Looking back on this year’s HESA staff return

How was this year compared to previous years? 

The HESA Staff return this year has been very different to last year:

• Met the submit deadline 2 days ahead of the  2nd October deadline
• Met the first commit deadline 2 days ahead of 16th October deadline
• Met the final commit deadline 5 days ahead of the 11th November deadline
• Received the VC sign-off 10 days ahead of the 18th November deadline
• Fewer targets for improvement from HESA

There was an overall 9% reduction in working time spent on the 2023/24 return compared to the previous year, despite there being an increase in the number of records being returned (1.8% more contracts) and not all activity being captured in 2022/23. Looking in more detail at stages where we have time data for both years, the changes are even more pronounced, with a reduction of 38.4 working days or 31.8% in 2023/24 compared to 2022/23:

Figure 1: Comparable working time (days)

What made this possible?

In addition to the improvements in data capture brought about by the implementation of the 'Onboarding' functionality, the Focus led review of the entire process at the start of the year helped us establish which areas of work we could approach differently to improve efficiency:

• Development and implementation of a HESA communications plan focussing on engaging departmental users with data quality
  • The resulting efforts of departments to keying items collected via 'Onboarding': Previous Employment, Highest Qualification, Academic Teaching Qualifications, and the clinical/NHS data items.
  • Fewer follow-up questions to departments were required this year because of the improvements in data quality and completeness
  • HESA acknowledge the improvements in our data completeness particularly in Previous Employment; in fact, the targets for improvement against Previous Employment are no longer in place!
• Identified other parts of the process where improvements could be made, for example:
  • PeopleXD system configuration changes for HESA to reduce manual data derivations and data loading to module, particularly making the most of the data supplied via 'Onboarding' functionality.
  • Automation of off-system processes for calculated data items using Alteryx.

All of this had a huge impact on the progress of the return this year. We will be doing deeper analysis of the impact the changes and what lessons can be learned, but our initial analysis shows substantial improvements in many stages of the process:

Stage 2 – a reduction of 34% in working days
Stage 3 – a reduction of 73 % in working days

In addition to being able to meet the milestones associated with the HESA return more comfortably, these improvements reduced the amount of evening and weekend working in the team, enabled the team to progress other statutory work in the same timeframe, and to assist in the implementation of the Pay & Conditions Review.

Figure 2: Comparable working time (days) by process stage

What remains to be done?

We still have targets for improvement in the completeness of some data items:

• Location after leaving
• Diversity characteristics

We will be continuing with the process improvement work to ensure the Return is made efficiently and in line with the deadlines from HESA.