Proposed updates to the Staff Record 2012/13

Introduction

As part of its regular cycle of record review HESA has over the past few months been considering issues related to the Staff Record. Work commenced in late summer 2010 and a review group of representatives from institutions and HESA's Statutory Customers has met on a number of occasions.

The group has considered data requirements in a wide range of areas such as: coding of activities, grade information, salaries, career tracking, coverage of the record, equality information, leaving information, academic subject area, academic teaching qualifications, home postcode, extra information for clinical staff and REF requirements.

In addition HESA is proposing technical changes to the format of the return to use XML and will also be implementing updated versions of both JACS and cost centres alongside implementation of the outcomes of this review.

This document presents the detail of changes in all of these areas which it is proposed be made to the record for implementation in the 2012/13 return.  Institutions are invited to comment on the proposals in response to the questions included in the document.

Proposals

XML

It is proposed that this opportunity is taken to move the Staff Record to an XML format. This would mean moving the return to a file structure that contains both the Person and Contract tables in a single XML file.

XML is the Extensible Markup Language and is a way of structuring data files that provides far more flexibility and possibilities for processing than the old-style fixed-length or comma-separated file types. XML is the cornerstone of all data standards in the twenty-first century and, specifically, is a recommendation of the Government data standards (e-gif), the Education and Children's' Services Information Standards Board and the global HR data standard HR-XML. HESA is committed to adopting relevant technical standards for data collection. The Staff Record is the last of the HESA records to move from a flat file structure to XML.

The key advantages of adopting XML for the Staff Record are:

1. By putting the Person and Contract data in the same file, we gain the ability to perform validation between these tables in the validation kits that are run before the data is submitted to HESA. The current collection method involves over 60 COMMIT-stage validation checks that could be incorporated into the XML validation kit.

2. The ability to group together fields in an XML structure will allow the clearer definition of which fields apply to particular types of staff.

3. The ability to create hierarchical data structures in XML will allow more flexibility for the reporting of multiple attributes (e.g. cost centre and activity pairs for a contract).

4. The publication of XML Schema Definition (XSD) files offers a machine-readable specification of the data structure. These XSD files also contain much of the file structure information for validation

5. Since XML files contain field descriptions for each field, it is easier to change data structures over time either through the addition or removal of fields from the record.

The UCISA Corporate Information Systems Group has discussed this proposal and broadly supports it.

There is a wealth of information on the web about XML; the W3 Schools introduction is a very good starting point.

Coding of activities

The Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) is a common classification of occupational information for the United Kingdom, developed and maintained by the Office for National Statistics. Within the context of the classification jobs are classified in terms of their skill level and skill content. SOC is used for providing career information to labour market entrants, job matching by employment agencies and the development of government labour market policies. It is used to code data from the Census and the Labour Force Survey amongst others. SOC is revised every 10 years with SOC2010 being the latest update.

Using SOC for the Staff Record will enable institutions and national organisations to make comparisons between staff working in the higher education sector and others in the economy in terms of equality, salary data etc.

Currently institutions are required to allocate staff activities to a set of aggregated SOC 2000-based groups, with each contract able to be allocated to up to three groups. It is recognised that the current categorisation does not provide sufficient detail for much of the analysis institutions and others would like to be able to perform, particularly in relation to equal opportunities. With SOC 2000 now to be replaced by SOC 2010, it has been in any case necessary to reconsider activity coding.

It is proposed that institutions should in future be asked to code job activities to SOC 2010 at the 3-digit level. This would provide a classification with approximately 90 categories. There are some categories that might never be used in the HE sector, however, it is proposed that the full SOC 2010 coding from be retained for consistency and simplicity.  Optionally, institutions could choose to code activities to full 4-digit SOC and the record would be designed to allow for this level of detail to be returned.

The one area where this straightforward approach will not work is in identifying academic staff. At 3-digit SOC level HE teaching staff are in the same category as all other education professionals. It would be necessary to use a 4-digit code (2311) to isolate them and an additional code (2317) to separate academic administrators from teaching staff in other education sectors.  There is no specific SOC 2010 code for academic research staff, even at 4-digit level and so they will be allocated across a range of codes for scientists, engineers, health and other professionals, alongside practitioners in the same professions (so for example the GP running the university health centre would have the same 4 digit SOC code as a someone doing medical research).  It is therefore proposed that an additional field, alongside SOC will be used to indicate academic activity. This will look very much like the current Academic Employment Function field, but will need to be repeated for each activity code returned (each Contract can currently include up to three activities and it is not proposed that this be changed, though use of XML will mean that where a contract is for only one activity there will be no need to return blank or default fields for a second and third).

