Zone Based Pay & Reward Structure - Professorial & Senior Administrative Staff

Message from Professor Andrea Nolan, Senior Vice Principal

Colleagues,

As you will be aware, the University has been working towards the implementation of professorial zoning for some time.  I believe that this is a significant and valuable exercise to provide a pay and remuneration framework that is consistent, transparent and fair, and which reflects equality of opportunity with respect to development and career progression for the professorial and senior administrative groups.

This represents the second phase of the Maximising Academic Performance and Career Development (MACPD) as detailed below:

• To ensure the effective performance management and reward and recognition of Professorial and Senior Administrative staff
• To facilitate the effective grading and reward of Professorial and Senior Administrative staff across the University.
• To review and revise academic promotion criteria to include evidence-based quantitative and qualitative assessment measures for all other Research & Teaching staff.
• To review academic probation in order to develop a holistic early career development path to support ‘new’ academics.

Staff within the Professorial and Senior Administrative groups are instrumental to the realisation of the University’s strategic goals and ambitions through their leadership roles.  The modernisation of pay and remuneration principles for this group, consistent with the large scale exercise applied to all other staff in the University some time ago, will enable the University to provide a clear career structure and assist future succession planning, through the introduction of a four zone structure to replace the current salary scale for Grade 10 staff.

The Project Board and Professorial Working Group, consisting of 24 professors from across all the colleges have worked closely together on this initiative to ensure that future processes for determining pay, rewarding performance and facilitating career development for Professorial Staff are robust and effective. I am confident that the college specific zone descriptors, underpinned by job evaluation principles as set out below, provide a good framework for implementing a modernised pay scale for senior staff.

A full job evaluation exercise will be utilised to assist the implementation of the zone based structure for those on the Senior Administrative grade (approx. 40 in total).  This will enable the assimilation of these unique roles into the zone based reward structure on the basis of job size.

I would like to thank those who participated in the Pilot Zoning Exercise for the Professorial Group; this has helped to ensure the fitness for purpose of the college zone descriptors.  The University has undertaken this initiative in consultation with GUCU.

I welcome and encourage your continuing engagement in this process.