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Staff record 2015/16 (C15025): Annual update - Outcomes

This document provides information about the outcomes of the annual update consultation.

The notification of changes provides the detail of all coding manual changes for C15025.

The annual update process

The annual update process began with a 'request for comments' survey, which was released in December 2014. This was an open-ended questionnaire on the Staff record which received 26 responses. This questionnaire asked for suggestions for changes to the Staff record.

All responses were analysed and those which didn't require further progression were addressed in our earlier response. The remaining issues were taken forward into the main consultation survey. The consultation survey was released in February 2015 and received 54 responses. As well as informing the changes for C15025, responses to the consultation will be used as a starting point for future reviews.

Outcomes

Parental leave (PARLEAVE)

A number of changes to parental leave legislation in the United Kingdom took effect from 5 April 2015. Shared Parental leave became a legal entitlement for eligible parents of babies due, or children placed for adoption, which provides both parents with the opportunity to consider the best arrangement to care for their child during the child's first year. More information in these legislative changes is available from the government.

This change in legislation has led to the following changes being made to the PARLEAVE field:

  • C14025 – No change. The legislative change was made by financial year, and the therefore does not fit with HESA's reporting year.
  • C15025 – Addition of a new valid entry to record 'Shared Parental Leave'. Increase of maximum occurrences to 2 as staff may be on 'Shared Parental Leave' at the same time as another form of parental leave. Retain '2 – Additional Parental Leave' for this collection as a cross-over period.
  • C16025 – Removal of '2 – Additional Parental Leave' as this valid entry will be superseded by 'Shared Parental Leave' at this stage.

Atypical non-academic staff

As stated in our previous response, atypical non-academic staff will no longer be included in the Staff record. For C15025, the coverage statement will be updated to reflect the decision to no longer collect data on atypical non-academic staff.

Source of basic salary (SOBS)

We have investigated aligning the SOBS field in the Staff record with the Finance record, in order to reduce burden on both Finance and Staff record contacts. This feasibility of this alignment was investigated through consulting on this through the survey and as well as discussions with users of the data. The outcomes of this demonstrated that whilst providers of the data would welcome the alignment, there are a range of users of the data who remain highly interested in the data which is uniquely provided in this field, such as staff funded by health authorities and various charities. Establishing that the SOBS field and data in Finance do not aim to measure the same criteria has demonstrated the value of retaining the data which is currently collected in this field. Therefore we will not be making any changes to this field for C15025. We will reconsider alignment across fields as part of a major review of the Staff record.

CASCOT

From C15025, the CASCOT tool for SOC coding will be available through a link from the coding manual, rather than aardvark.

Template exit survey

A number of HE providers informed us in the initial requests for comments survey that they struggle to obtain data from staff leavers. In order to help combat this and share good practice across the sector, we are developing a template exit survey, which will be published in the first full release of the coding manual in October. When consulted 60% of respondents stated they would find a template survey helpful, despite 80% of HE providers stating they already had some form of exit survey at their institution.

HE providers have been sharing their current exit surveys with us  in order to assist with the creation of a template. If your HE provider has an exit survey you would be willing to share, please email this to us.

Equality fields

In the initial requests for comments survey, there were a few items raised regarding the equality fields in the Staff record. Following the consultation, we are planning to consult with ECU on the equality fields across HESA records. The responses to the consultation indicated the effort of collecting marital status data outweighed the benefit and we will be representing this to ECU.

Sector returns

HE providers informed us that there is still a wide range of duplicate collections of staff data in the sector. This is something we plan to address and reduce as the focus of the new major review of the staff record. The data that we gathered through these surveys will help build the knowledge base in tackling these. It is likely that more staff salary data would be required to meet the needs of other staff data collections. HESA will analyse the requirements of other collections as part of a work to reduce duplication as part of the major review.

We are in dialogue with MSC who have shared with us their plan to end the parallel collection of staff data.