March 2022 bulletin

 

Important - for action/attention this month

System downtime for Tax Year End: 24 - 28 March
Clear FTE, employee status and sub status errors by 23 March
Clear Target End Date errors by 23 March

News and reminders

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As shared in the February bulletin, we need to schedule a period of system downtime to complete essential tasks for tax year-end. The schedule for this period is as follows: 

Date Activity
Thursday 24 March

Standard ‘no user input’ period for People Management users.

17:00 System downtime begins. PeopleXD and HR Reporting will be unavailable.
Friday 25 March System downtime continues for PeopleXD and HR Reporting.
Monday 28 March System downtime continues for PeopleXD and HR Reporting.
We will let you know as soon as PeopleXD and HR Reporting become available.

All areas of the system will be impacted except the applicant interface, therefore applicants will be unaffected by this work.

Implications for users:

  • HR Self-Service will also be unavailable during the full system downtime. A notice has been added to the Staff Gateway page.  
  • It is likely that the payroll costing reports will be distributed slightly later than usual. However, we expect to be able to meet our commitment to providing these within three days of completion of the payroll run.

As always, we will aim to keep the duration of any downtime to an absolute minimum.

As many of you may be aware, Liz Mitchell, our Head of HR Analytics, will be leaving the University at the end of May to start the next chapter of her life – early retirement and a move to Northumberland! Rather than recruit externally to replace Liz, we’ve decided to create a number of developmental opportunities within the HR Systems team in recognition of the talent and capability we already have internally. Effective from 1 March, the following role changes are now in place:

  • For her remaining time with us, Liz Mitchell will focus on wrapping up select pieces of work and knowledge transfer particularly around HESA and the Data Quality and Assurance project. 
  • Mandy Zaccheo will now lead the HR Analytics team on an 18-month secondment, undertaking a review of various aspects of the service to identify how and where we can make improvements.
  • Sarah Rowles will take on day-to-day management of operations and line management of the HR Analytics team members. 
  • Tonya Iasisen-Kandola will take over Mandy’s previous responsibilities as our programme-level Business Change Manager to shape and guide IT investment in HR systems. Tonya will also lead the BAU initiative to overhaul elements of the staff request process, including the work around post creation and org structure reporting. 
  • Lois May will now become our team liaison for everything relating to Time Management and implementation. This includes supporting any remaining work in the pilot, shaping and leading on BAU implementations and being at the heart of the wider rollout when we get funding to start.
  • Michelle Williams will take on more of Tonya’s previous activities in day-to-day running of the POGs, the fortnightly patching process and general business change work that underpins our stakeholder engagement. 

Please join me in congratulating everyone on their new responsibilities!

Following the migration to the Portal in 2020 users of the People Management module were no longer able to view or update data on legal sex and the previous surname for an employee, within the Key Information screen. This created issues for departments as it impacted the ability to report on this data for various purposes. We are pleased to inform you that the ‘Legal Sex’ and ‘Previous Surname’ fields will be reinstated on the main Key Information screen within People Management in the coming weeks. 

As we collect this data via the New Starter Data Collection Form, it is also imperative that Personnel Administrators have the means to maintain it in an accurate and timely manner. The reintroduction of these fields in the Key Information screen enables this practice. As there could be sensitivities around the collection and maintenance of such information, we would like to remind departments of some related key University policies and guidance, as follows:

•    Transgender guidance, and specifically 

•    Transgender policy

See also: 
•    Gender equality
•    Gender pay gap reporting
•    Data protection policy

If you have any questions around the handling of this data, please contact Tonya.iasisen@admin.ox.ac.uk. 

Our next briefing session for PeopleXD users will be held via Teams, on Thursday 24 March from 11:30-12:20. Please note the timings have been adjusted to avoid a clash with the Registrar’s Update for Professional Services Staff.

The agenda will include:

  • HR Self-Service 
    – account set-up, access and troubleshooting
  • Work Groups 
    – set-up and maintenance
  • Team news
  • Key reminders and other updates

 An invitation has been sent to all system users. We hope to see you there!

HR Systems Support 

HR Systems Support will be closed from 17:00 on Wednesday 13 April until 08:30 on Tuesday 19 April 2022. PeopleXD will be available to users and applicants during this time.

April Payroll deadline

The main payroll deadline has been scheduled for 7 April, to account for the Easter break. Details of upcoming Main and Casual payroll deadlines can be found on the Payroll website. 

Support for applicants

A message will be placed on the University’s Job webpages advising applicants of the office closure over the Easter period with the dates as above. Please be aware that behind the scenes, the support team will be monitoring the availability of the online recruitment system.

Staff requests

Please note that University HR will also be closed during this period. Staff requests will not be processed from 12:00 noon on Wednesday 13 April until Tuesday 19 April.

Update from the HR Analytics team

Please run the HRINFO01 Data Validation 2021-22 report and clear all FTE error messages, followed by employee status and sub status errors by Wednesday 23 March. This will reduce the number of data quality issues queried with departments by HR Analytics after the extract has been taken for the annual mandatory gender pay gap analysis. Error counts in total across the University at 8 March 2022 by error type were:

Error Type No. errors
FTE errors 176
Employee status and sub status errors 111

    
When correcting data on appointments, please always follow the How-to guide: Track Changes and Correct Records.
 

Accurately recording the number of hours worked for all casual teachers, casual examiners and casual workers enables the HR Analytics team to calculate figures for the annual mandatory gender pay gap analysis. Gender pay gap reporting is a legal requirement for all employers with 250 or more employees. Information about gender pay gap reporting is available on the Reward website.

It is crucial that all departments continue to record hours worked and payments accurately, by one of the following ways:

The Reward team will follow up on any anomalies identified during the gender pay gap analysis, including hourly rates that are obvious outliers. Please avoid having to field queries by ensuring that you are providing a true and accurate record.

This is your last chance to run the HRINFO01 Data Validation 2021-22 report and clear all Target End Date errors by Wednesday 23 March. The table below shows that there has been a small reduction. Please continue to clear these errors before the March payroll is run to ensure accurate reporting of employees on fixed-term contracts.

Number of appointment records with a Target End Date error message

Percentage Reduction

8 February 2022

8 March 2022

327

285

12.8%

 

The HR Analytics team would like to thank all those departments that have already amended appointment records in PeopleXD to clear the target end date errors.

The HR Analytics team provides detailed guidance to help you resolve data errors raised in the ‘HRINFO01’ data quality reports:

  1. HRINFO01 Data Validation 2021-22
  2. HRINFO01 Data Validation_Qualifications and Subjects 2021-22

These reports are currently being reviewed as part of the ‘Data Quality and Assurance Project’ and minor changes will be made to them over the coming weeks.

Any noticeable changes to the guidance will be updated on the ‘Data Quality HRINFO01 Error Clearing’ page, so please continue to review this page in conjunction with running the HRINFO01 reports on a regular basis. The page can now be found here:
HR Analytics > Data Quality Clearing Errors

You can also email the HR Analytics team at hris.dataquality@admin.ox.ac.uk for help.

Reward updates

Increasingly as part of the regrading process, applicants mention specific roles at a higher grade that they believe is equivalent to their job. Unfortunately, few mention these roles from the beginning. Some suggest comparators when the Reward team is in the midst of a regrading or in appeal. 

We have revised the regrading form, which is available on the Reward section of the HR Support website. On the front page is an invitation to mention comparator jobs that the role analysts will take into account when evaluating a regrading. Analysts always compare every evaluation with comparators across the University and it is good to specify some of these at the beginning of the regrading process. If you do not know of any direct comparators, it’s fine not to mention them.

Please bookmark the revised regrading form for future use.

This month's deadlines

The HR Systems team has recently reviewed how key payroll dates are presented for system users and have moved to a new format, which we hope you will find useful. 

Monthly payroll dates are now available on the new This month's Payroll deadlines webpage. Please bookmark this page, which will be updated on a monthly basis. If you have any comments or suggestions, contact us.