September 2025 bulletin
News and updates
The Occupational Health and Safety department are excited to announce the launch of their new Display Screen Equipment (DSE) assessment platform, Healthy Working Plus.
This platform is part of the University’s commitment to ensuring a safe and healthy working environment for all staff. It includes an online training course and a DSE risk self-assessment to help staff set up their workstation correctly and minimise the risk of discomfort or injury while working from both the office and from home.
Healthy Working Plus is being rolled out to departments in phases starting in September. Departmental DSE Coordinators will be informed ahead of their launch dates and will communicate details to the rest of their departments.
For more information about the new platform, please contact your local DSE Coordinator or visit the guidance on Display Screen Equipment webpage.
Following the revised staff request process, we want to share the following updates to assist HR teams.
Email notifications now include:
- Post number (note: post/sequence not included due to technical limitations)
- Job Details Additional Info and Funding Additional Info (free text fields)
- Reminders about the revised process, which include:
- Create New Request: System creates a vacancy, links the post and planned appointment. Find the Post Number on the Vacancy Details 1 tab.
- Create Request From Post: Adds a planned appointment to an existing post (does not create a new post or link to a vacancy).
Updated Staff Request & Contract Decision Tool:
- Please use the updated version, which now includes revised instructions.
How to identify Post/Sequence:
- After approval, the system links the vacancy and planned appointment.
- To find the planned appointment, go to the Linked Appointments tab in the vacancy (using the vacancy ID from the email).
- For direct appointments, unlink the planned appointment as per the “Manage unplanned recruitment scenarios” steps.
The refreshed 2024/25 data for the Athena SWAN staff and recruitment dashboards will be available by 31 October. However, the 2023/24 maternity return rate data will not be refreshed until early 2026 (January/February), as 18 months must pass after the end of the 2023/24 year to accurately measure return rates and longevity.
Recruitment and turnover data for the current 2024/25 academic year is now available in the Resourcing Dashboard.
Additionally, the validated turnover data for 2024/25 in the Resourcing Dashboard will be refreshed by the end of October - earlier than the usual 15 November update. This is to support a data presentation for the People Committee in Michaelmas term.
- 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
Following our email on 8 September, we have two sessions remaining for HR staff, research staff and facilitators to attend a ‘My Development Introduction and Demonstration’. The session provides background, a demonstration and an overview of the implementation plan for the My Development module.
As communicated in the August bulletin the 2025 pay award is effective from 1 August 2025 and will be paid on September payday.
Key reminders for departments:
- Please ensure to use the updated pay rates for recruitment purposes.
- The updated casual payroll submission spreadsheet is available on the payroll website.
- Add the new allowance ‘Z - Spot Salary OUW’ for any new staff on the off-scale grades – Appointing guidance has been updated.
- Academic-related contract templates within PeopleXD have been updated (support staff contracts are unaffected).
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.
- Queries before 6 October: workforcemanagement.project@it.ox.ac.uk
- Queries from 6 October: HR Administrators should raise issues with the HR Systems Support team. The WFM team will assist during early-life support (6 October–end December).
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.
