Article from the HR Department

Over the last 14 months, colleagues in HR and Finance have partnered to embark on an exciting project to improve the University’s staff establishment controls. The project was initiated in November 2021 with the aim to implement a budgeted HR establishment system to effectively manage our people resources and provide improved correlation between HR and Finance data with a more accessible view of the budgeted staffing establishment. This will be delivered as enhanced reporting within the Staff Connect system.

The system will enable managers across the organisation to gain a better insight into which posts are occupied, vacant or being actively recruited to at a single source, as well as showing how these fit within the total staffing budget allocated to the Division / Department, giving greater financial management and structure control to devolved Finance and HR teams. This will enable approval of new posts or changes to be devolved out to the local management teams, with the aim of simplifying the recruitment approvals process.

Following a lot of hard work building, validating, and completing initial testing of the system, we are now pleased to announce the soft launch of the enhanced reporting capability within Staff Connect. This comes with a host of new features, benefits, improved processes, and ways of working.

Soft launch commences from beginning of September and will last for a few months, during which appropriate training and support will be given to relevant managers and staff on how to use the system. The aim is to roll out the system across all areas of the University during this soft launch period, so please do not worry if you don’t hear from the central teams straight away.

Follow-up communications will be circulated imminently to the relevant teams that manage staff budgets and establishments, including user guides for the new system. Staff from the Management Accounts team will be in touch to arrange training sessions.