October 2023 bulletin

Visit the Payroll deadlines and cycles page for information about the monthly payroll cycle, including the monthly key payroll dates for People Management users.

Details of all the upcoming payroll deadlines can be found on the Payroll website.

Visit the Payroll website 
 

We would like to remind you that Onboarding in PeopleXD will apply to new appointments with start dates from 1 November.

If you missed our support session, we encourage you to watch the recording at: Record - Intro to Onboarding-20230927_095354-Meeting Recording.mp4.

For a recap of the Onboarding process and key changes, refer to the Onboarding overview guidance. Other impacted guides, such as appointing, have been updated to reflect the introduction of this new system feature.

Please remember to follow section 2B of the How-to: Create and approve staff requests - Initiate a request guide, when raising staff requests for a refill.

If you are unsure what type of request to raise, please consult the Staff Request and Contract Decision Tool. Failure to follow the correct process will mean that the post history will be lost.

We frequently receive HR Self-Service queries that can be addressed through our published guidance. The two main issues are:

1.    New starters unable to log into HR Self-Service. This is usually because the staff member isn’t on the University network or VPN, which is necessary for accessing HR Self-Service off-site/from home. Guidance on this is on the HR Self-Service webpages. 

2.    Requests for HR Self-Service account creation. There is no need to contact us to request access to HR Self-Service. Accounts are created once there is a commenced appointment in PeopleXD, with a linked SSO and work email (normally, within the first week of employment). Please only contact us if it’s been longer than a week. Delays in access often result from SSO and email setup delays.

Our HR Systems Support team’s service is aimed at HR colleagues using PeopleXD and related reporting tools. Please don’t direct staff to contact us directly about HR Self-Service issues. Most problems can be resolved using the user guides or FAQs, which cover common troubleshooting queries.

Reducing such queries enables us to address other issues more efficiently.
 

It’s recently been highlighted that jobs are often advertised using old job description templates. Always use the latest job description template to ensure that the information for applicants is accurate and up to date. We’d especially like to draw your attention to the ‘If you need help’ section, directing applicants to the right assistance. This should be:

Often, we receive queries meant for the hiring department or those that could be resolved quickly through the FAQs. Note that contact details here should be for the HR team, not the recruiting manager, as they can’t assist with most HR- or system-related questions, eg document uploads etc.

In June, we communicated a change to the process for staff moving from a fixed-term to an open-ended, externally funded contract. Departments no longer need to raise staff requests in such cases, and instead process this as an appointment change, using the appointment reason ‘FTC to Open-Ended (ext. Funded) move’. This is outlined in the Staff Request and Contract Decision Tool.

We are about to release the 2023-24 version of all the HRINFO data quality reports:

•    HRINFO01 data quality validation reports
•    HRINFO20 Casual worker data quality validation report
•    HRINFO21 Vacancy and applicant data quality reports

Run these reports monthly and clear errors in a timely manner, utilising the following guidance:
•    Staff Classifications
•    Clearing data quality errors
•    Making changes to recruitment data

For reporting data queries, email hris.dataquality@admin.ox.ac.uk (include Employee/Applicant No. and Appointment/Vacancy No.).
 

The Athena SWAN staff and recruitment data Tableau dashboards are about to be updated for 2022/23.

Continue to run and clear errors from the 2022/23 version of the HRINFO21 Vacancy and applicant data quality reports. As the recruitment dashboard will be refreshed early in 2024, this will increase the amount of data available for Athena Swan applications in Tableau and improve University-wide recruitment monitoring data.

The Resourcing Dashboard has been refreshed with data to the end of September 2023. The leaver and turnover figures for the 2022/23 academic year have been through the annual data quality assurance process and the finalised figures have been published within the dashboard.

Whatfix is a self-help tool that provides interactive guidance at the point of data entry for PeopleXD users. It reduces the need to search for HR Systems guidance on our webpages, away from PeopleXD. It is now available to Staff Request Creators who can use ‘in-system help tips’:

More Whatfix content will become available soon, including help tips on the appointing wizard and step-by-step guidance for different system processes.