A Higher Education-specific coding index will be developed to assist institutions, as is currently available.

Consultation questions: Do you agree that activities should be coded to SOC 2010 at 3-digit level? If not what alternative would you suggest? Will the proposed additional field provide a suitable way of identifying academic activity? If not do you have an alternative suggestion?

Grades/levels including senior staff identification

With the move a few years ago from national to local grading structures the HESA Staff Record was amended to capture the detail of local structures and map individual contracts to those structures. The data captured as a result has not proved easy to analyse and has not been able to provide answers to often asked questions such as ‘How many senior lecturers are there and how many are female?'

For use in its own salary surveys UCEA has defined a generic set of ‘levels' which equate to grades. It has been proposed that in future the Staff Record make use of these level definitions and HESA cease to capture the detail of local grade structures. This would have the advantage of providing comparative data across the sector.

The levels as defined by UCEA are in two parts. The first provides detail of staff below the level of professor, the second provides detail about more senior staff. Permission is being sought from UCEA and its commercial partners for use of these coding frames. An additional level for ‘head of institution' would need to be added for use in the Staff Record as this is not included in the UCEA survey.

For institutions that choose to make returns to the UCEA surveys, the level data will already exist in their systems. Other institutions will need to assess jobs against this new coding frame.

This proposal will also ensure that data is available in more detail about staff in senior roles in institutions. Currently there exists only a ‘senior management post holder' flag that is interpreted differently by institutions and provides only limited intelligence. The new proposals would more clearly identify staff at different levels of seniority. The current ‘professor' and ‘senior management post holder' fields could be removed from the record.

As a consequence of implementation of the proposal there would no longer be a requirement for institutions to provide a complete record of local grade structures to be held centrally i.e. the Grade Table could be discontinued; evidence is that only very limited use has been made of this data to date. It has however been suggested by some institutions that with systems now in place, there is little effort in returning this data to HESA and it might provide useful to continue to do so on a voluntary basis to support analysis, for example, of numbers of staff paid on discretionary pay points. There would be overhead to HESA in processing, validating and storing the data.

Consultation question: Do you agree that the requirement for the current Grade Table and associated fields should be replaced by recording of ‘levels' as used by UCEA? If not do you have an alternative to propose? If the option remained to continue to return the Grade Table do you think that your institution would do so?

Salaries

Currently the Staff Record captures information about an individual's basic pay only. In the past it has been proposed that HESA also capture a total pay figure including all other payments but this has never been implemented. There remains a requirement for more information on pay and it is again proposed that a total pay figure be added to the record. It is proposed that institutions return to HESA the P60 total pay figure relating to the tax year ending 5 April in the year to which the Staff Record relates as this figure will already have been calculated and should therefore be available. However, this means that the salary figure and the FTE figure, currently provided on an academic year basis will not match and so in order to be able to fully exploit this data it would be necessary that in addition FTE be provided in two parts, one relating to the nine months from 1 August to 5 April and a second from 6 April to 31 July.

It is understood that changes are planned by HMRC to the PAYE system resulting in monthly returns being made by employers to HMRC. It will still however be a requirement for employers to produce end of year (P60) statements for employees, so these totals will still be calculated. Institutions that run outsourced payroll systems are particularly asked to consider the implications for them of providing this data.

The requirement for this data will exclude atypical staff. The data will be collected on the Person table.

Consultation question: Are institutions able to extract P60 data from payroll systems to include in the Staff Record? Is it feasible to provide split values for FTE?

Understanding careers

There continues to be significant interest in tracking careers within the higher education sector, particularly those of academic staff, and the Review Group has discussed a number of alternative options for improving the Staff Record to support such analysis. What is needed to improve use of the data for tracking is additional information that adds to the uniqueness of each record and improves confidence in year on year linking. Currently some but not all records in the database are unique, that is identifiable to an individual, and so it is not possible to track individual careers reliably. Any additional data would only be used to provide a link between different years' Staff Record data and not to link to any data outside of the Staff Record and so does not necessarily need to be data that identifies the individual beyond the dataset. Note that the Staff Record is already a dataset from which some individuals can be identified and the data managed as sensitive personal data.

