October 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

 

PeopleXD now includes a comprehensive cookie consent management system designed to ensure full compliance with EU GDPR regulations. This update gives you transparent control over your cookie preferences while maintaining the highest standards of data protection.

If you’ve recently updated your cookie preferences and can’t access the Bot Assistant, it’s likely because this tool requires essential cookies to function.

To fix this:

  1. Clear your browser’s cache and cookies.
  2. Refresh the page.
  3. When prompted, accept all cookies to restore full Bot Assistant functionality.

We’re pleased to announce that the team successfully met the first HESA staff return submit milestone three days ahead of schedule. After completing a period of data assurance, the second milestone was achieved six days ahead of the deadline. The team is now focussed on meeting the final deadline in November.

We would like to thank all those in departments that helped us achieve this with their improved data quality and timely responses to our recent queries.
 
 

The Athena Staff Data workbook's staff in post, turnover, reasons for leaving, and recognition of distinction dashboards now include 2024/25 figures. Maternity leave return rates, Ordinary paternity leave and shared parental leave are to follow in early 2026. 

The 2024/25 Athena Swan recruitment data dashboards are also live. Only vacancies with valid, complete data, and a full applicant status history (i.e. Applied, Shortlisted, Offer Made – Personnel, Offer Accepted – Personnel) that resulted in an appointment are included. Vacancies set to 'appointment made' with a missing mandatory status are excluded.

To improve data availability for Athena Swan applications and University-wide monitoring, please continue clearing errors from the 2024/25 HRINFO21 reports. Tableau will be refreshed early in 2026.
For access to Athena Swan data in Tableau, follow the user access process. For queries, email: athena.staffdata@admin.ox.ac.uk.

  • Throughout September: Be prepared to respond to any queries as we undertake rigorous HESA checks and prepare our submission.
  • 26 September and 1 October, 11:00 – 12:00: My Development Introduction and Demonstration (further details below)
  • 1 October: Prepare for the October increments for eligible academic-related staff (further details below)
  • 16 October - 10:00 - 11:00: HR Systems briefing

Reminders

The final demonstration for My Development took place in September 2025. While no further demos are planned, a recording is now available for anyone who missed the sessions or would like a refresher.

You can access the recording on the HR Systems Guide pages: My Development - Introduction and demo

As outlined in the recent HR Systems briefing, all divisions and departments are now required to submit sickness absence data annually as part of the University’s submission to the UCEA (Universities and Colleges Employers Association) sickness absence reporting survey.

We’ve added a new FAQs section to the UCEA Sickness Absence Survey webpage, where you’ll also find all the information covered in the briefing.

If you haven’t already, please nominate a single point of contact for your department to coordinate submissions and handle any related queries.

Automatic increments are due to be paid for Professional and Management, Academic and Research grades from 1 October, provided they have been in their current role since 1 July 2025 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, those without a future increment date or those that have been overwritten.
  • 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 October have the correct salary approved by 23:59 on 30 September.
  • The system will automatically add one increment (where applicable) to the current approved salary.
  • Verify that future dated salary lines with effective after 1 October 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.

When correcting an appointment sequence (on the latest appointment), please ensure the “Reason” field reflects the scenario. Do not select “CORRECTING ERROR” unless told to do so by the HR Systems Support Team. Accurate reasons are essential for central reporting, including family leave data for Athena Swan, and for payroll purposes.

Guidance on correcting appointment errors is available on the Appointment, Salary, and Allowance Corrections webpages and in the new Correcting Appointment Errors eLearning module.

For corrections to ended appointments, please email hris.dataquality@admin.ox.ac.uk providing the personnel number, appointment sequence, and details of the change that are needed.

For accurate address details in People Management:

  • Ensure Post Code Prefix and Post Code Suffix fields are filled in alpha-numeric format, without spaces.
  • Check number '0' hasn't been confused with letter 'O' and vice versa, eg Post Code Prefix OX1 not 0X1 and Post Code Suffix of 0LX not OLX.
  • If postcodes transfer from Recruitment under one field, separate it into two fields without spaces.

Examples:

Post Code Prefix Post Code Suffix
OX1 2JD
OX29 7RA
SW1A 2AA

 

For further guidance, please refer to Add and manage personal details guide.

Updated guidance, documents and reports

Guide Update
Document templates (letters, forms and contracts) - create or amend departmental letterheads Managing letter heads for multiple departments
Staff Request and Contract Decision tool. To reflect recent changes in process. See item above.

 

We have now released the 2025-26 versions of the HRINFO data quality reports. Please run these suites of reports monthly and clear any errors in a timely manner to ensure robust data quality and avoid the need for any backdated data cleansing exercises.

For guidance on clearing errors visit our Data quality clearing errors and ⁠Recruitment data quality webpages.

Academic-related contract templates within PeopleXD have been amended following the expansion of scope of the Oxford University Weighting.

Project updates

For HR Teams adopting this functionality this autumn, thank you for all your hard work so far—we are nearly at the finish line. Key reminders as we approach go live:

  • Check your comms toolkit, prepare messages for staff, and signpost learning resources.
  • Complete required training: Workforce Management resources.
  • TeamSeer users: pull at least 12 months of absence history and email the WFM inbox with your termination date if you haven’t already.
  • Staff will see their new leave balances (Oct 2025–Sep 2026) from w/c 6 October. HR Admins may need to adjust entitlements (e.g. carry-forward, purchased leave).
  • Leave taken 1–6 October must be requested retrospectively in PeopleXD, and staff must also re-enter any already-approved future leave.
  • Sickness absence data will be collated in November (details to follow late October).

We are producing new end-to-end process videos for HR Admins, due in October. 

The project team will also be available to support with staff queries as you get used to the changes.

Details of current, in-scope projects under the HR Systems Programme can be found on our dedicated webpage. This includes latest updates and timelines, where available. 

HR Systems Programme projects