find what you need. This page has been renamed to ‘FAQs and further help’ and can be found in the usual place on our website.

We recommend you check this page (along with System Issues) regularly to stay up-to-date with the latest issues, fixes and tips.

Where to go for help

https://hrsystems.web.ox.ac.uk/where-to-go-for-help

Our small team provides training and support to nearly 600 system users. To best support our growing user community, we have created a comprehensive range of resources, to enable you to ‘self-help’. This new webpage outlines how to get the most out of the support available.

Support with your online job application

https://staff.admin.ox.ac.uk/recruitment-support-faqs

This page replaces the ‘Recruitment Support’ page, which was previously hosted on the HR Systems website. Now located under the University Jobs pages, the page has an improved format, to assist applicants with making their online job application.

Recruitment users may notice that the Vacancies Stream widget is no longer visible on the Vacancies screen. A recent system change removed all security on this widget and also led to many users getting an error message when the widget tried to load. We have asked the supplier to investigate this but until such time as the issues are addressed, the widget will remain unavailable.

We are aware that some system users are experiencing issues (ie ‘Save’ button not working) with PeopleXD when using Internet Explorer (IE). Please note that IE will be retired by Microsoft in June this year. We therefore recommend those using IE switch to an alternative supported browser when accessing the system. We recommend Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge. 

We look forward to hosting our first online session of 2022, which will take place at 10:05 – 10:55 on Tuesday 25 January.

An email invitation has been sent to all system users. If you haven't received this, please get in touch.

The session will cover:

  1. Where to go for help
    - Finding the right information
    - How-To Guides vs Scenario Factsheets
    - Contacting the Support team
    - Team changes
  2. Staff Requests – best practice 
    - Using the Staff Request and Contract Decision matrix
    - Avoiding common errors
  3. What’s in the pipeline?
    - New system features released soon
    - Online ‘User Access Form’
    - Update on the release of a new In-system support tool
  4. Q&A

This session will be recorded. If you are unable to attend, please contact us with any questions you would like answered during the session. 

We are pleased to announce a chain of secondments which have come into effect this month. 

Athena Artuso has begun a secondment with the Equality and Diversity team as an EDI Data Analyst for part of her time. To cover Athena, Michael O’Sullivan has taken on the role of Senior Functional Analyst. 

Asta Siautilaite has joined our Functional Analyst team, to cover Michael’s role (Functional and Configuration Analyst) and Emma Fitz-Gibbon will be acting up as senior member of the HR Systems Support team. 

We also welcome Omer Farooq who joins us from TSS as a Helpdesk Analyst, covering for Emma. 

These secondments present a valuable opportunity for our team members to further expand their knowledge and expertise. We hope you will join us in congratulating Asta, Michael and Athena, and giving a warm welcome to Omer!

Payroll Corner

All Payroll Officers are currently working from home, but are all working their normal office hours. Payroll is currently being overwhelmed with emails, so please use the phone to speak to your contact whenever you can. This approach will sort out issues much more quickly.

All office extensions are forwarded, so you can simply call your contact’s normal number. These are published at https://finance.admin.ox.ac.uk/payroll-contacts. Not all the Payroll Officers are set up for Microsoft Teams calls, but you are welcome to use that option for those that are.

Please do not direct your employees to email the Payroll inbox with their queries. Ideally they should speak to their HR Team in the first instance, who can then contact their Payroll Officer (by phone) on their behalf.

Update from the HR Analytics team

Please prioritise the clearing of staff classification errors in the 01 – employees and  20 – casuals data quality reports by Monday 31 January.

Please re-run the reports and clear any errors in a timely manner. 

To correct a staff classification error once an appointment has been activated in PeopleXD, please follow the How-To guide: Track changes and correct records.

 
Report name Action required Required for
HRINFO01- Staff Validation 
in conjunction with
HRINFO01 Data Validation – Quals & subjects
 

Clear validation errors for all employee appointments active for any period of time from 1 August until 31 July the following year.

HRINFO01 data quality validation report web page gives additional details about the report.

Guidance can be found here:

Staff Classifications

Clearing data quality errors

 HESA
Medical Schools Council Survey
Athena SWAN
Financial year end reporting
HRINFO20_Casual Worker Data Quality Validation

Clear validation errors for all casual worker and casual teaching appointments active for any period of time from 1 August until 31 July the following year.

