Information about national issues

What the disputes are about

There are ongoing national disputes throughout the higher education sector, relating to national pay negotiations and working conditions.

These are complex matters and the national issues are of concern to us in Sheffield as well as across the higher education sector.

Pay

• Read: What we’re doing about this at Sheffield

On pay, we are one of around 150 employers that take part in national pay negotiations through our national employers representatives, the Universities & Colleges Employers Association (UCEA). We know that our local trade union colleagues support our continued participation in these collective arrangements.

Following the pay negotiations in August 2022, alongside other higher education institutions, we implemented UCEA’s final pay offer of at least a 3 per cent increase, with increases of up to 9 per cent for colleagues on grades 1 to 5.5. 

This year we implemented the 2023-24 pay award from February 2023, with increases of £1,000 or two per cent, whichever is greater, on all points on the national pay spine. Further increases of up to another three per cent will follow in August 2023. 

This year’s award adopts a two-stage approach so that staff receive an increase as soon as possible during this period of increased cost of living pressures.

While the issues raised under the pay and working conditions mandate can only be resolved at a national level, we continue to make progress locally, including making a number of improvements to staff pay, leading to significant uplifts. Scroll down to read about these.

Working conditions

• Read: What we’re doing about this at Sheffield

The dispute on working conditions relates to university gender, ethnic and disability pay gaps, employment contracts, and workloads.

What we’re doing about the disputes

We continue to work closely with our trade union colleagues locally, with the aim of helping to make Sheffield a great place to work and study.

Pay

• In addition to the nationally negotiated pay award, we have implemented changes to the University of Sheffield Grading Scheme, following collective negotiation with our local trade unions.
• We have invested an additional £6.3 million per annum into staff salaries, leading to an increase in pay of up to 6.5 per cent for a large majority of colleagues. These changes were also implemented in the August 2022 payroll.
• We commit to undertaking a further review of the grade boundaries in the 2023-24 academic year, to conclude by 31 July 2024. 
• To further increase pay for staff, we have invested an additional £8.4 million for the remainder of the 2022-23 financial year. In October 2022 we announced that a supplement of up to £1,000 (pro rata for part time staff), is being paid across ten months (until July 2023) for all staff. To provide the equivalent to casual workers, an additional £0.55 is being paid for each hour they work.
• In line with our commitment to our campus trade unions last year, combined with the national pay award, all University staff will be paid at least £11.03 per hour, which exceeds the current Real Living Wage, £10.90 per hour. As a result of these pay increases, the supplements paid to staff earning less than £10 per hour are no longer required.
• Where national pay negotiations fail to match the Living Wage Foundation recommended level, we commit to supplementing the pay of staff to ensure they are paid at least the rate recommended by the Living Wage Foundation. This supplement would continue until the national pay negotiations increase the values of the pay spine above the rate recommended by the Living Wage Foundation.
• The national pay award is just one component of our reward package. Our total reward offer includes normal incremental pay progression (ranging from 1.5 per cent to 3 per cent) for eligible colleagues in January each year, opportunities for accelerated pay progression for exceptional contribution, recognition awards for all staff, and a wide range of other benefits and offers.

Improving our working environment

Gender equality

Our vision for the University of Sheffield includes a commitment to ‘identify and tackle patterns of inequality, to ensure that staff and students can achieve their full potential’. This commitment is at the heart of our ambition to eliminate our Gender Pay Gap.

We take a partnership approach to our gender pay gap analysis and action planning, working closely with senior academic and professional services colleagues, campus trade unions through our joint Gender Pay Gap Working Group, our Gender Equality Committee and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee. Together, we are embarking on a programme of work to deliver a target for Gender Pay Gap reduction of five percentage points by 2025. We will review progress against this target annually and increase it if we are able to meet it before 2025.

Local action plans for faculties and professional services are supported by a central programme of work that is designed to address structural and cultural contributors to gender inequality. This work includes actions to improve recruitment processes and career progression opportunities for women, a review of the impact of unequal workload allocation on research performance and a commitment to create transparent processes for filling significant departmental leadership roles.