Currently tracking the careers of individual members of staff as they move around the HE sector relies on institutions forwarding HESA Staff identifiers, issued when an individual first works in the sector, to a new employer. This system is resource intensive for institutions (individual staff members are often not aware of the identifier and cannot provide it to their new employer) who have to request and chase provision of the identifiers, and does not produce good quality results - large numbers of staff are issued with new identifiers when they should not be as institutions do not ask or do not reply to requests.

National Insurance Numbers (NINOs) are stored by all institutions for all staff and they are also known by the individual staff member. They are passed to a new employer as part of the administrative process of starting a new job and so their capture presents no additional burden on institutions. It has therefore been suggested that the addition of the NINO to the HESA Staff Record would both reduce burden and improve the quality of the tracking. Discussions are ongoing with The Department of Work and Pensions to determine if and how this might work. Additionally, HESA is investigating the possibility that collection of just a subset of the characters from the NINO would provide sufficient additional uniqueness to the record, while providing additional reassurance to staff that the dataset remains self-contained and not linkable externally.

The alternative proposal would be to add staff names to the Staff Record. Over and above the capture of NINO, this would have the benefit of allowing linking between the Staff Record and the HESA Student Record, improving even further the tracking of research careers. The capture of names has been considered and rejected by institutions on previous occasions and as a consequence institutions asked to improve the transfer of staff identifiers. However, despite much encouragement and support, institutions have not been able to achieve the necessary improvement and, as set out above, it is known that this is a resource intensive endeavour: it is now essential to find an alternative method for tracking individuals. If it does not prove possible to use NINO, then it will be essential to add names to the record.

It is intended that the additional data added to the record will be used, alongside other data already captured (such as date of birth), to create a derived unique identifier which can provide the year on year link between records for tracking purposes. This work will be done by HESA which means that neither names nor national insurance numbers will need to be passed to any of HESA's data users, retaining, outside HESA, the level of anonymity currently available in the Staff Record. One of HESA's statutory data users may, however, request temporary access to the additional data for the purpose only of evaluating HESA's linking process.

The additional data will be required for staff with academic contracts and other staff (definition to be confirmed) who might be expected to have careers within the sector.

Consultation question: Do you agree with the proposal to include either of names, national insurance number (NINO) or partial NINO in the Staff Record? If not do you have an alternative proposal?

Coverage

The funding councils currently require HEIs to supply data on Atypical staff via HESA, in part to enable the funding councils to monitor issues relating to equality and diversity. It has not yet been confirmed what the requirements of the Equality Act 2010 in Scotland and Wales will be, however implementation of the Equality Act 2010 in England has revised HEFCE's responsibilities so that HEFCE is now only required to monitor the impact of its policies on equalities. The impact of the funding councils' policies and initiatives on equality is primarily felt within the academic staff body. In the light of this, and of the new equality legislation, the funding councils are reviewing the requirement to collect data on non-academic atypical staff via HESA (although institutions will still be required to monitor their own internal staff). The Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council (SFC) is of the view that current legislation (including relevant Scottish legislation) does not require SFC to monitor equalities aspects of the non-academic atypical staff group and is therefore minded to cease requiring this information from Scottish higher education institutions.

Informal feedback indicates that collection of this data to date has encouraged improvements in institutions' systems and enhanced the comparability of sector-wide data which was not previously possible. 

It is recognised that if collection of data on non-academic atypicals does cease that it will be crucially important to have clear and unambiguous guidance as to which staff are and are not atypical. HESA will work with the sector to improve the current guidance.

Consultation questions: Do you agree that collection of data on non-academic atypical staff through HESA should cease? Do you foresee any negative impacts on equality and diversity for non-academic atypical staff if collection of data through HESA should cease?

