March 2024 bulletin

News and updates

Details of upcoming Main and Casual payroll deadlines can be found on the Payroll website.   

Visit the Payroll deadlines and cycles page to learn more about the monthly payroll cycle, including the key monthly payroll dates for People Management users. 

Visit the Payroll website

The Wellcome Trust now requires employers to confirm that no grant applicant has had an allegation of bullying, harassment, abuse or harm of any kind upheld against them for which there is a current disciplinary warning or active sanction. To comply with this requirement, we have added three new questions to the application form:

As the Wellcome Trust funds a wide range of jobs, this will apply to all applicants. 

Answers to these questions will appear on the “private questions” report, which should be run during recruitment exercises. Please inform recruitment panels if any shortlisted candidates have answered these questions positively and keep a record of the appointee’s answers on file for future reference. 
 

Are you looking for a new challenge? We're seeking a passionate individual, from within the University, to fill the role of HR Systems Support Analyst, for a period of three months! With over 600 HR systems users, you'll be at the forefront of providing exceptional systems support, helping to ensure efficiency, smooth operations and resolving technical queries.

If you're eager to broaden your skillset and knowledge within the University, please consider this role. We're open to secondment arrangements, where this is possible.

For full details about the role, please visit our Jobs pages. For an informal chat, please contact Tonya at tonya.iasisen@admin.ox.ac.uk.

  • Easter closure for HR Systems: 17:00 Wednesday 27 March - 08:30 Tuesday 2 April 2024
    • Staff Request processing on pause: 12:00 noon on Wednesday 27 March - AM Tuesday 2 April 2024 - see details below
  • HR Systems briefing: Thursday 18 April 10:00 – 11:00 (invite to follow)
  • HESA "check-in" communication: w/c 22 April 2024 (see 'HESA 2023-24 overview, actions and timelines' communication on 21 March)

Reminders

HR Systems Support

HR Systems Support will be closed from 17:00 on Wednesday 27 March, until 08:30 on Tuesday 2 April. PeopleXD will remain available to users and applicants during this time.

Support for applicants

During this period, applicants can apply for jobs online, but technical support will be unavailable. Therefore, we advise that you avoid closing vacancies during this time.

Most applicant queries can be resolved with guidance from the ‘How to apply’ and ‘Support with your online job application’ webpages. A notice on the University’s Jobs webpages will inform applicants of the technical support closure.

Staff requests

University HR will also be closed, and staff requests will not be processed from 12:00 noon on Wednesday 27 March, until Tuesday 2 April 2024. 

We’ve noticed an increase in queries from non-HR staff being directed to our HR Systems Support service. Kindly note, this service is only for HR staff managing PeopleXD responsibilities. 

For HR Self-Service queries, comprehensive guidance is available on the Staff Gateway pages, including step-by-step guides and FAQs. Please only escalate technical queries to us (using HR routes), where these can’t be resolved locally.

HR staff can find HR Self-Service guidance for HR on the HR Systems website. 
 

Once the April payroll is run, we will be taking a snapshot of all the casual payments made in April. This enables us to accurately calculate figures for the annual mandatory gender pay gap report; a legal requirement for the University. 

It is therefore crucial that hours worked in March are recorded and processed in full in April for the purpose of accurate gender pay gap reporting.

Please remember that casual appointments must be ended with dates that accurately reflect the period worked. Using an incorrect end date can have a negative impact on the HESA return and payroll processes. To help determine the correct end dates to record when ending a casual appointment please use ‘PERDEP50 Casual worker last period paid’ report and follow the guidance on ending casual appointments.

Duplicate employee records require considerable corrective work to be undertaken, with involvement from multiple central teams. A false duplicate record can impact the person’s pension and pay, result in incorrect employee history, and impact the University’s statutory reporting, such as HESA.

Please always check if the individual has ever had a record in the system by following the relevant appointing guidance, before setting up a new employee record in People Management.

As a reminder, follow these system steps when setting up a new starter or rehire:

  1. Undertake a duplicate check, by searching on at least two of the following criteria: first name, surname and/or NI number (if available). For full assurance, also check the CV for previous University employment.
  2. You must search on each criterion separately - delete the previously entered search criteria, then enter the next one.

For accurate address details in People Management:

  • Ensure Post Code Prefix and Post Code Suffix fields are filled in alpha-numeric format, without spaces.
  • Check number '0' hasn't been confused with letter 'O' and vice versa, eg Post Code Prefix OX1 not 0X1 and Post Code Suffix of 0LX not OLX.
  • If postcodes transfer from Recruitment under one field, separate it into two fields without spaces.

Examples:

Post Code Prefix Post Code Suffix
OX1 2JD
OX29 7RA
SW1A 2AA

 

For further guidance, please refer to Add and manage personal details how-to guide.

Updated documents and reports

We’re pleased to announce improvements to the HRINFO01 Qualifications and Subjects report. It now includes a check for missing academic teaching qualifications, enabling identification of relevant records where this critical data is missing.

Important reminder: Academic teaching qualifications completed via Onboarding in HR Self-Service do not automatically populate the personnel record in PeopleXD. HR teams must manually extract and update these details in People Management, to ensure staff record completeness. Refer to the Onboarding overview guidance for details about this process and guidance on how to extract the relevant data. Failure to comply with the revised process will result in poor data quality.

For guidance on how to add Academic teaching qualification refer to Add and manage personal details.
 

We have enhanced the HRINFO01 Data validation report, as follows:

  1. The report will now flag when 'Apprenticeship type' is missing for staff who are on an Apprentice grade.
  2.  The 'Immediately previous employment' error message will now flag records without data for immediately previous employment. This previously only flagged mismatches between 'Industry' and 'Company'. This has been implemented as part of our HESA process improvements, and whilst this may now result in a higher number of errors being flagged, it means that action to resolve these can be taken sooner than previously.
  3. The columns have been reordered so that high-impact errors are presented first, descending in order of importance to the HESA return.
  4. The data columns for appointment attributes have also been reordered so that the relevant data for each error type is presented in the same order as the error messages, eg Staff Classification data first, followed by Immediately Previous Employment Data, and so forth. This should make it easier to address the errors.

 

The PERDEP01 report now includes the following service details:

  • Length of Service
  • Total Length of Service
  • Continuous Service Duration

Please note that due to a difference in the calculation methods, there may appear to be a very minor difference between the Length of Service and Continuous Service Duration columns, normally with only a 0.1 difference. This does not impact the staff members’ length of service/continuous service dates, but for clarity, you may refer to the People Management record where service details are displayed in years, months and days.