The UHR Chair writes......oh to take our foot off the gas  Looking back at my first five months as UHR Chair and asking myself, ‘how has it been’, my immediate response is, ‘incredibly busy’. There is so much pressure on HR practitioners within our sector. Within my own institution we are planning our budget for 2017/18 within an increasingly tight resource envelope, preparing our response to the REF consultation, preparing for gender pay publication, finalising our work on professorial zoning and on and on and on it goes. You will all have similar pressures and sometimes we crave to take our foot off the accelerator to allow for just a little time for reflection. I often smile when I hear of HR Directors recruiting for senior HR colleagues and receiving applications from individuals from outwith Higher Education who have applied because they wish to, ‘go down a gear’, from their current sector. A somewhat warped perception of the realities of HE methinks! In such a whirlwind of work, it’s sometimes hard to take time out. However, we have to strive to thrive; strive to find time for our own professional and personal wellbeing. As we hit the spring, as well as planning your summer holiday, plan some time for your own development: book onto a UHR CPD event; think about becoming a mentor or about finding yourself one and set time aside for self-learning, starting with this e-Newsletter! You can keep up to date with what’s going on within Universities Human Resources by following us on Twitter, reading one of our recent blogs, joining the UHR LinkedIn group and, personally, I always read Helen Scott, our UHR Executive Officer’s Friday ‘rapid round up’. I believe that the standard of people management practice within Higher Education is second to none. Let’s keep it that way by ensuring that we stay at the top of our game. I hope to see many of you at our Conference in Newcastle between 9-12 May 2017 or at a CPD event. Finally, please do remember to enter for one of the UHR awards. As a previous winner, I can tell you that, no matter how busy you are, entering is time well spent! Sandra Heidinger,UHR Chair & Director of Human Resources,University of Strathclyde |
Newcastle, 9-12 May 2017
All things to all people: what are universities for?
There’s only two months to go until the UHR annual conference, from 9 - 12 May in Newcastle. The theme is “All things to all people: what are universities for?”
We’ve a stimulating range of speakers including: - Gareth Jones, one of HR Magazine’s top 20 most influential HR thinkers and co-author of best-selling book, ‘Why should anyone by led by you?’
- Matt Elliott, People Director at Virgin Money
- Professor Janet Beer, President-elect of Universities UK, Chair of the Board of the Equality Challenge Unit, and Vice Chancellor of the University of Liverpool
- Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, DBE, in conversation with the BBC’s Wendy Gibson, who will also be compering the awards at the gala dinner.
For HR Directors, the Forum on Tuesday afternoon, taking the form of a masterclass, will this year be opened to include Deputy and Assistant HR Directors.
Delegates who have already booked can now make their choice of workshops, legal seminars, and social activities online. It’s first come, first served, so don’t leave it too long to book for the conference, whether as a full delegate (places still available, at a reduced rate but not including accommodation), a day delegate, or for the gala dinner especially if you’ve entered for the UHR awards.
Visit https://www.uhr.ac.uk/events/conference/ to book places and other options. |
UHR awards – deadline for entries fast approachingThere’s two weeks to go until the closing date for this year’s UHR Awards for Excellence in HR. There are four categories. - Business Effectiveness Through Innovation: for an innovative initiative led by, or with significant input from, HR that has driven demonstrably enhanced organisational performance through people.
- Learning and Organisational Development: for a learning and/or organisational development initiative led by, or with significant input from, HR that achieved culture change, demonstrably positioning the organisation effectively to meet future challenges and uncertainty.
- Equality and Diversity: for the role of HR in a successful and impactful initiative involving equality or diversity.
- Exceptional HR: for exceptional achievement by a HR team.
We’ll be announcing the winners at the UHR conference gala dinner, this year on Thursday 11 May - but it doesn’t end there. As well as the ‘Showcasing Good Practice’ day, we produce a Newsletter featuring the winners and commended entries, and many entries are publicised in other ways, such as regional groups, articles in UHR’s e-Newsletters, and as case studies in national policy work and evidence to government.
