03/02 - June
Staff Records – Single Replacement Record for 2003/04
Dear Colleagues
STAFF RECORDS – SINGLE REPLACEMENT RECORD FOR 2003/04
Introduction
As institutions will be aware, HESA currently collects a number of separate records about staff in institutions. The individualised record for staff involved in teaching and/or research for at least 25% FTE has been collected since 1994/95, and has had only limited change during that period. Additionally since 1994/95, HESA has collected an aggregate staff record consisting of one table returning total academic staff load by cost centre.
More recently there has been interest in information about a wider range of staff in the sector in response to legislative requirements, such that it was necessary for HESA to introduce the New Aggregate Staff Record (NASR) to collect equal opportunities information about all staff as an interim measure before review of the staff records was concluded and more long-term arrangements could be made. NASR was collected for the first time for 2001/02 and is being collected again for 2002/03.
Review Process
The review has been undertaken by a working group consisting of representatives from HESA’s statutory data users and from a range of sector bodies. A number of these had a very specific and direct interest in the data that is to be collected, including ECU, HESDA, UCEA and several of the trades unions. UPA and the SCOP Personnel Network represented institutions.
The review group met five times between December 2001 and May 2003. The sector has been consulted twice, firstly on a range of issues of principle in autumn 2002, and again on more detailed proposals in spring 2003. Over 70 responses were received to the first consultation and over 60 to the second. On both occasions it was obvious that many institutions had put considerable thought and effort into their responses.
This paper presents the recommendations of the review group for a new staff record as approved by the HESA Board unchanged at the meeting on 30 May 2003.
Recommendations for the Future Collection of Staff Data
The Board has agreed that in the future there should be only one staff record that will cover all those staff for whom data is required. This will be an individualised record. Both of the current aggregate records will be discontinued when the New Individualised Staff Record (NISR) is implemented. Institutions will benefit from the reduction from three returns to one, albeit a more comprehensive record.
The new record will have a normalised structure, using separate tables for reporting person attributes and contract attributes. So, each person record included in the person table may be linked to one or more contract records in a one-to-many relationship; there will be no duplication or redundancy of data. This structure therefore reflects efficient database management. For staff holding a single contract, this structure merely represents a split in the staff record data fields, with one table holding personal attributes and one other holding contract attributes. There is therefore no additional data burden of returning data on all contracts in this structure for staff with only one contract. However there is flexibility to allow for the reporting of multiple contracts held by individuals in any reporting period.
Collecting the data in this way will allow counts to be made of the number of people employed in the UK HE sector, together with their attributes, while also recording the details of the individual contracts under which they are employed. This will provide a comprehensive information resource for analysis purposes.
Statutory data users other than those in England, together with HESA, and other national bodies (e.g. DH, ECU, HESDA, UCEA, NATFHE and the AUT) with an interest in staff data have expressed a need for information on multiple staff contracts. HEFCE and DfES however have no requirement for data to be collected about multiple contracts held by individuals. Therefore, HEFCE have insisted that institutions in England should be able to choose to return the detail of only one of the contracts held. If an institution (in England) elects to return only one contract per staff member, then that institution will be required to: declare this methodology, apply this methodology for the whole of the institution, and apply the standard algorithm (to be published by HESA) to derive the contract details to be returned. HESA will then use the same algorithm in order to provide sector-wide analysis at a single person record level but will not be able to produce sector wide analysis about contracts. In cases where individuals do hold multiple contracts in any reporting period HESA encourages English institutions to return the detail of each of the multiple contracts to facilitate the analysis of consistent data across the UK and meet the needs of the non-statutory data users.
As the normalised data structure for the New Individualised Staff Record is novel, after a period following its introduction it is proposed to review the outcomes of returning data in this way.
Summary: Normalised record structure with encouragement to all institutions to return multiple contract records for staff where appropriate.
One of the most difficult issues that the review group has had to address is the definition of who should be included on the record. The discussions in this area were informed by legislation in the employment and equal opportunities areas and after a number of iterations the following coverage has been agreed:
- The record should include all individuals for whom the institution pays Class 1 National Insurance contributions or who have a contract of employment.
- There should be no minimum FTE ‘cut-off’ below which individuals are excluded.
- That for those individuals whose contracts would be defined as ‘atypical’, only a limited set of data will be required – primarily to address equal opportunities and resourcing issues. The definition of ‘atypical’ being taken from DTI documentation {ref.: para. 23 of http://www.dti.gov.uk/er/individual/statusdiscuss.pdf} that will be further refined in the HE context for inclusion in operational documentation for the new record, but includes some casual staff.
