The Academic Career and Reward Framework's 2025 ambitions

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• The Academic Career and Reward Framework (ACRF) evolved significantly during 2024

• The ACRF project timeline and visual identity (shown below) are announced

• Consultation with members of the academic and professional services communities expected to start in June 2025

The new visual identity of the ACRF

During my tenure as Pro-Vice-Chancellor for People and Digital, I have been fortunate to be involved in many interesting and challenging programmes of change and none more so than the Academic Career and Reward Framework (ACRF) project. This project grew out of work that was done to try to address some of the workload issues for Associate Professors, and the work of the Vice-Chancellor's 2023 Pay & Conditions review that provided further evidence of academic staff experiencing the dual impact of a heavy workload coupled with the undeliverable expectation to excel equally at research and education.

Although no longer Pro-Vice-Chancellor for People, I am continuing to sponsor the Academic and Career and Reward Framework project until the end of this academic year and at the last meeting of the Steering Committee we agreed an ambitious timeline. We hope that during this academic year we can complete the design phase and prepare for the implementation of the new model. As we have described in previous blogs, the framework incorporates all academic roles including research roles; the initial phase is focused on the senior end of the scale – starting at Assistant Professor, but with the intention that future phases will incorporate the researcher career path.

The new framework offers opportunities to improve the career pathways and rewards for individual academics, provide the mechanisms to organise workloads within departments and colleges, and assist in academic workforce planning at the institutional level.

In developing the framework, we have tried to take into consideration the balance of responsibilities of academic roles that include teaching, research and administrative loads and providing options for how the balance might be met, while rewarding leadership in any given part of the role. The framework aims to deliver transparent, consistent and appropriately rewarded career paths.

Last term, the ACRF team and I went out to Divisions and other groups to discuss the framework and garner feedback. Whilst we acknowledge there is still a lot of detail to go through, the initial response of colleagues was positive. I am also very grateful to colleagues from across the institution who volunteered to get engaged in the detailed design of the framework, including the creation of a new working group focused on the interface with the colleges. That detailed work is taking place now and through this term. It includes considering promotion criteria, reward structures, options for implementing the move to the new framework in due course, and of course the financial modelling that is needed to support the new model.

There will be further consultation with Divisional groups, before the framework goes through the University’s governance structure. With a fair wind behind it, the ACRF will then be presented to the wider collegiate University over six weeks in June and July. This is an opportunity for members of the academic and professional services communities to engage with the shaping of a framework that will constitute a future foundation for the working lives of the majority of University employees.

If the Academic Career and Reward Framework is to be robust, it requires your challenge and solution in equal measure – please do take time to get involved, either this term or during the general consultation. We will continue to provide news on the ACRF’s progress on the project website and feel free to engage with the project team by emailing academic.framework@admin.ox.ac.uk.

The timeframe for completing this design phase is ambitious, as the new framework touches on all elements of the existing academic roles and related policies. We hope that with your help, we can be in a position to begin implementation in the next academic year, but if your feedback through consultation means more time is needed to get it right, then we will adapt. As ever, we want to go as fast as we can, and as slow as we must.