Our Senate and Council Committees now have an overall average of 51 per cent female membership. Five out of 12 colleagues on our Executive Board are female, including our Deputy Vice-Chancellor.

We are also committed to improving the working environment for women, by providing support for women at specific life stages.

We know that caring responsibilities disproportionately fall to women and as part of our commitment to supporting staff members who combine work and caring responsibilities, the University has agreed the enhanced provision of up to five additional days (pro rata for part-time staff) paid leave to cover emergency caring responsibilities for all staff with dependents. 

We are in the process of establishing a formal Carers Network to provide much needed support for those staff with caring responsibilities, specifically for elderly or vulnerable relatives and we continue to commit to our membership with Employers for Carers and Carers UK who will assist us in this work. 

We have also introduced a new fertility leave policy that gives up to five days pro-rata paid leave to staff needing to attend fertility related appointments, as well as up to two days pro-rata paid leave for partners, per treatment cycle.

We have established a new working group to look at identifying and removing barriers to promotion in relation to gender, race, and disability.

Race equality

Since the publication of our updated Race Equality Strategy and Action Plan in 2021, we have been taking action to improve race equality at our University. Following an extensive consultation with BAME students and staff and specifically targets issues of under-representation, progression and attainment. One of our key objectives is to close the differential award (attainment) gap for BAME students at the University, which stood at 8.5 per cent in 2018. 

We acknowledge that we still have work to do, therefore our strategy and action plan is a live document that continues to be reviewed, updated and amended over time as we progress the actions and learn from our experience, our community and experts in this area. There is a Race Equality Steering group with representation from various areas around the University and the Students’ Union to oversee progress.

Over 7,000 staff members have completed a mandatory ED&I training module and more than 130 colleagues in senior positions have attended full-day, race equality training workshops delivered by Advance HE. Diverse Minds have delivered online training sessions for staff in Student Support Services including wellbeing advisors and counselling service staff.

For the last two years, we have created and delivered a three-phase anti-racism programme for all first-year undergraduates that covers our basic principles of race equality and allows students to learn about the complexities of the societal effects of racism through department lectures and workshops. 

At the end of 2019 we launched Report + Support, a service that enables students, staff and external visitors to the University to report incidents of discrimination and harassment and seek support. 

To progress our work around tackling racial inequalities and build upon our Race Equality Strategy and Action Plan, we’ve signed up to the Race Equality Charter. This framework will help us understand the current situation at Sheffield fully and identify where institutional and cultural barriers may be standing in the way of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) staff and students.

To read more about how we are progressing and improving inclusion, including our work on race equality, visit our Inclusion web pages.

Disability equality

From consulting with our staff and students on a university-wide disability survey to launching our disability equality strategy and action plan in 2022, we are committed to improving the experiences for our disabled staff and students.

We know that we still have a lot more to do to progress this work for our university community. Following the consultation in 2021, we have listened to feedback from our University community and have already started making changes to improve the experiences and support available to our disabled students and staff.

As part of our Disability Equality Strategy and Action Plan, we have committed to identifying and delivering the specialist support that is required to support disabled colleagues and their managers. In November 2022, we appointed a new Staff Disability Advisor role to provide support and guidance to disabled staff and their managers on all matters relating to disability in the workplace. 

We are committed to providing  financial support for reasonable adjustments required by disabled staff at work. Clear guidance has been developed for managers and staff about how they can access the available budget.

We are committed to helping staff get the support they need. Access to Work is a government support programme that can provide practical and financial support for those with a disability or long-term physical or mental health condition. Through the programme, disabled staff can access specialist assessments, recommendations for reasonable adjustments, and financial support.

To read more about how we are progressing and improving inclusion, including our work on disability equality, visit our Inclusion web pages.

Wellbeing and workloads

As part of our work to improve staff wellbeing, we established a Stress Risk Management Working Group. The group includes colleagues from Human Resources, Health and Safety and trade unions, to work collaboratively to identify and mitigate stress at the earliest opportunity.