So how do you enter? Visit www.uhr.ac.uk/Awards.aspx to download a copy of the entry form, and find information about the judging criteria and the panel of experts who’ll be assessing the entries, and see some previous years’ winning and commended projects.
The closing date for entries is Friday 24 March, to be emailed to exec@uhr.ac.uk. |
CUPA bursary opportunityFor the first time, UHR is delighted to offer the opportunity to an HR professional in mid-career, to attend the annual CUPA-HR conference, this year in San Diego, California, from 16 to 18 September.
This development opportunity includes UHR funding conference attendance, accommodation, and reasonable subsistence and travel costs. Further support to visit a local university in the area is also available. CUPA is the equivalent of UHR in the USA, and in 2017, UHR will fund attendance by an HR professional in mid-career, to encourage international, reciprocal learning and develop talent within the HE sector in the UK.
There’s more information on the UHR website and applications need to be sent to Helen Scott, UHR Executive Officer, exec@uhr.ac.uk by Friday 17 March. |
CPD updateNo matter where you are in your career pathway, you should find a CPD event to help you develop your knowledge, skills and abilities. Upcoming eventsSome of our events are now fully booked. The following have some spaces available, but book soon to avoid disappointment: - Introduction to HE for Effective HR Professionals
- The Effective Mentor
- The Psychology of Managing Performance (CIPD event)
- HR Consulting Skills
- Strengthening Personal Impact (CIPD event)
- HR at the Centre of the Business
- UHR Annual Conference and Exhibition
- The Art of Influencing Line Managers (CIPD event)
- The Emerging Leaders’ Programme
So, wherever you are in your career journey, check out the Events area on the website and see how you can benefit – www.uhr.ac.uk. Many of the events are free, and all others are subsidised to increase accessibility. Regional CPD eventsMany of UHR’s regions are very active in identifying their regional CPD needs and ensuring they are met with appropriate events and workshops. Often if a newly designed event works well for one region, they are rolled out to others. The CPD Coordinator for Scotland, Alison Campbell had this to say: “ Our work in raising the CPD profile within the region had led to a number of events being planned for this year, which have already sold out, including an Effective Networking event for the Scottish HR Practitioners’ Group, a CIPD workshop ‘The Art of Influencing Line Managers’, and for our HR Administrators, Delivering HR Service Excellence. UHR’s support in helping to fund these events is a real benefit to our members.”If you have any suggestions for regional CPD activities, drop a note to cpd@uhr.ac.uk and your suggestions will be forwarded to the relevant regional Chair and CPD Coordinator. A CPD Coordinator vacancy currently exists for the Southern region, so if you have a passion for professional development and would relish the chance to work closely with the regional HR Directors in helping to identify CPD needs and design new events, please contact cpd@uhr.ac.uk. |
UHR M25 group updateEach term we feature a different UHR group from around the country, and here, Dean Morley, Chair of UHR M25, writes about the group's recent activities.
The UHR M25 group meets around 4 times per year and is generally well attended with around 20 HRDs present and kindly hosted by Kim Frost at UoL’s Senate House. Our typical agenda usually features a guest speaker, a helpful UCEA update from Nicola Carter and an 'Information and issues exchange’, where some of the current hot topics are shared and discussed - as well as providing an opportunity to share and promote ‘UHR News’!
For our guest slots, we do get many speculative requests from suppliers to come and present. One thing we have recently introduced to help manage this, as well as encourage meeting attendance, is asking for the speakers to be ‘sponsored’ by a current M25 member as we find this a useful way of helping ensure the topic will be of relevance and interest to colleagues.
Some of the recent speakers have included Mills & Reeve, who helped us think through some of the people implications of the then Green Paper and we also initiated the recent IES (Peter Reilly) and CIPD (Jess Cooper) session on 'HR Operating Models', that subsequently toured other regional networks and presented at the last UHR Conference. Jess is continuing her research in this area and keeps the group involved and updated on this - her latest avenue is looking at the extent to which the ‘design intent’ of any revised HR operating model was actually realised in practice (I guess a common theme we can face in HR, with a great policy/strategy/design falling down due to ineffective implementation…). A couple of M25 members have volunteered to work with Jess on this as case studies - so we await this latest strand of research with interest!
