November 2021 bulletin

 

Important - for action/attention this month

Early December Payroll deadlines
Clear errors from the data quality reports
Shortlisting form reinstated

News and reminders

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Following a fix to the system it is now possible to generate the shortlisting form from Recruitment.

The issue with merging applicants should now be resolved for vacancies created after 3 August 2021. For vacancies that were already in progress on or before 3 August 2021, please follow the alternative shortlisting method listed under item 3 of the Common Queries page.

Previously, we had two different versions of the shortlisting form available:

  • standard version - designed to accommodate seven essential and seven desirable selection boxes; and
  • extended version - designed to accommodate 14 of these selection criteria boxes.

To simplify this, only the extended form is now available in the system.

Please refer to the user guide for further information on producing documents in PeopleXD.

Please remember to direct your new appointees to HR Self-Service for the gathering of their equality and diversity details.

An equality and diversity data collection form must only be produced/sent in exceptional circumstances, where the staff member won’t have access to HR Self-Service.

 

The HR Self-Service welcome email sent to new staff, instructs them to check and update their personal details, including their diversity information. Having this data enables us to uphold our commitment to fostering an inclusive culture which promotes equality, values diversity and maintains a working, learning and social environment in which the rights and dignity of all staff and students are respected. We also require some of this data for reporting purposes, eg the University’s annual Equality Report, and the HESA and Athena SWAN submissions.

If you have any questions about this process, please email hr.systems@admin.ox.ac.uk. 

Since the pilot launched in mid-October, the in-system support tool; Whatfix, has been trialled by over 50 PeopleXD users. The 'Self Help' function has been the most commonly used feature, enabling users to search and access system guidance easily, from within PeopleXD. 'Smart tips' (helpful hints available when completing certain fields within PeopleXD), have also been provided for system processes where the pilot team require the most help.

According to the UAS HR team, the use of Whatfix has decreased the support required by new starters, as guides are now more easily accessible to users.  

We are continuing to work with the pilot teams to maximise the benefits of this new functionality in preparation for its wider release and look forward to rolling out Whatfix more widely soon!

At our last HR Systems Briefing, a number of you expressed an interest in receiving additional support with the generation of documents in PeopleXD.

On Wednesday 24 November, we will be holding an online session focused on these processes. 

The session will cover: 

  • A demonstration of how to produce documents in both Recruitment and People Management;
  • Understanding the system prompts;
  • A demonstration of setting up letterheads;
  • Troubleshooting common issues; and
  • Q&A

An email invitation has been sent to all system users. If you haven't received this, please get in touch.

This session will be recorded. If you are unable to attend, contact us with the questions you would like answered during the session.

We are pleased to welcome the following new members to our Product Ownership Groups (POGs);

  • Elise Cochrane (People Management POG); 
  • Elena McPhilbin (Business Sponsor, People Management POG); and
  • Sibel Ruc (Recruitment POG)

We also thank outgoing members; Audrey Cahill, Russell Morris and Amira Harb, who have now left the University.

We are always looking for new voices to join our POGs, to ensure representation from all areas of the University and to enable regular users to influence system developments. We are still looking for further members to join the Time Management POG. If you are a user of the Time Management module (either as part of the recent pilot, or a long-standing user of the Back Office for sickness absence) and would like to get involved, please contact Tonya Iasisen-Kandola.

A new in-application feedback feature will now display for users at random, based on a set of rules defined by the supplier, when they log in to the Portal.

Users will be asked the optional question: “How likely are you to recommend this product or service to a friend or co-worker?” from which they can select a score between 0-10, and an option to provide additional feedback. The information collected will be analysed by the supplier and used to enhance the product and user experience.

HR Systems, including HR Systems Support, will be closed for the Christmas break from 16:00 on Wednesday 22 December 2021 until 08:30 on Tuesday 4 January 2022. This period includes the UAS fixed closure dates.

Closing vacancies

To ensure that applicants have access to technical support should they need it, please try to avoid closing any vacancies for the period Thursday 23 December 2021 to Monday 3 January 2022 inclusive.

Staff requests 

If roles that do not need evaluation are submitted by the end of Friday 17 December 2021 they will be authorised before the Christmas closure. The evaluation of roles will end on Wednesday 22 December 2021 and will recommence on Tuesday 4 January 2022. 

Payroll Corner

Payday in December is on Wednesday 22 December, a week earlier than the usual end-of-month date. This means that there will be an earlier Main payroll deadline, on Monday 6 December. 

The deadline for Casual Payroll is Thursday 2 December.

The Payroll team will be working to tight deadlines, so will not be able to accommodate any late requests in that month. Payroll also ask that users input and approve as many changes as possible well before the deadline, to enable them to complete their work on time. 

For further details of upcoming deadlines, please see the December 2021 Payroll Cycle Diagram.

Update from the HR Analytics team

Please run HRINFO data quality reports; 01 – employees, 20 – casuals and 21 - recruitment at least monthly and clear any errors in a timely manner.

If we contact you concerning errors that need to be cleared from the 2020-21 data quality report, please ensure you run the earlier version of the report as soon as possible while they are still shared with you.

Report name Action required Required for
HRINFO01- Staff Validation 
in conjunction with
HRINFO01 Data Validation – Quals & subjects

Clear validation errors for all employee appointments active for any period of time from 1 August until 31 July the following year.

HRINFO01 data quality validation report web page gives additional details about the report.

