March 2023 bulletin

We have recently seen an increase in the number of duplicate records being created in the system. This requires 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 How-to guide, 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. We recommend you always use the NI number where this is known.

2. You must search on each criterion separately - delete the previously entered search criteria, then enter the next one.
 

It has recently come to light that a number of casual records were retrospectively ended with an incorrect date, using dates that were completely misaligned with when the individual was paid. This has had a negative impact on the HESA return and payroll processes and has created issues with our audit process/trail.

We have updated the guidance in the Scenario factsheet for Casual workers, teachers and examiners to make it clearer which date should be used.

In summary, when ending casual appointments retrospectively please follow this guidance:

• run the PAYDEP02 Historical Pay Costing report to check when the staff member was last paid; 
• use a leaving date that is within the financial year (ie 1 August – 31 July) within which they were paid. For example, if their last payment date was in July 2022, their leaving date must be between 1 August 2021 and 31 July 2022. 
• do not process any appointments with a leaving date that is more than five tax years in the past, from the start of the current tax year (ie 6 April). If unsure, please check with your Payroll officer. 

Many thanks to those departments that have cleared data quality errors recently.  We encourage you to continue to run the reports monthly to keep errors at a manageable level (HRINFO01, HRINFO20 and HRINFO21).

Target End Date errors – clear by Thursday 20th April 2023
•    HRINFO01 = 149 (as at 6 March 2023)
•    HRINFO20 = 4,534 (as at 13 March 2023)

Please continue to clear target end date errors from HRINFO01 and HRINFO20 reports to ensure accurate reporting of employees on fixed term contracts by following Data Quality Clearing Errors.

Target End Date should only be used to record the end of a fixed-term contract (not permanent or open-ended); planned return from any form of leave should be recorded off system. 

Each month it is recommended that you run the reports within the PERDEP02 FTC End Dates folder.

For active appointments refer to Track changes and correct records  (Section 4. Making corrections to appointments (including casuals) – page 9).

For ended appointments send details to hrisdata@admin.ox.ac.uk (Include Person Reference, Appointment ID and details of the correction).

For data quality help email the HR Analytics team at hris.dataquality@admin.ox.ac.uk.

Recording the number of hours worked for all casual workers enables us to calculate figures for annual mandatory gender pay gap reporting, which is a legal requirement for the University. 

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

• Input to the payment submission spreadsheet available to download from the Casual Payment Process webpage. 
• Follow the guidance on the Timesheets and holiday claims page if you are participating in the pilot to manage timesheets in HR Self-Service.
• Follow the process outlined on the Data Service SharePoint site if your department uses the Data Service. 

The supplementary payroll deadline is the absolute deadline to input late leavers, bank account changes and cost centres. It is not a second deadline for salary changes that were missed earlier in the month. Those must wait until the following month.

Every month the Payroll Team is having to chase up missing bank details for new starters, particularly for Casual Workers. Every new starter must have a bank account entered on their record in order to be paid. The University no longer produces cheques and has not done so for several years. 

We have updated the following document templates, which are available to download from PeopleXD: