Previous page

Table of Contents

Next page

Report of the Council and the General Board on new arrangements for determining the initial place on the scale of stipends on appointment in respect of non-clinical academic and academic-related officers and unestablished staff

The COUNCIL and the GENERAL BOARD beg leave to report to the University as follows:

1. Scope of this Report

1.1 The Council and the General Board will be bringing forward in the near future a number of proposals concerning the recruitment and retention of staff designed to improve and streamline the existing arrangements. Some of these proposals require further detailed consideration; others are at the point where the Council and the Board are likely soon to be in a position to present them to the Regent House. In order to expedite progress in this area, the Council and the Board have agreed to publish Reports as and when such proposals have been fully considered and are ready for consideration by the Regent House. This Report is concerned with the improvement of the present policy of determining the place on the relevant salary scale of appointments to non-clinical academic and academic-related offices and, by analogy, the improvement of the current policy which applies also to unestablished staff, including contract research staff. The policy with which the Report is concerned affects only the appointments to offices which have incremental salary scales. It should be noted that the additional increments and steps which have been placed above scales of stipends or single-step stipends for the purpose of the additional increments scheme, would not normally come within the scope of the current proposals, although the Chairman of the Personnel Committee, in consultation with the Director or Assistant Director of Personnel may exercise a discretion in exceptional circumstances (see 3.1(1), 3.1(5), and 4.1(5) below). Such additional steps should generally be attainable only as a result of outstanding performance in the office in the course of appointment.

2. The present policy

2.1 Statute D, XVII, 14, which applies only to University Lecturers, provides that:

when there is an incremental scale of prime stipends the General Board, on the recommendation of the Appointments Committee concerned, shall determine a University Lecturer's place on the scale of stipend… .

For other officers, the place on the relevant scale of stipend on initial appointment must be determined in accordance with Regulation 3 of the Regulations on Stipends (Statutes and Ordinances, p. 639), which reads as follows:

If there is an incremental scale of stipends for a particular officer, the competent authority, on the recommendation of the authority making the appointment, shall determine the initial place on the scale of the officer concerned.

The present policy for operating Statute D, XVII, 14 and Regulation 3 is based on age-relation. Regulation 1 of the Regulations on Stipends (Statutes and Ordinances, p. 639) lays out the general scale of stipends for University offices, specifying the age-relation in respect of all points up to the equivalent of the top of the University Lecturer scale.

2.2 Under the existing policy additional increments above the appropriate age-related point on the scale may be awarded to take account of current basic salary (excluding London Weighting Allowance and other benefits such as non-contributory pension schemes). Account may also be taken of 'live' offers by another potential employer which the appointee has not formally accepted, provided that there is written evidence that an offer has been made. The number of additional increments which may be offered is limited to the number required to match existing salary; there is no scope for awarding increments as a recruitment incentive, although a lump sum payment may be offered in order to induce recruitment. The Council and the Board believe that this policy, and the customary practice of operating it, has become deficient in several important respects and has ceased to serve the University effectively in recruiting academic and academic-related staff. The policy and practice take insufficient account of the weight and length of relevant experience, allowing no scope for offering 'additional' increments on appointment as an incentive to recruitment, and given the increasing number of appointments made in recent years from institutions and commercial organizations outside the University, have led to the creation of inequities between 'incoming' and existing staff, and in some cases to a failure to recruit, particularly in the more specialist areas. Moreover, under the present arrangements a number of staff have been appointed at places on scales which, because of age-linking, are higher, in some cases considerably higher, than could be justified by their experience and level of current salary.

2.3 The proposed new arrangements will apply to all new appointments. With regard to the relative positions of members of staff whose initial salaries were determined under the current arrangements and of those whose initial salaries will be determined under the proposed new arrangements, it should be noted that the additional increments scheme, which recently replaced the old discretionary payments scheme, provides a mechanism for members of staff to progress more rapidly up the salary scale in the course of their appointment than is possible by automatic annual incremental progression.

2.4 The proposed new arrangements will also apply to appointments of existing staff resulting from promotion. Promotion now carries a financial reward of not less than two increments; because of the policy of age-linking and the overlapping of some scales, this was not the case until the proposals of the General Board's Report on the recruitment, reward, and retention of academic-related offices were approved in 1998.

2.5 The Council and the Board accordingly propose that the current policy of determining place on the scale of stipends on appointment be replaced by the policy described below.

3. Proposed new policy

3.1 It is proposed that, on appointment, salary will be determined as follows:

3.2 Provided that the appointee has recent relevant experience,

• the salary offered will not normally be less than the current place on the scale which most closely corresponds to the appointee's existing basic salary,
• up to two increments above this may be awarded as a recruitment incentive.

3.3 If the appointee has no, or minimal relevant experience, the salary will be at an appropriate point on the scale up to the point corresponding most closely to present salary. Account must be taken of the levels of salaries of existing staff in the same area.

4. The process for determining the place on the scale of stipends

4.1 Under the present arrangements, the process for determining place on the scale of stipends is straightforward, and for the majority of cases, mechanistic. The Appointments Committee, on the basis of such information as the appropriate age-related point and current salary level of an appointee, makes a recommendation to the Council or the General Board which is minuted. Such recommendations are not normally referred to the Personnel Committee or to the General Board or the Council, as the case may be, since in almost all cases the recommendations conform to policy or precedent and are accordingly approved at officer level on behalf of the Council or the General Board. If it were not possible to resolve a difficulty which arose in relation to a recommendation, the matter would be referred to the Personnel Committee who would advise the General Board or Council, as appropriate, on how the matter should be resolved. It is proposed that these arrangements be replaced by those described below.

5. Unestablished staff

5.1 The same process will be followed as far as possible when unestablished staff are appointed. There is, however, no requirement for Appointments Committees to be involved as there is in Statutes and Ordinances for appointments to University offices. It is therefore appropriate that the Head of the institution or Chairman of the Faculty Board, or person delegated by him/her, for example the Principal Investigator in the case of contract research staff, undertakes the responsibility for making a recommendation as to place on the scale of stipends in relation to the criteria.

5.2 The relevant 'request to appoint' form which is currently used in relation to unestablished appointments will be amended so as to make clear what is required. With regard to appointments of contract research staff, some sponsors operate their own criteria when making funding available for the appointment of such staff on research grants and contracts. Faculties and Departments will be required to take account of such criteria also when deciding what is the appropriate salary on appointment.

6. Recruitment incentive payment scheme

6.1 The Council and the General Board believe that the current policy of recruitment incentive payments to assist the recruitment of academic and academic-related staff in non-professorial grades should be retained alongside the changes of policy referred to in this Report. However, they wish to propose that the current maximum limit of the payment which was specified as 42 per cent of the maximum point of the University Lecturer scale (see paragraphs 21-22 of the General Board's 1998 Report on the recruitment, reward, and retention of academic and academic-related offices, Reporter, 1997-98, p. 807) be revised to 50 per cent.

7. Guidance and date of implementation

7.1 If the proposals in this Report are approved, the Council and the General Board will issue guidance and inform the Heads of all institutions of the date from which the new arrangements are to be implemented.

8. Recommendations

The Council and the General Board recommend:

I. That approval be given to the proposals in paragraphs 3 to 6 of this Report.

II. That, if Recommendation I is approved, the age-linking specified in the age columns in Regulation 1 of the General Regulations on Stipends (Statutes and Ordinances, p. 639) be deleted from a date to be determined by the Council and the General Board.

Previous page

Table of Contents

Next page

Cambridge University Reporter, 13 June 2001
Copyright © 2001 The Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Cambridge.