Prioritise the clearing of staff classification errors first.

Guidance can be found here:

Staff Classifications

Clearing data quality errors

 HESA
Medical Schools Council Survey
Athena SWAN
Financial year end reporting
HRINFO20_Casual Worker Data Quality Validation

Clear validation errors for all casual worker and casual teaching appointments active for any period of time from 1 August until 31 July the following year.

HRINFO20 Casual worker data quality validation report gives additional details about the report. Prioritise the clearing of Staff Classifications errors first.

Please note that the error messages relating to FTE Hours can be ignored.

 HESA

HRINFO21 Vacancy and applicant data quality four paginated reports:

Step 1 Advertised Vacancy Validation
Step 2 Applicant Status Validation
Step 3 Non-Advertised Vacancy Validation

Applicant Data View and Export

Clear validation errors for all vacancies posted externally on or after 1 August.

For additional details about the report and guidance on closing vacancies and adding missing Applicant Status history please refer to HRINFO21 Vacancy and applicant data quality report.

 HESA
Athena SWAN
Race Equality Charter

            

For guidance on making the indicated changes to clear the data anomalies highlighted red and amber in the report, please refer to data quality in the first instance.

If you need assistance making data changes or running any of the above reports contact HR Systems Support.

Contact the HR Analytics team if you have any queries relating to these reports. Give the Person Reference number, (and appointment ID if the individual is on more than one contract). For queries relating to appointment records; provide the Vacancy ID for queries relating to clearing errors from the HRINFO21 Step 1, Step 2 & Step 3 reports; and Applicant ID for queries relating to adding a missing applicant status.

The HR Analytics team would like to remind departments that in accordance with the Transfer and appointment decision matrix all Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 (TUPE) transfers in should be notified to your HR Business Partner in Central Human Resources and our team via UAS HR Reporting. There is no need to raise a staff request.

Please complete the relevant sections of the TUPE form, with guidance from your HR Business Partner, and return this password-protected to Data Services.

It is essential that TUPE transfers in are initially processed in PeopleXD People Management by Data Services to prevent corrections needing to be made.

See Transferring staff into or out of the university for more details about TUPE transfers.

The Athena SWAN staff data Tableau dashboards have been updated for 2020/21 with the exception of recognition of distinction success rates by sex and year.

The Athena SWAN recruitment data Tableau dashboards have also been updated for 2020/21. Thank you to those departments who made data updates and corrections to vacancies/applicants for vacancies posted externally on or since 1 August 2020. Please continue to run and clear errors from the 2020/21 version of the HRINFO21 report. (For tips on how to do this refer to the table in the data quality reports section.) This will increase the amount of data available for Athena SWAN applications in Tableau, which will be refreshed early in 2022 for 2020/21, and improve University-wide recruitment monitoring data.

These can be found at: https://bits.uas.ox.ac.uk/#/workbooks. If you require access to the Athena SWAN data in Tableau please follow the user access process.  If you have Athena SWAN data queries please contact Tim Harris on athena.staffdata@admin.ox.ac.uk.

Reward updates

The Reward team is receiving an increasing number of requests to underfill appointments. For these to be processed, recruitment advertisements need to have mentioned the potential to fill the post at a lower grade.

Generally, appointments are made at a lower grade because the new recruit does not have some of the specified skills or experience required by the post. The post remains at the substantive grade and an appointment is made at a lower grade. Please contact the Reward team to lower the grade.

Departments need to create a development plan so that the appointee may reach the substantive grade through training, during the contract of the post.  A new staff request should be submitted, based on the substantive post, when the training is completed. (Please refer to the Staff Request and Contract Decision Matrix, section 13.) See also: Scenario factsheet: Underfills.

New/updated documents and reports

The New Starter Data Collection form has been updated and is now available in both Recruitment and People Management. Changes to the form include:

  • an updated email address for the Equality and Diversity team;
  • fixing to some formatting; and
  • updates to facilitate data collection.

Please ensure that you use the latest version of these forms.

The PERDEP16 HR Self-Service Work Groups report has been updated to include a filter for ‘Employee Status’. 

This month's deadlines

Please refer to the December 2021 payroll cycle diagram.

Guidance on the University’s pay periods and payroll cycles is available here.

 DEADLINE EXPLANATION 
Supplementary payroll deadline Any changes which affect payroll but do not require payroll action/ approval, must be entered and approved within the department by this date in order to be included in the payroll run.
No user input Users cannot enter data into the Personnel module/People Management in the Portal or use menu options under 'Core|Personnel>Maintenance'.
Staff request deadline For staff requests which do not require grading, any requests received by this deadline will be processed by the payroll deadline. Staff Requests received after this deadline are not guaranteed to be processed by the standard payroll deadline. The usual turnaround timings for gradings apply (ten working days).
Casual payments deadline  Details of casual payments must be received by this deadline in order to be included in this month's payroll run.
HRIS Data Services users only: Data Services admin deadline Data Services payroll forms should be submitted to the HRIS Data Services team by this deadline. This is to ensure sufficient time for the team to process them for the payroll deadline and resolve any queries.
Support requests Requests for assistance associated with actions for this month's payroll deadline should be received by HR Systems Support by this date. This is to ensure that sufficient time is available for the team to address your queries.
Payroll deadline All changes which require payroll action/approval must be entered and approved within the department by this deadline in order to be included in this month's payroll run.