The group developed a Departmental Stress Risk Assessment and Action Plan template with accompanying guidance that is now being used extensively across the University. We invited departments to participate in a pilot for stress and resilience training, which was well received. Following delivery of the original objectives, this group has recently reconvened and is focused on the development of a revised Stress Risk Management Policy, associated guidance and forms. 

We have also established an Academic Workforce Consultative Group, chaired by Professor Craig Watkins, Vice President and Head of the Faculty of Social Sciences, involving trade union colleagues and academics. The working group aims to establish how the University can better support academic staff to deliver excellent research, teaching and leadership. It evolved from an earlier group which considered academic workload, and made recommendations to UEB which are now being implemented within faculties. The group contributed to the wider consultation on the University's Code of Conduct for staff, launched in October 2022. 

In 2022, we convened a working group to explore issues and concerns around professional services workloads.

Mental health

We recognise the importance of creating a positive environment where colleagues are supported and feel able to talk openly and with trust about mental health problems and seek help if necessary.

We are currently working to develop a joint staff and student Mental Health Strategy that will align with the key principles of the Student Minds Mental Health Charter Framework. This work will drive our institutional mental health action plan for staff and students and for the first time will ensure a whole-university holistic approach to mental health at the University of Sheffield. This work will intersect with our Disability Equality Strategy and Action plan which is also currently in development. 

Aligned with the Mental Health at Work Commitment, during the past two years the University has participated in Minds Mentally Healthy Universities Pilot Scheme. One of the key outcomes of the pilot is the new Mental Health at Work Commitment Guide for the Higher Education Sector. During this period, we have successfully trained a cohort of our Wellbeing Champions in championing mental health. Our Wellbeing Champions community has grown and we currently have 90+ champions. 

We have also established a Staff Mental Health Peer Support Scheme. Peer Supporters are staff with lived experience of mental health problems, who are well placed to provide support to their colleagues. 

The University has also announced its association with This is Me Yorkshire, a pioneering initiative to reduce stigma and dispel myths around mental health in the workplace. 

Our dedicated Mental Wellbeing web pages include mental health wellbeing resources, signposting to relevant resources and provide guides and information for staff and managers alike on key themes such as coping with change and supporting neurodiversity in the workplace. We use the hub to promote local charities and partnerships, for example, Sheffield IAPT and the Access to Work Mental Health Support Service. Training and development for staff and managers has included the how to series modules including, ‘How to have a Wellbeing Conversation’, ‘How to Ease the Load’ and ‘How to Lead through Change’.

Casual working

In 2019, following discussions with University and College Union (UCU) colleagues, we confirmed our commitment to ensure all regular scheduled teaching is undertaken by staff on employment and not casual contracts.

We continue to monitor external funding streams and look to see where we can transfer fixed-term contracts to open-ended contracts where there is some certainty the funding is likely to continue.

Following feedback from several departments, and in agreement with UCU, we have created a Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) employment contract at Grade 7. This is to recognise the type of work some departments have told us they need postgraduate research students to carry out and has been available for departments to use since September 2019. This builds on the constructive work we have previously undertaken with our UCU colleagues to agree the employment status and terms of employment for our PGRs who undertake teaching alongside their studies.

In August 2023, we began constructive discussions with our local UCU branch on how graduate teaching assistants are employed, and on other ways of providing more stable employment for colleagues across the University. The Anticasualisation Working Group will continue to meet regularly.

LGBT+ inclusion

We're working hard to create an inclusive University for our LGBT+ community.

A LGBT+ Strategy Review Group was established to review our work to progress LGBT+ inclusion and identify any provisions that need updating and any gaps. Their work and feedback from our staff and student community have helped develop the new strategy and action plan. 

Delivery of the Action Plan will be led by our LGBT+ Equality Delivery Group, comprising senior stakeholders from across the University. Continuing on from the work of the LGBT+ Strategy Review Group, the Delivery Group will work collaboratively to oversee the delivery of actions, which will be published via a live action plan dashboard. 

To ensure that the lived experiences of our LGBT+ students and staff shapes our work, an LGBT+ Equality Advisory Group has been formed. Members will offer a sounding board, constructive challenge and advice on the implementation of the action plan. 

Read more about how we’re improving LGBT+ inclusion