In the coming weeks, we have also arranged for our next meeting to be a joint one with our very active ‘HR Practitioners group' (drawn from Deputies, HRBPs, etc.) where we will have guests from ACAS attending who will help us to explore some of the typical challenges facing HR and ways in which ACAS can help.
Finally, back in November around 6 HRDs attended a session facility by Prof John Ramsden (a key associate of the Leadership Foundation) who helped colleagues reflect the way in which they face current HR challenges. We covered quite a few things on the day, including recent case studies about how UK HEIs have faced financial challenges, discussing specific institutional challenges and evaluating our leadership style to enable the changes to be delivered successfully - a particular helpful aspect of this was John taking us through the typical ‘tense’ that an academic might view these challenges from and how they could contrast from our own viewpoint and perspective. |
UHR on social media and the webUHR launched a new blog in January, and we’ve so far published four blog posts: Content is being published around three key themes (broadly covering, HE policy, HR policy and career development for HR staff) to focus on communications this year. If you would like to contribute a blog post, please contact Helen in the first instance.
We’ve set up a new UHR LinkedIn group, HR in Higher Education, that’s growing rapidly (250 members since launching a month ago), and is open to anyone within or beyond UHR with an interest in people management in HE.
We’re tweeting @UHR_UK more actively, particularly using #UHR2017for the conference and #UHRgoodpractice for the recent event, and #UHRawards for those; and following HR departments in HEIs, (and lots of other relevant accounts), and seeking followers (now heading towards 800). Work is also being planned to make www.uhr.ac.uk more user-friendly, and actively to promote the outputs and activity at the UHR conference. |
An engaging challenge?From April 2017, universities will be required to tax some companies as if they were individuals. KPMG has written an article for UHR explaining what you will need to do, how to prepare for the change and how this will affect the HR department.
Key points:
To comply with the new rules and reduce the risk of unexpected tax liabilities, universities will need to: - Review their current suppliers and identify those that are likely to be affected;
- Create a process for identifying new suppliers who are caught by the new rules;
- Modify Accounts Payable and Payroll systems and processes so that PAYE, NIC and VAT can be applied to affected suppliers;
- Introduce processes for reviewing employment status of PSCs supplied by 3rd parties (including agencies); and
- Communicate with their suppliers and those engaging them.
This exercise should be well under way, if not complete by now, but if you have yet to start, you may need external support.
KPMG have already assisted many universities in this review process.
Visit the UHR website to read the full article
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Disability discrimination - a warning for employersTwo recent EAT decisions on disability discrimination have reached somewhat surprising conclusions and could have far-reaching implications for universities as employers.
Jane Byford, Partner at Veale Wasbrough Vizards has written a guest article for UHR outlining these cases. Here’s a key quote:
“In cases where a link is established between the employee's actions and a disability an employer will only avoid liability where it did not know, and could not reasonably have been expected to know, that the employee was disabled or where its actions can be objectively justified. On the basis of this judgment an employer will not escape liability simply because the evidence available at the time of its decision did not establish a link between the behaviour and the employee's disability."
Visit the website to read the full article
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An alternative UHR blogUHR launched its blog in January, covering some serious topics. But here, Alex Killick offers a more tongue in cheek blog on the perennial problem of spam emails...
Green Eggs and SPAM - ode/odium on email litter that clogs up the inbox
I do not like green eggs and SPAM, I do not like them Sam I am.
“Oh go on try some they’re really good”, I’m sorry Sam I don’t think I could
I don’t know why they think the buyer will respond to their tacky flyer.
“But we all need to make a buck”, I am sorry Sam you’re out of luck
I will not accept your special offers; I will not empty all my coffers.
“You might miss out, you might regret”, I doubt it pal, I’m not upset
I don’t know why you think I care about your advertising flare.
“Yes but if one place you might agree, then you’ll get the next one free”
You think you can get to me with FOMO, but please will you desist your Promo.
I do not need you in my way; I will not let you spoil my day.
