November 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 closure: Closed from 16:00 Tuesday 23 December 2025 to 08:30 Monday 5 January 2026, in line with UAS fixed-closure dates. 

Vacancy closing dates: Avoid setting vacancy deadlines between Tuesday 23 December 2025 and Monday 5 January 2026, inclusive, as technical support will be unavailable. If unavoidable, include departmental contact details in the job advert and/or job description to assist applicants. 

Staff Requests

  • Roles needing evaluation: Submit by Wednesday 11 December 2025.

Role evaluations will pause from 16:00 Tuesday 23 December 2025 to 08:30 Monday 5 January.

In preparation for implementing the ‘Co-Workers Calendars’ and the amazing efforts to remove staff who were assigned to the ‘Core Default Work Group’, the following updates have been made:
 

  1. The following “Bucket” posts have been updated so that the Work Group field no-longer defaults to the “Core Default Work Group” option. Departments are now required to select the appropriate Work Group manually (when appointing into these post types), as they would with any other post type.  The “Core Default Work Group” option is no-longer available to select.  
  • NONEMP – Non-employee 
  • CASUAL – Casual worker 
  • CASTCH – Casual teacher 
  • CASEXM – Casual examiner 
  • CASAMB – Student ambassador  
  • AGENCY – Agency staff  
  1. The Personal Services Company bucket post (PSCPAY) now has a new default Work Group, ‘KH-Central Payroll Administration only’, which does not need to be updated.   

If a post was created using the “Core Default Work Group” prior to the change above being implemented, and you are now appointing an individual into the related post, you will need to contact HR Systems Support notifying them which work group needs to be assigned to that post.
 

 

The ‘Co-workers Calendars’ feature was released earlier this month in HR Self-Service.  This enables staff to view requested/ booked annual leave as well as other absences of staff in the same Work Group as them.

As managers sit in different Work Groups to their direct reports, we recommend that they continue to use Team Scheduler for view annual leave and absence details of the team(s) they manage.
 

  • Staff Requests pre-Christmas submission deadline: Roles requiring evaluation: Wednesday 17 December 2025
  • HR Systems Support Christmas closure: Wednesday 24 December 2025 to Sunday 4 January 2026 inclusive

Reminders

All changes which require payroll action/approval must be entered and approved by the department by the payroll deadline, in order to be included in that month's payroll run. Visit the Payroll deadlines and cycles page for information about the monthly payroll cycle.

Late submissions should only be processed with prior agreement from the Payroll team, and requests for this must be of exceptional nature. If you anticipate challenges in meeting the deadline or require assistance, contact the payroll team in advance to explore options. Your proactive communication helps us address issues promptly.
 

Please note that you should only ever enter a 'To Date' when ending an UDF record to add a new UDF of the same type. Entering a date in this field results in the UDF data not being returned in reports and can cause unnecessary errors in the data quality reports.

As part of the Internal Mobility Principles (currently being piloted across Professional Services), departments are encouraged to advertise vacancies internally first via HR Self-Service, before opening them externally if required. Guidance on how to advertise roles internally is available on the Prepare a vacancy for advertising – Vacancy details webpage. 

This means it’s now important for staff to check the Internal Jobs Board in HR Self-Service to view all available opportunities, as some posts may not appear on the public jobs site (jobs.ox.ac.uk). Please encourage colleagues to familiarise themselves with this by sharing the Internal Job Board webpage.
 

In-line with the University’s policy, any unused carried forward leave will automatically be removed from staff’s leave entitlement after 31 December. For clarification, this refers to leave that was unused in the previous leave year with an Adjustment Type of ‘Carried Forward', it does not refer to untaken leave accrued on family leave, for example, which was recorded as a ‘Floating’ Adjustment Type. 

Updated guidance

Guide Update
Transfer and appointment decision tool Replaced previous matrix with interactive tool which also includes revised scenario instructions
Employee Self-Service - check annual leave balance and request annual leave Now includes Co-workers Calendars – see item above
Manager Self-Service - approve annual leave
Manager Self-Service - record annual leave, sickness and other absences

 

We’re pleased to confirm that the issues causing incorrect research grade error messages in the HRINFO01 Data Validation report have now been resolved.

In addition, the HRINFO01 Qualifications and Subjects report has been updated to ensure that leavers with Academic Discipline Taught or Researched data no longer trigger inaccurate Academic Discipline error messages.

If you have any concerns about the output of these reports, please contact the team at hris.dataquality@admin.ox.ac.uk.