Equality-related issues

There are a range of changes proposed in the area of equality monitoring which relate to new legislative requirements and to the recent Census. All of the background to the legislation and recommendations is set out in a paper prepared by the Equality Challenge Unit. The proposed changes can be summarised as follows: 

• New coding frame for Ethnicity
• Update to coding frame for Sex
• Guidance on the question to be asked for Disability, but no change to the coding frame
• New fields for:

             -        Religion and belief

             -        Sexual orientation

             -        Gender reassignment

             -        Pregnancy and maternity

The new fields included in the final bullet will be optional - that is it will be optional for institutions to collect and supply this data (at least until the next review of the Staff Record) and optional for individual staff to answer the relevant questions if asked. However, even partial data will allow analysis of these characteristics at sector level and also indicate willingness of individuals, when asked, to provide the data. There are benefits in having a standard set of definitions in use across the sector to allow comparisons to be made even if the data is not collated by HESA.

Consultation questions: Do you agree with the proposal to add additional fields to the Staff Record in order to collect data about the full range of protected characteristics as recommended by ECU in order to comply with recent equality legislation? Do you have any comments on the proposed coding frames? Is your institution already collecting data in these new areas or does it plan to start?

Leaving information/End of contract

The coding frame in the current Leaving Destination field includes a mixture of codes designed to capture why someone left the institution and where they went next. However, the most frequently used code in this field every year is ‘not known' and it acknowledged that institutions find it difficult to capture information particularly about where leavers have gone. It is proposed that, in future, information about why a contract has ended be collected separately from information about a leaver's destination, resulting in the recording of better information about ‘why', which institutions are more likely to know. The destination information will be captured in two fields - a physical location and an activity. It is recognised that institutions may still find it difficult to capture this information, but even partial information is useful for onwards analysis and monitoring of trends. The proposed fields are as follows:

Reason for end of contract

Proposed coding frame:

• New contract issued due to change of job circumstances
• End of fixed-term contract
• Redundancy
• Death
• Other (includes resignation, retirement, dismissal and ill-health)

This field will be included on the Contract table and should be completed for all contracts that end.

Location after leaving

Proposed coding frame:

• England
• Wales
• Scotland
• Northern Ireland
• UK (not otherwise specified)
• Other EU country
• Non-EU country
• Not known

This field will be included on the Person table and completed for staff for whom all contracts have ended.

Activity after leaving 

Proposed coding frame:

• Working in an HEI
• Working in another education institution
• Working in a research institute (private)
• Working in a research institute (public)
• NHS/General medical/general dental practice
• Working in another public sector organisation
• Working in the voluntary sector
• Working in the private sector
• Self-employed
• Registered as a student
• Retired
• Not in regular employment
• Not known

This field will be included on the person table and completed for staff for whom all contracts have ended. 

Consultation Question: Do you agree with the proposed changes to the information to be captured at the end of a contract and when an individual leaves an institution? Do you have any comments on the proposed coding frames?

Academic subject area

The current record captures the subject of a staff member's highest academic qualification. While these data are useful in mapping the academic workforce they do not accurately answer the question which is most frequently asked, namely "How many academics are there that are active in a particular subject". Therefore, data on staff member's current academic discipline would be more useful to data users and allow better tracking of the composition of the academic workforce. Given the high degree of alignment between subject of highest qualification and current discipline it is not proposed that both items be collected, that is if academic discipline is added to the record, the requirement to return subject of highest qualification would be removed. Further, it is recognised that updating academic discipline annually would be burdensome and therefore it is proposed that the field would only be updated where staff undertook a major shift in their academic activity.

Consultation question: Do you agree that current academic discipline would provide more useful data? Would returning current academic discipline create a significant additional ongoing burden?

Academic teaching qualifications

The ‘Browne report': Securing a Sustainable Future for Higher Education proposed that data should be published showing the proportion of academics holding a relevant HE teaching qualification with further sector views sought in the recent consultation undertaken by the Higher Education Academy (HEA) on its Professional Standards Framework. It is proposed that this data should be captured through the Staff Record by the addition of a new field on the person table, for completion for staff on academic contracts and with proposed valid entries as follows:

• Has successfully completed a course in teaching in HE (e.g. provided by their employing institution) accredited against the UK Professional Standards Framework;
• Is recognised by the HEA as an Associate, Fellow or Senior Fellow (i.e. through personal application);
• Is the holder of a National Teaching Fellowship Scheme Individual Award;
• Has a PGCE in FE/LLL, or other relevant and equivalent qualification, including from outside the UK;
• Has accreditation as a teacher of their subject from a professional body;
• Has other equivalent accreditation/qualification in teaching in HE.
• None of the above

It is recognised that an individual may hold more than one of these qualifications and also that some are temporary, making data capture more difficult. It may be necessary to amend the valid entries to account for these issues.

