Notification of Dates for Time
Allocation Survey
Dear
Colleague
I am writing
now to ask you again to take part in the University’s annual Time
Allocation Survey. I begin by giving you the key information about the period of
time for which you have been asked to return your time
When
You Will Be Required To Complete the Survey
You have been
allocated a 7 day period between which you should record ALL of the time you
spend on University activity, your time period is detailed at the foot of this
e-mail within your log-in credentials information (please note: there is a
section at the beginning of the form to record any leave (annual/sickness etc.)
taken during the allotted week).
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Start |
Finish |
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24:00 |
In order to
access the On-line form you will need to enter your University User ID
( eg. Mtfss…) and your Unique
TAS PIN – your PIN is also included in the log-in credentials
information.
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Your Unique PIN is |
Note:
You will not be able to access the On-line form until the start of your
allotted time period. Further guidance on where to find this and how to
complete it will be sent to you in advance of your start date.
Why It Is Important That You Take Part in This Survey
Message from Professor Martin Humphries, Vice President:
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Each year the University asks all academic members of staff to complete
a simple form to record how they spent time during a particular week. This
note explains briefly how we designed the exercise to make it as simple as
possible, what the next steps are, how staff can help improve the exercise,
but, most significantly, why it is very important for Schools that academic
staff complete their forms carefully: The University could lose millions in research funding
if the results from our survey are deemed unreliable. |
Our Approach
Drawing on the experience of
other universities, and particularly
- we require each academic to record their
allocation of time for just one week;
- we have designed both the form that each
academic has to complete and the accompanying explanatory notes to make
them as straightforward as possible;
- we have introduced a system to allow
forms to be completed on-line.
Why is TAS
Important?
TAS is important for a
number of reasons:
Internal Factors
(i)
If we are to manage the university to achieve its Vision 2020 objectives
while being financially sustainable we need to understand the income and costs
associated with the broad range of activities we carry out so that if we expand
some activities we need to be sure that the costs do not exceed the income. The
biggest element in our cost base is staff time, and while for many staff it is
fairly clear how their time relates to different activities, academic staff can
be engaged in a wide range of the activities the university undertakes, and so
we need to understand how much of their time is spent on different activities.
(ii)
TAS also provides information on how many hours a week our academic staff
are working.
External Factors
(iii)
TAS was introduced in 1999/2000 as part of the TRAC (Transparent Approach
to Costing) process, which is designed to assess how far each University is
managed in a way that is financially sustainable. Under TRAC all Universities
are required by HEFCE to identify each year their costs by broad categories of
activities such as Research and Teaching, and, for the reasons given in (i), TAS is a key part of this exercise. The requirement for
all universities to produce annual TRAC data has been a critical element in the
negotiations with the government over a number of years which has led to
significantly increased funding for higher education, both for recurrent
funding and capital funding. While the focus in the early years of TRAC has
been on funding research and capital, the debate in the next few years will be
on the sustainable costs of teaching, and the data derived from TAS will be an
important element in the debate to persuade the government that more funding is
needed for teaching.
(iv)
More recently, TRAC principles have been used to develop fEC – full
economic costing of research grants and contracts. This has been another source
of additional funding to universities – Research Councils were given more
funding to meet the additional costs of fEC. fEC principles have also been
extended to EU funded research grants.
(v)
However both the funding councils (HEFCE) and the Research Councils
(RCUK) require each university to undergo a Funding Assurance Process (FAP) to
ensure that it is applying TRAC and fEC principles properly. An important
component of FAP is to check that TAS is being conducted satisfactorily (e.g.
we have high response rates, statistically supported sampling procedures etc).
If we fail to satisfy HEFCE and RCUK then financial penalties are imposed.
Specifically in submitting research grants we will not be able to use our own
rates for estates and indirect costs but rather will have to use
‘default’ rates set by RCUK, until such time as our procedures are
deemed to have improved. These default rates are very low and we have
calculated that this could cost schools millions in lost research income while
the default rates apply.
So quite a lot of resources for the University depend
on getting TRAC and TAS right.
What is the
process for collecting TAS data?
(i)
Each academic will be asked to complete the survey for one week in each
financial year.
(ii) Each academic member of
staff is assigned (at random) one week (7 days) of the year for which to record
how they need to allocate all their working hours.
(iii) For each member of academic
staff, we will contact you 4 weeks in advance to notify you which week you have
been allocated, to send you the forms and guidance notes, and you will be given
up to 4 weeks afterwards to submit your form.
(iv) Individual data will treated
strictly confidentially. We will ask Heads of School to comment on the overall
reasonableness of the (un-named) data aggregated for their school.
How you can help refine our processes
Although we have taken a number of steps to considerably simplify the
process, there will be scope to make further modifications in future. So if you
have suggestions about how you think the process could be further simplified or
improved please send them to the Head of Cost Accounting melanie.j.lythgo@manchester.ac.uk
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In summary I stress that this is an important exercise for
the University, and while that is true for all universities, as one of the |
Professor Martin Humphries,
Vice President & Dean of Life Sciences
Chair of Financial Sustainability Strategy Board
What you will
need to do:
In summary,
what you are asked to do now is as follows:
Briefly, when
your allotted week arrives:
• Complete
your Time Allocation Survey using the log in details below to access the
on-line form. If there is a valid reason why you cannot complete the return
electronically please contact Gaynor Newsome (Senior Costing Officer) on 58853
or at gaynor.newsome@manchester.ac.uk
• Use
the links on the form for further information
• Enter
the number of hours spent during the week on University business in the
relevant box against each of the activities listed;
• Finally,
submit your completed return by pressing the save/submit button. It will
automatically be sent through to the TRAC and fEC team.
Note
that you can re-open the form at any point until 4 weeks after the week in
which you participate and add/amend data even if you have previously pressed
submit.
• The data
collected from you is confidential and will be anonymised for processing,
whereby data is summarised by grade (i.e., Lecturer, Senior Lecturer etc.) at
School level.
Please
make a record now of the one-week period assigned to you. We
will send you a reminder via e-mail approximately one week before you are due
to begin your time allocation exercise.
Finally, if
you have any further questions about this exercise please contact either Gaynor
Newsome (Senior Costing Officer) on ext 58853 or at gaynor.newsome@manchester.ac.uk
or Craig Sykes (Costing Accountant) on ext 57673 or at craig.sykes@manchester.ac.uk
Once again,
the University is grateful for your participation.
Professor
Martin Humphries
Vice President
Chair of Financial Sustainability Strategy Board