July 2025 bulletin

Automatic salary increments for Support Staff are applied from 1 August, provided they have been in their current role since 1 May 2024 or earlier. To ensure the correct rate of pay is implemented,  please follow these steps:

1.    Verify increment dates:

• Run the ‘Increment Due Date’ report to identify staff without an increment due date, those with the ‘increment on hold’ flag, or those without a future increment date.
• Review these records to confirm their accuracy and make necessary amendments. 

2.    Approved correct salary prior to the increment date:

• Ensure employees due for an increment on 1 August have the correct salary approved by 23:59 on 30 July.
• The system will automatically add one increment (where applicable) to the current approved salary.
• Verify that future dated salary lines with effective after 1 August 2025 are set at the correct scale point the employee post-increment.
• Use the ‘Staff in Post’ report to check current salary data and the ‘Monthly Personnel Changes’ report to review future dated salary changes and their approval status.

This is a final reminder that the new data extract for Athena Swan dashboards (in Tableau) will be taken on 31 July.

Please ensure that you run the report and review the data in the HRINFO02_AthenaSWAN Potential Staff Data report and make any necessary corrections before this date. For more details, refer to the May 2025 bulletin. For access to People Data Dashboards, including Athena Swan, please visit: https://hrsystems.web.ox.ac.uk/request-access-to-tableau.

For assistance with data queries, email hris.dataquality@admin.ox.ac.uk.
 
 

On 15 July there were 444 staff classification mismatch errors in the HRINFO20 Casual Data Validation report. These errors reflect mismatches between Category and Sub Category fields and must be corrected as a priority. Accurate classification is essential, as these fields determine whether a casual appointment is included in the HESA staff return. Resolving these errors is a prerequisite before addressing other data issues in the report, all of which must be cleared by 8 August 2025.
 
We have already been in contact with some departments regarding these errors. If you require further guidance in addition to that given on the Staff Classification tool and matrix and data quality clearing errors web pages, please email hris.dataquality@admin.ox.ac.uk.
 

To ensure accurate Athena Swan reporting, please clear all errors from Step 1 and Step 2 in the HRINFO21 Vacancy and applicant data quality reports by 29 August 2025, at the very latest. This may involve the need to add applicant status history data by following the guidance on How to add missing applicant statuses.

Only vacancies with the status 'Closed' and with complete and valid recruitment data are reported in the Athena Swan recruitment dashboards and for recruitment monitoring purposes.
 
Further notes:

• Where vacancies resulted in an appointment being made, only closed vacancies with complete applicant status history (ie Applied; Shortlisted; Offer Made - Personnel; Offer Accepted - Personnel) are included.
• Any vacancies set to 'appointment made' where a mandatory stage of applicant status history is missing are not included.
• The ‘Applicant Statuses’ section of Manage recruitment statuses and events illustrates the mandatory applicant statuses in a table by recruitment stage.

For help with any data errors or queries, please email hris.dataquality@admin.ox.ac.uk.

Please continue to record Reward and Recognition Scheme nomination details, (for all awards), following the Reward and Recognition Scheme guide. Please refer to May 2025 bulletin for guidance.

To support the rollout of the new Standardised Job Descriptions (SJDs), we’ve launched a dedicated Teams channel where HR, Recruitment colleagues, and Hiring Managers can post questions related to the SJDs.

The Reward Team will review and respond to questions daily between 10:00am and 11:00am. All discussions will help shape a formal FAQ, to be published on the Reward webpages.

This support is available until October 2025, after which the channel will become part of a broader Grading Community of Practice.

We encourage you to join the conversation and share your questions: Standardised JDs launch - questions and answers

For more information please visit: Standardised job descriptions | HR Support

As communicated in last months bulletin, the new staff request approval process is due to go live on 29 July 2025. Please see a reminder of the key dates below: 

The updated guidance has now been published and should be followed from next Tuesday.