HRINFO20 Casual worker data quality validation report gives additional details about the report. Prioritise the clearing of Staff Classifications errors first.

Please note that the error messages relating to FTE Hours can be ignored.

 HESA

HRINFO21 Vacancy and applicant data quality four paginated reports:
Step 1 Advertised Vacancy Validation
Step 2 Applicant Status Validation
Step 3 Non-Advertised Vacancy Validation
Applicant Data View and Export

Clear validation errors for all vacancies posted externally on or after 1 August.

For additional details about the report and guidance on closing vacancies and adding missing Applicant Status history please refer to HRINFO21 Vacancy and applicant data quality report.

 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.

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 if the individual is on more than one contract), for queries relating to appointment records; provide the Vacancy ID for queries relating to clearing errors from the HRINFO21 Step 1, Step 2 & Step 3 reports; and Applicant ID for queries relating to adding a missing applicant status.

The third HR Analytics newsletter was published on 13 January, aimed at keeping you informed about important HR data quality news and actions. If you missed it, click here to read. This includes details about the following actions required by departments:

  • request for volunteers for the ‘Continuous service dates’ work stream of the data quality project; and
  • encourage staff in direct appointments to access Employee Self Service to add their equality and diversity data.

Reward updates

The Reward team is being asked to set up additional posts for staff requests that initially requested one post. Departments will need to raise a new staff request for additional posts in this instance.

Additional posts are set up using a different procedure from the authorisation of staff requests. Role analysts tend to authorise posts and the HR Apprentice sets up additional posts. If additional posts are not notified in an email within a day, you should write a reminder to the Reward inbox and the additional posts will be set up.

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.

The following guides have recently been updated:

Guidance What’s changed
Regrades Scenario Factsheet

Due to the recent number of errors/ queries, we have provided clearer guidance relating to the effective date which should be entered on both the Staff Request and the Appointment Wizard.

We also include concise instructions relating to how to record backdated compensation payments.

    

From Thursday 20 January, the sub report: ‘Successful applicants’ will show the following changes:

New fields

  • internal open/close dates – shows whether a vacancy was advertised internally only
  • applicant type – shows if an applicant was internal (a staff member) or external (not employed by the University) at the point of application

New parameters (all optional)

  • Date range – allows users to run reports on vacancies within specific dates. If a vacancy was open to anyone between the dates specified, it will be returned on the report
  • Vacancy Type – allows users to specify whether they want to see results for Internal-Only vacancies, External vacancies, or all vacancies
  • Applicant Type - allows users to specify whether they want to see results for Internal applicants, External applicants, or all applicants
  • Grade - allows users to specify which grade(s) the vacancies in the result-set must be assigned. 

The PAYDEP01 payroll costing and PAYDEP02 historic pay costing reports have been updated to include an improvement that is necessary to implement timesheet functionality in PeopleXD.

Cost values are now combined by their common attributes in order to remove any unnecessary duplication and reduce the size of the report. For example, pay code and costing elements will be combined into one row per person, per appointment, per cost centre for each payroll period instead of multiple duplicate lines caused by weekly timesheet entries.

This month's deadlines

Please refer to the February 2022 payroll cycle diagram.

Guidance on the University’s pay periods and payroll cycles is available here.

 DEADLINE EXPLANATION 
Supplementary payroll deadline Any changes which affect payroll but do not require payroll action/ approval, must be entered and approved within the department by this date in order to be included in the payroll run.
No user input Users cannot enter data into the Personnel module/People Management in the Portal or use menu options under 'Core|Personnel>Maintenance'.
Staff request deadline For staff requests which do not require grading, any requests received by this deadline will be processed by the payroll deadline. Staff Requests received after this deadline are not guaranteed to be processed by the standard payroll deadline. The usual turnaround timings for gradings apply (ten working days).
Casual payments deadline  Details of casual payments must be received by this deadline in order to be included in this month's payroll run.
HRIS Data Services users only: Data Services admin deadline Data Services payroll forms should be submitted to the HRIS Data Services team by this deadline. This is to ensure sufficient time for the team to process them for the payroll deadline and resolve any queries.
Support requests Requests for assistance associated with actions for this month's payroll deadline should be received by HR Systems Support by this date. This is to ensure that sufficient time is available for the team to address your queries.
Payroll deadline All changes which require payroll action/approval must be entered and approved within the department by this deadline in order to be included in this month's payroll run.