March 2025 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

HR Systems Support

HR Systems Support will be closed from 17:00 on Wednesday 16 April, until 08:30 on Tuesday 22 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. Most queries can be resolved with guidance from the ‘How to apply’ and ‘Support with your online job application’ webpages.

Staff requests

The People Department will also be closed, and staff requests will not be processed from 12:00 noon on Wednesday 16 April, until Tuesday 22 April. 

To support one of the targets for improvement set for us by HESA this year, we are pleased to announce that the field 'Location After Leaving' is now a mandatory field to complete when ending appointments. Guidance on completing this field is available in the Ending appointments guidance.

Refresh of recruitment data for 2023-24

The Athena Swan recruitment Tableau dashboards have been updated to include refreshed recruitment data for 2023/24.

We would like to thank local HR teams that made data corrections to vacancies/applicants for vacancies posted externally on or since 1 August 2023. These updates have increased the amount of 2023/24 data available in Tableau.

Maternity leave return rates and longevity calculations updated

The Athena_Staff Data Tableau workbook has been updated for the maternity leave return rates and longevity calculations at 6, 12 and 18 months after return, with data spanning academic years 2019/20 to 2022/23. This differs from the other data provided because of the potential duration of maternity leave (52 weeks). For details, refer to Athena SWAN data provision.

Following the upgrade to the Cority system used in Occupational Health completed in December 2024, the way correspondence is sent to clients and HR was changed. All appointment confirmations, certificates and reports are now sent from the Cority system via the department’s enquiries mailbox enquiries@uohs.ox.ac.uk. 

When the correspondence contains medical information, it will be password protected to protect the contents. A separate email will be sent containing the password. The format of this email has been updated following feedback to prevent it from being sent to spam folders. Please also add enquiries@uohs.ox.ac.uk to your safe senders list.

For more information please visit https://occupationalhealth.admin.ox.ac.uk/article/upgrade-to-occupational-health-it-system 

  • System downtime for Tax Year End: Monday 24 - Wednesday 26 March 2025
  • Easter closure for HR Systems: 17:00 Wednesday 16 April - 08:30 Tuesday 22 April 2025
  • Staff Request processing on pause: 12:00 noon on Wednesday 16 April - Tuesday 22 April 2025 
  • HR Systems briefing: Tuesday 29 April 2025 - 10:00-11:00 - invite to follow

Reminders

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.

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 guide.

Project updates

The WFM Project team are delighted to share with you the progress of the implementation of the additional functionalities within PeopleXD: 

We are excited to announce that GLAM will be going live with the rostering functionality of PeopleXD from 7 April 2025.

A small group of staff helped us to test the Mobile App and review our marketing and training materials back in February. We are pleased to say all went well, with no big changes needed or issues raised. The Mobile App will be going live for all staff on the 28 April. Details of the App’s functionalities are detailed below. 

For all staff:  

  • Access and update your personal details: Easily update your contact information, emergency contacts, and other personal details anytime, anywhere.  
  • Access your payslips: View and download your payslips and P60s directly from the app.

For staff in departments who have gone / will soon be going live with Leave and Absence:  

  • View and book leave, complete absence data initiated by HR or your Line Manager, and view absence information  
  • View roster information (for relevant departments) 

Departments part of Wave 2 for Leave and Absence are set to go live in April. Staff will be receiving communications toolkits and details of training this week, to help prepare for the time leading up to going live. For those departments going live, remember to reach out to your Implementation Officers or any of the team via email to workforcemanagement.project@it.ox.ac.uk, with any questions or advice you need. The team are happy to help and are here to support you. 

We appreciate how busy September and October are for us all at the University. We have listened to these concerns and are planning for a July go live for the next phase of our Leave and Absence rollout, with some departments already committed who are unable to go live in April or October. Stay tuned for more updates as we finalise the timeline and do reach out to us if you would like to go live in July or understand more about how a pre-October launch would work.  
 

There has been a delay to the rolling out of the timesheets functionality, as the project team undertake further exploratory work. The team have been reaching out to departments to help further understand individual requirements. The project team really appreciate those of you who have already completed the survey that has been sent out. The deadline to complete the survey is Wednesday 2 April so please do take the time to complete it by this date so your information can be incorporated into our planning.
 
As always, please send any questions you have about the WFM project to workforcemanagement.project@it.ox.ac.uk 
 

Details of current, in-scope projects under the HR Systems Programme can be found on our dedicated webpage. This includes latest updates and timelines, where available. Note: These pages are updated regularly.

HR Systems Programme projects

Updated user guides, documents and reports

Guide Update
HR Self-Service user guides webpage Improved navigation for staff and managers to find relevant guidance sections.
Leave balances - What is a balance and when do I assign one? New balances have been introduced for those using online timesheets for casual staff as part of the pilot.
Data Quality Clearing Errors webpage Updated to include new validations added to the HRINFO01 Data Validation report.

 

The HRINFO01 Data Validation report now includes two additional checks for Research grade and staff classification mismatches. Please run the HRINFO01 suite of reports to identify and clear errors in the ‘Research grade errors’ column:

  • Appointment is coded to Sub Category AP (Research Staff) or AR (Research Fellow) but is not on a Research grade (RS, D, E, MCR, MCF).
  • Appointment is on a Research grade (RS, D, E, MCR, MCF) but is not coded to Sub Category AP (Research Staff) or AR (Research Fellow).

Note that appointments with Sub Category AC – ACADEMIC on the following grades are exempt from this check:

  • D35 - RSIV
  • D90 – Off-scale Researchers
  • D94 – Royal Society Professors
  • E82 - Senior Clinical Researchers

Any grade corrections must be made before the appointment ends to avoid payroll issues. We understand that this new check has resulted in errors being flagged that cannot be corrected when the appointment has ended. Moving forward, please correct research grade/staff classification mismatches for existing, current appointments before the appointment is ended.
 
For guidance on correcting errors please refer to: Clearing Data Quality Errors and Staff Classification

We have updated the following document template, which is available to download from PeopleXD:  

Guide Update
Apprenticeship learner agreement Small update to the wording in the duration paragraph of the learner agreement