Pay & Conditions review update

It was great to hear from all the colleagues who got involved in the work of the Pay & Conditions review last term: by sending in feedback, joining a focus group or coming to the Town Hall event. Along the way, we heard from academic and professional services and support colleagues in all divisions, and at all pay grades and career stages. All that input, together with a raft of supporting data, including the Staff Experience Survey and benchmarking analysis, is informing our recommendations for improving how the University invests in and supports its people, which we look forward to sharing with you before long. 

The last couple of months have been a particularly busy time for the Pay & Conditions Steering Committee. We met in mid-December to discuss the emerging report and I am pleased to say we submitted a full draft to the Vice-Chancellor on schedule, with our key findings and recommendations, on 20 December. We have since met again to review the draft and that will now progress to Council on 5 February, ahead of discussion at a Council away day on 4 March.  

I know a lot of colleagues, like me, joined the ‘Conversation with the VC’ event held at the Old Road Campus in Headington on 10 January, where the Vice-Chancellor gave some positive initial reflections on our progress to date and the panel answered several questions relating to pay and conditions. A recording of that discussion can be found here, if you missed it. 

What’s next? 

After the Council meeting in February, Council members, including our heads of division, Pro-Vice-Chancellors and the Chair and Vice-Chair of the Conference of Colleges, will have time to reflect on the contents of the report and discuss its implications for different parts of the University with the Vice-Chancellor directly. Council will then meet to discuss the review’s findings and recommendations in full at their away day on 4 March. Assuming the recommendations gain Council approval, we will then move to plan their implementation, as part of which we will be able to start sharing initial outcomes of the review with staff via the Pay & Conditions webpages, updates in the University Bulletin and various other means. 

A collective effort 

Work on the Pay & Conditions review is certainly not going to wind down; although much has been achieved since the committee first met in June 2023, we know there is a great deal yet to do in the months and years ahead to realise our aspirations. This will require a collective effort from colleagues across the University and we hope Steering Committee members will continue to play a role throughout this academic year in how the programme of future work develops. 

Along with other related streams of work, some of this will dovetail with outcomes of the Academic Career & Reward Framework project, which I am also closely involved in and which I discussed in my Bulletin blog on 11 December, and with the Strategic Review of Professional Services that the Registrar is leading (see Gill Aitken’s Bulletin blog from 27 November). There will be plenty of opportunities to get involved in the Academic Career & Reward Framework project this term, and initial findings of the Strategic Review are currently being discussed with leadership teams and governance groups across the University. 

Find out more 

Our project team have been keeping the Pay & Conditions webpages on the HR Support website updated with copies of all-staff updates, committee meeting papers and dates, and a set of more than 30 Frequently Asked Questions. More information about this review will be shared on the webpages next month. 

We hope to provide a further update on progress and next steps in February, so watch this space. In the meantime, you can get in touch with the Pay & Conditions project team at payandconditions@admin.ox.ac.uk.