UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK
Notes from the Athena Network Group
Held on
Wednesday 19th August 2015
Present: Kim Adams, Claire Algar, Larbi Alili, Sandra Beaufoy, Liz Blagrove, Lisa Burton,
Katherine Branch, Rachel Brogan, Sue Burrows, Joanna Collingwood, Amy
Hamson, Maryanne Heafey, Sharon Howard, Kayleigh Hyslop, Laura Jackson,
Serena Johal, Richard Moffatt, Charlotte Moonan, Sunita Palmer, Juliet Raynsford,
Alison Rodger, Peter Winstanley, Annie Young
In Attendance: Anne O’Rourke, HR Systems team and Sam Cole, Strategic Planning and
Analytics Office
1.
(a)
Minutes from the meeting held on 7th May 2015
S Beaufoy confirmed that the Jobs.ac logo prices are still unconfirmed. Jobs.ac have
proposed charging an institutional rate of £3000 for 600 adverts which equates to
approximately £5 per advert. Sandra will discuss this with the Athena Steering Group
at its next meeting to determine if a central budget would pay for this. Alternatively
the logos are £25 per advertisement per department.
Minutes of the meeting held on 25th June 2015 were approved.
2.
Presentation of Departmental Athena Data
REPORTED: (Anne O’Rourke)
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Anne advised that the data cut off point is 1st August each year. All last years
data is now ready and will be sent out to departments by the end of August.
Departments must notify Sandra Beaufoy immediately if they intend to
submit in the November round, as ECU need to be informed.
All departments will receive the same data templates, if departments require
any additional information they should contact Anne directly.
The data will focus on Gender and not any other protected characteristics.
No graphs will be provided in the data sets. Departments have a choice on
how they wish to present the data, and therefore if they require graphs, they
should be able to create them easily enough by the data tables.
Although the submission form asks for 3 years of data 5 years will be
provided.
Data on Zero hours contract staff will not be provided as this is currently
recorded on a different system, if departments require this data, contact
Anne directly and she will see if it can be obtained.
A new report will be provided on academic leavers and the reasons for them
leaving. Departments to contact Anne directly, if they require this data.
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Recruitment and selection data has been recorded on different systems over
the last 3 years and therefore the data is problematic to collect. Also
departments have not always been sending through their shortlists for roles,
so the HR data is incomplete. Where possible departments were asked to
ensure that all shortlisting data is returned to HR prior to any appointments
being made. This would then ensure complete data sets.
It should be noted that the number of applications provided on the data is
correct, the data is provided based on the closing date of the advert not the
start date – this caveat should be noted on the submission form to explain
any discrepancies.
As flexible working arrangements are usually an informal agreement made in
departments, this data cannot be provided.
Adoption leave data will be provided.
Again, because departments do not always complete the correct paper work,
data regarding Paternity Leave is not complete. Departments may have more
accurate information and should ensure that this is passed to HR so that the
records can be updated.
DPR completion data can be provided for this year and can be matched with
staff awarded Merit Pay.
REPORTED: (Sam Cole)
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A Dashboard is being created to enable departments to run off their own
data reports on a variety of protected characteristics. It is anticipated that
the dashboards will be available next month.
A named person in the department will have access to the dashboard
The dashboard will provide data on Undergraduate students
A data set has been added to enable benchmarking to compare with the
sector
Once the dashboard is available, Sam has requested feedback on what other
options and data would be useful
The data for those submitting November is now available and departments
should contact Sam directly to obtain their data.
AOB
Alison Rodger thanked the systems teams for the tremendous work that has been
done to ensure a more streamlined process for departments working towards
Athena.
All Athena submission drafts to be sent to Sandra at the earliest convenience, Sandra
has requested that departments send her completed sections for her comments, as
and when they are available, to try to avoid a huge volume of drafts being received
just prior to the submission deadline.
Sandra advised that Institutions cannot apply for a Gold award until at least one
department has been awarded with Gold and all STEMM departments have Athena
awards and a number of arts and social science departments. If departments have
any international work that is being done, which can be included in the Institutional
submission please send details to Sandra for inclusion.
Claire advised that she is setting up a forum to allow departments to discuss
submissions/topics and shared initiatives. This will be a closed forum and access will
need to be requested.
4.
Date for the next meeting
The date of the next meeting is Tuesday 22nd September 2015, 12 – 1pm, MOAC
Seminar Room.