- That data which enables the tracking of individuals between institutions will only be required for those individuals with contracts to undertake activities in SOC major groups 1, 2, and 3.
Summary: Record to include all for whom the institution pays Class 1 National Insurance contributions or who have a contract of employment, but the range of data required about an individual be linked to their circumstances.
As set out in the section above on the record structure, the record will consist of two linked data tables. The person table will collect data about attributes of individuals, including those related to equal opportunities monitoring (date of birth, gender, ethnicity, disability), qualifications and academic discipline, previous employment and destination, and involvement in the most recent RAE. The record will not, however, include names.
It is already known that there will need to be field(s) added to the person table in the near future to record whether academic staff are ‘qualified to teach’. It is not possible to specify the detail of field(s) in this area at this stage, as government policy has yet to be finalised.
Linked to each person record will be one of more contract records, each containing information about the nature of a contract (full-time/part-time, open-ended/fixed-term), the grade and salary associated with it and the activities for which the contract exists. Detail of the data to be recorded about grade and salary has not yet been confirmed, as it will be necessary for this to reflect the final outcome of current negotiations between UCEA and the unions. However, it is looking likely that the new pay and grading structures will not be implemented until after 2003/04 in the majority of institutions, and so the new record will need to take account of the full range of current pay and grading systems across the sector for the first year, and the fields then redefined to reflect the new arrangements from 2004/05. Activities will be identified using the SOC 2000 based categories developed for use in the NASR and linked to the standard HESA cost centres.
There will be just over 20 fields on the person table and just over 30 fields on the contract table. There remain a few detailed issues to resolve before operational documentation can be finalised, in particular in relation to the information requirements for clinical academic staff.
Summary: Record to collect information relating to individual and contract related attributes to allow monitoring of equal opportunities, analysis of salary and grading issues and allocation of activities to SOC related categories.
As part of the implementation of the new record HESA asked institutions to agree that in future actual salary data could be released to users for analysis purposes, rather than banded salaries as currently. The availability of actual salary information enables more accurate analysis of the data and so leads to better representation of the results of that analysis.
Individualised staff data is covered by the Data Protection Act 1998, even though names are not included with the data. This is because the records are so detailed that in some cases it may be possible, using HESA data in conjunction with other information in the public domain, to infer the identify of the individual to whom a HESA record refers. Although salary data is not classified as sensitive data under the Act, all users are aware of the delicate nature of the data. Accordingly, all the data controllers involved (HESA and statutory data users) take extra care in the management and use of this data.
Given further reassurances on the uses that will be made of the data, and the precautions that will be taken to ensure that individuals are not identified, it has now been accepted that actual salaries can be used for onward analysis.
Summary: Actual salary data to be available for analysis.
Implementation
It was intended when the review was launched that the new staff record be implemented for the 2003/04 reporting period. Issue of operational documentation this summer would give institutions 12 months notice before the first return was made to HESA in September 2004. However, in responding to the second consultation, quite a number of institutions (and UCISA on behalf of its members) stated that they would have difficulties in implementing the new record to this timescale – they would need to start collecting and storing data to meet the new requirements from 1 August this year and could not have systems in place to do this. They requested that consideration be given to postponing implementation for one year.
HESA therefore proposed to the review group that implementation might be postponed to give institutions (and the software houses, on which many are reliant) time to prepare for the significant changes that the new record will introduce. However, at the final review group meeting, statutory data users insisted that that they did not want to wait a further year for data on the wider range of staff and that implementation should go ahead for 2003/04. Statutory users accepted that the quality of the data returned for 2003/04 across the entire new record would be compromised, for example containing a high level of ‘unknowns’. They therefore agreed to phase implementation of the new record, limiting the coverage of the record for 2003/04 to exclude ‘atypical’ staff. Statutory users were of the view that institutions should already be holding information for staff on ‘traditional’ contracts and so should be able to return this for 2003/04. Staff on ‘atypical’ contracts would be added to the record for 2004/05 but only a limited set of data would be required.
On this basis, it was agreed that both of the current aggregate records will be discontinued following the 2002/03 collections.
Summary: Implementation of new individualised record from 2003/04, but phased in over two years, with ‘atypical’ staff added in 2004/05. Both current aggregate records discontinued after 2002/03.
Next Steps
HESA is now working to finalise operational documentation for the new record for issue to institutions as soon as possible. A single national training seminar on the new record will be organised for later in the year.
| Operation documentation issued | July 2003 |
| First reporting period for new record begins | August 2003 |
| Training seminar | Nov/Dec 2003 |
| Pre-collection circular | July 2004 |
| First data due to HESA | September 2004 |
Yours sincerely
C Jane Wild
Director of Operations
