We are asking all staff to log into Employee Self Service (ESS) to ensure that their personal information is up to date via the following link: https://www.hrsystems.admin.cam.ac.uk/systems/systems-overview/employee-self-service-ess. Note that it is now possible to log into ESS on a mobile device.
In common with all publicly-funded universities, we are required to send data about our staff to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) every year. Staff information is sent to HESA in an anonymised form. The information gained from across the sector is analysed and made available to the government departments and agencies that need the data to help them carry out their functions. It is also made available (with appropriate safeguards to protect anonymity) to other users.
We are obliged to ask you for sensitive information such as ethnicity. We currently do not have ethnicity information for about 15% of our staff, and there are also gaps in other sensitive information. HESA has asked us to improve this percentage. As well as being used in the HESA return, sensitive information is useful to the University: For example, information on ethnicity is useful for our Race Equality Charter submission. Knowing the composition of our staff also helps the University plan and invest in the required support and enables us to address issues of under-representation within particular roles. Equality monitoring information has helped us to identify and make positive changes to improve the experience of some staff groups. An example of positive change includes setting up events and a staff network for staff with caring responsibilities. It is therefore crucially important that equality monitoring is up to date and accurate.
As we still have a significant proportion of staff where equality monitoring information is either missing or incomplete, we would ask you to spend five minutes of your time to update your records. Without equality monitoring information we wouldn’t know whether our policies are working or whether the benefits we promote across the University are inclusive.
If required, in most cases you can decline to answer by selecting the ‘Prefer not to say’ option.
Sensitive information can be updated from the 'Update my sensitive information' link on the ESS home page.
HESA have asked us to collect two new items of data this year:
- Sex identity: with options of Male, Female and Other. In previous years, we have had to return information on sex to HESA. This year staff have the option to choose “Other”.
- Gender reassignment: asking whether your gender identity matches your sex as assigned at birth. This information is optional and you can choose the “Information Refused” option if you wish.
We would particularly welcome the completion of these new data items. We are required to return information on sex identity to HESA and therefore if you have not had the chance to update this before 30 September 2018 then we will assume that your gender identity matches your sex identity.
The University also holds further information about you which we do not share with HESA. This information includes your home address, contact details and emergency contact details (such as relatives). It is very important that this information is up to date in case we need to get in touch with you (or a friend or relation) in an emergency. We would also be grateful if you could ensure that these details are up to date.
If, having read the user guide available on the ESS website, you have any queries about how to use ESS, please contact the HR Systems Helpdesk (chris.helpdesk@admin.cam.ac.uk)
Full details about how your information will be used can be found on the HR Division’s website. This also contains a link to HESA’s staff data collection notice, which provides definitive information on the uses to which they put our data: https://www.hr.admin.cam.ac.uk/hr-staff/hr-data/how-we-handle-your-personal-data
If you have any questions about the data we collect or about the staff HESA return, then please contact Simon Virr (simon.virr@admin.cam.ac.uk).