“Oh go on just have a nibble, your money back without a quibble”
Well maybe I should not be so hasty, you might have something here that’s tasty
“We do, we do, please please peruse, we have lots for you to choose”
I can do a one-day course, some distance learning on a horse, I can improve my presentation on a train or at a station. I can also now frequent the secret caves of management, I can learn to manage time and I can learn to make a dime. Oh and here’s a conference you must attend, the list of speakers is heaven sent. Maybe Sam you were right, I don’t know why I tried to fight. I should be open to ideas, achieve my hopes and quash my fears. And I should be more reticent before I then decide to vent, there might be something in this SPAM, there just might be Sam I am...
Oh wait, oh wait, I clean forgot, too many emails I have got.
Can’t you see, I can’t complete, so I will simply just delete.
Alex Killick, Director of People, Glasgow Caledonian University aka #SoulGuardian
(With apologies to Dr. Seuss) |
Starters and leaversWe are pleased to welcome and congratulate the following colleagues taking over lead HR roles. Congratulations to Ros Pepper, confirmed in the HR Director role at Lincoln. Welcome to Judith Whitaker (Newcastle), Richard Billingham (Aston), Brian Parkes (Queens, Belfast) and Adele Cope (Worcester). Welcome back to Gill Hemus, who has taken over as HR Director at Royal Holloway, and to Sheila Gupta, Naomi Holloway and Lesley Houfe, covering the interim HR Director roles at Sussex, Birkbeck and Salford respectively.
Fiona Ryland will be starting as HR Director at UCL at the end of April, as will Daniel Jones at Falmouth. We wish the best for the future to Susie Long, leaving UWL in April, to Kath Clarke, leaving Goldsmiths in May, to Pat Lofthouse, who left York last month, where Paula Tunbridge is currently holding the fort; to Anjum Saad at Courtauld, where Julia Andrews is covering the role; to Steph Harris at Wolverhampton, where Niamh Kelly and Jean Davis are jointly acting; and to Ronnie Magee at Ulster, where Paul Davidson is our current contact. Congratulations to Lynne Warwick, now the HRD at Bucks New University; Andy Dodman, who is now the COO at Sheffield; Tracy Wray who has replaced him as HR Director; and Kim Frost, having taken on a wider brief as Secretary at Senate House, University of London (Simon Cain is joining as Director of HR Services). Dean Morley is moving from Kingston to the Royal College of Art in April, and carrying on as UHR M25 group chair. And last but not least, welcome to new UHR member the London Business School, where the HR Director is Tariq Ahmed. |
UHR ExecutiveHR Directors should have received a notice inviting nominations for several roles on the UHR Executive committee. The process of nominations and elections will be conducted electronically, via the UHR website, but if you have any questions or difficulties, the process is overseen by Margaret Ayers, UHR Secretary, secretary@uhr.ac.uk and the deadline for nominations is 24 March. |
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Other HE updates & eventsImpact and Influence: a development programme for Directors in HE
The next iteration of the AHUA’s successful ‘Impact and Influence’ programme will start in June 2017 with a deadline for applications of 21 April.
Impact and Influence is aimed at Directors and Heads of Professional Services in HE – for example Directors of Finance, Estates, HR, Student Services etc.
For further information and application form, visit the AHUA’s website, or speak to Catherine Webb, AHUA Executive Secretary, on 0161 275 8095.
HE Shared Legal: The ‘in house’, shared legal service for HE institutions
Wednesday 10 May 2017
Woburn House, London, WC1H 9HQ
Gain a detailed introduction to the HE Shared Legal service and the experiences of its users. This complimentary event will include: - an insight into the nature of the service and its operations
- an indication of the benefits to be gained from a subscription to the service
- a chance to question current subscribers about their use of the service to date
- an opportunity to raise current legal topics of concern to the sector
- scope for informal discussion with service personnel
Lunch, tea and coffee will be provided.
Email Neil Hunter or call on 0845 108 4484 to book your free place or obtain further information. As places are limited, early booking is recommended. |
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UHR/UCEA Engagement Network contact details |
01 March 2017 
Helen Scott, Executive Director
