What are their employment conditions?

HE Staff Data What are their employment conditions?

17 February 2022

The impact of COVID-19 on 2020/21 Staff data was minimal.
Expand this box for more information.

HESA considered performing a detailed analysis of potential COVID-19 impacts on this year's Staff record. However, since the Staff data is limited in scope, many of the hypotheses that one might wish to test would not be visible to us.

For example, press reports from 2020 and 2021 suggested that the switch to online delivery of courses resulted in significant additional effort for many staff. This hypothesis is difficult to test because HESA staff data does not permit straightforward linking of Staff records between years and contains very limited data on hours of work.

An initial analysis of the Staff data showed similar patterns to previous years and our analysis of Student data found limited impacts of COVID-19. We therefore decided not to undertake an in-depth analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on this year's Staff data.

In the table below, use the buttons to show HE provider data by sex, source of basic salary, academic employment function, terms of employment or contract level.

Key fact: 32% of academic staff were employed on fixed-term contracts in 2020/21.

Table 7 - HE academic staff by HE provider and employment conditions

Academic years 2014/15 to 2020/21

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What’s the difference between Professor and a Senior academic contract level?

Every contract is coded with a contract level. The Professor level (F1) is defined as “Senior Academic appointments which may carry the title of Professor but which do not have departmental line management responsibilities.”

Other senior contracts (codes A to E) include leadership and management responsibilities. These contracts may also be held by people who hold the Professor title.

See the Contract levels definition for more detail.

Key fact: 10% of academic staff were professors in 2020/21.

Table 9 - HE academic staff by source of basic salary and contract levels

Academic years 2014/15 to 2020/21

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The following table shows data about the number of staff on an hourly paid contract. This can be filtered by various data fields including zero hours contract.

What is a zero hours contract?

A zero hours contract is a contract between an employer and a worker where the employer is not obliged to provide any minimum working hours, and the worker is not obliged to accept any work offered.

Figure 3 - All staff (excluding atypical) by mode of employment and hourly paid marker

Academic years 2020/21

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