This data will be included on the Person table. It will be required only for staff with academic contracts. 

Consultation questions: Does the proposed valid entries for this field cover all of the possible options? Is this information that is recorded centrally in institutions?

Clinical Academics 

During the course of the review, HESA has been in discussions with the Medical Schools Council (MSC) and Dental Schools Council (DSC) about the data that is currently captured by the two organisations about clinical academics. A separate individualised collection is currently made to MSC/DSC on an annual basis for clinical academics in medical and dental schools. This includes a subset of the data that is returned to HESA plus a small number of additional fields. It is hoped that in future MSC/DSC will take a data feed from HESA rather than collecting data directly ensuring that MSC/DSC are using data consistent with that used by others. Discussions are ongoing, but in order for this arrangement to work it will be necessary for the Staff Record to capture a small amount of additional data for clinical academics only. Two new fields will be introduced to the record: clinical sub-specialty and a flag to indicate if an individual holds a clinical excellence award. Additionally, it will be necessary to allow for the return of three sources of salary rather than two as is currently the case. This will be easier with the return to be made in XML.

Institutions responsible for making returns to both HESA and MSC/DSC are encouraged to work together to ensure consistent data is provided in the return. 

Consultation question: Do those institutions with medical and/or dental schools that already make returns to the MSC/DSC agree with the proposal that in future some additional data be provided to HESA to allow MSC/DSC to make use of the Staff Record in place of a separate data collection?

Clinical Specialties

The list of specialties to be used for coding clinical academics has been updated to reflect current practice and reviewed by the MSC, DSC and Council of Deans of Health. The proposed new list is at Health care specialties.

Consultation question: Does the proposed new list include all specialties that institutions would expect to be included?

Data to support the Research Excellence Framework (REF)

The HEFCE, HEFCW, SFC and DEL wish to minimise the burdens imposed by the REF. Therefore, where data are not needed during the assessment process it is proposed that these instead be collected via the HESA staff record. In particular, universal equalities data are not required for the assessment process although they are required to ensure that a full equalities impact assessment of the REF can be conducted. Therefore, it is proposed that fields are added to the staff record to collect the following items:

• Early career Researcher (ECR) status
• Research Assistant

The full definitions of both of these categories will be confirmed in the REF guidance on submissions.

It is not expected that it will be necessary to explicitly identify staff eligible (those with research in their contracts, excluding research assistants) for submission to the REF as evolving definitions and the introduction of the Research Assistant field will allow the population of eligible staff to be identified using data already included on the HESA return. It will be necessary to update the UOA field to capture details on REF units of assessment and multiple submission identifiers, the field will be mandatory for all staff eligible for submission to the REF.

The identification of Early Career Researchers and Research Assistants, together with other data in the revised staff record e.g. enhanced information on leaving, will help institutions in monitoring their implementation of the principles of the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers.

These fields will be on the Person table.

Consultation question: Do you agree that Early Career Researchers and Research Assistants should be separately identified in the Staff Record rather than separate data being collected through the REF?

Institutions own staff identification number 

At the request of institutions HESA will add to the Staff Record a field to record the institution's own ID number. This is intended to assist institutions when preparing, submitting and checking the Staff Record return. Use of this field will be optional.

This field would be on the Person table.

Consultation question: Would institutions find this additional field useful?      

Staff with zero FTE 

It has been proposed that the record include a field to identify those staff who, while holding a contract with the institution have not undertaken and work during a specific reporting period.

This field would be in on the Contract table.

Consultation question: Would institutions find this useful? 

JACS and Cost Centres

Independently of the review of the Staff Record, HESA has reviewed and consulted on changes to JACS and to the list of Cost Centres, both of which are used across a number of HESA data streams. Agreed changes to JACS have already been published and information can be found at JACS. The new list of Cost Centres will be published this summer, the consultation (now closed) can be found at cost centres consultation. These changes will be implemented in the Staff Record in 2012/13 alongside other changes emerging from this review.

Next Steps

Institutions are invited to respond to this consultation by completing the response form by 08 July 2011. Please provide one response for your institution, consulting with all necessary colleagues. Comments will be considered over the summer and the specification for the revised record will be published at the end of September 2011. First collection of the data in the revised format will be for 2012/13 and required to be returned to HESA in September 2013.