Introduction
Our Total Remuneration Package is designed to attract and retain the people we need to maintain our position as a world-leading institution.
Ensuring your salary is regularly reviewed to accurately reflect your responsibilities and achievement is a key part of this.
The annual Equity and Achievement Pay Review processes allow managers to address equal pay and internal benchmarking disparities in their area and to reward staff for exceptional contribution and achievement. The process is applicable to all staff on Imperial's terms and conditions, with the exception of individuals with a live Employee Relations sanction and staff paid on Clinical/Agenda for Change pay scales.
Both processes will commence in early June and awards are implemented in the October payroll.
Department pay review recommendations will undergo Equality Impact Assessments, prior to review by the Local Decision-Making Boards (at Faculty/ Business School/Support Service area level) to ensure recommendations meet the criteria and that sufficient evidence to support recommendations has been provided. This is in line with the university's commitment to reducing its gender and ethnicity pay gaps and, ensuring equity and a consistent application of achievement pay review awards.
This booklet outlines how we review our pay within our TRP and covers the Annual Pay Award and Equity and Achievement Pay Reviews. If you’d like to learn more about our TRP as a whole, you can visit our website.
Salary
Equity and achievement
Benefits
Pensions
Leave
Wellbeing Perks Environment
Pay Award and Pay Reviews
Each year, the university negotiates with the Joint Trade Unions (JTUs) to determine an Annual Pay Award, which applies an across-the-board increase for all eligible staff, whilst the Equity and Achievement Pay Reviews are individual processes where staff are nominated by line managers.
Salary
We aim to pay median-to-upper quartile base pay for staff.
This is benchmarked externally every year against a set of national comparators. As highlighted in the Benchmarking Report, we are pleased to confirm that our base pay is higher than all comparators across every job family and job grade.
HOW IS IT REVIEWED?
The universty is independent of national pay bargaining which, to date, has been to our staff's advantage.
Internally, base pay is reviewed every year through the Annual Pay Award
Imperial's management (on behalf of the Provost’s Board) negotiates with the Joint Trades Unions – UCU, UNISON and Unite –to determine the level of salary increase in base pay. When negotiations have ended, the annual salary increase is applied to all salaries which are covered by local pay bargaining.
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Lower quartile Lower extreme Upper quartile Upper extreme Median
What
MAY SEPTEMBER AUGUST JULY JUNE Annual Pay Award Equity Pay Review Achievement Pay Review Acrossthe-board process Individual process OCTOBER
The range at which we aim to pay vs. comparators
is a quartile?
Equity
Equity is the process through which we ensure what we pay is consistent, fair, and balanced across roles so that staff receive equal pay for work of equal value.
Alongside our internal benchmarking, we rigorously analyse pay data in order to eliminate any pay imbalances.
When a new role is created at Imperial, it is subject to the Korn Ferry Hay Job Evaluation Scheme to determine its appropriate grade and pay.
All Imperial managers are expected to apply equal treatment and fairness when making pay decisions. When reviewing individual salaries, this must be free from bias in relation to age, ethnic origin, gender, gender identify, gender reassignment, disability, religious belief,
sexual orientation, marriage and civil partnership and pregnancy or bias on any other grounds. Part-time staff, staff on family-friendly leave, and staff on fixedterm contracts must be treated fairly and given equal consideration.
Managers whose responsibilities require them to make decisions on pay are required to attend the university's Recruitment and Selection training, Unconscious Bias training, reward briefings and to also work closely with the Strategic HR Partner for their area.
Imperial is committed to ensuring that all staff understand the core requirements of their role and to ensure they have access to appropriate support and training to enable them to be effective within their role.
HOW IS IT REVIEWED?
The Equity Pay Review is designed to remedy any disparities that arise between roles of a similar profile.
The process is designed to objectively review each member of staff’s salary in line with relevant internal benchmark information. This is in order to ensure parity between colleagues undertaking similar roles across Imperial.
The Equity Pay Review criteria are:
• To address a significant misalignment of a member of staff’s salary when compared to others within the organisation who have a similar role size and profile
• To address equal pay differentials
Managers should review the Pay Review Framework: Guidance for Managers document for more information. Managers are also required to confirm that they have considered every member of staff they manage.
Members of staff may request a meeting with their manager to discuss their salary and to explore how their salary relates to relevant benchmarks.
However, members of staff are not permitted to request insight into other members of staff’s salaries. Heads of HR can provide support to managers with requests from staff on discussions on their salary.
Achievement
Whilst we want to ensure consistency between roles of similar profiles, it is also important to recognise those staff who demonstrate exceptional and sustained contribution to our institutional mission.
There are already a number of schemes in place designed to reward staff who demonstrate excellent achievement.
The President's Awards, Provost's Awards and Julia Higgins Medal and Awards celebrate the achievements of staff across a number of areas and designed for staff at all levels and job families.
We organise an annual Long Service Reception and Dinner to recognise and celebrate our long-serving staff who have completed over 20 years’ service.
We also have several routes available for staff across all job families to pursue promotions and progression.
HOW IS IT REVIEWED?
The Achievement Pay Review is designed to objectively review staff and teams across all Imperial job families who have made an exceptional contribution to the university.
Heads of Department are provided with information on their staff in order to identify colleagues that meet set criteria (outlined on the following page).
Recommendations for an achievement pay award are subject to an Equality Impact Assessment and reviewed by a Faculty/ Support Services decision-making board, who verify that a consistent approach has been applied before recommendations are submitted to Provost's Board.
The Achievement Pay Review criteria are:
• To recognise substantial and sustained exceptional ongoing individual achievement beyond the
usual expectations of the role.
• To recognise substantial and exceptional one-off individual achievement beyond the usual expectations of the role.
Exceptional contribution and achievement must be in addition to the usual expectations and contributions of the role, in line with the Imperial's values and the remit of the grade. All reviews should be informed by an individual’s Annual Review Conversation (ARC) process.
For substantial and sustained ongoing exceptional contribution, individuals will be awarded a consolidated increase in pay. For one-off exceptional achievement, employees will receive a one-off payment (non-consolidated and non-pensionable payment). Payments will be pro-rated accordingly for part-time staff.
Achievement Pay Review Criteria
Recommendations for achievement pay reviews should consider how individuals or teams have contributed towards and exceeded the university's mission in at least one of the three main criteria examples below:
Research and Innovation
• Seminal and contribution-building research
• An outstanding record of research outputs and inputs
• Excellent management of research projects which considerably expands the profile of the individual or team
• Leading large-scale multiple projects reaching across departments and faculties.
• Exceptional achievement in fostering collaborative and interdisciplinary research
• Research that is transformational in impact
• Activity that significantly enhances the reputation and international position of Imperial, well beyond the usual expectations of the grade
Education, Teaching and Student Experience
• Outstanding delivery of teaching and the student experience
• Excellent standards in course development with reviews that result in a step-change to enhance student learning
• Teaching coordination and support carried out to exceptionally high standards
• Volume and quality of teaching-related activity outside of the normal parameters
• Innovative use of technology to enhance student learning that is substantial and transformational in learning outcomes
• Excellence in inclusive practice
• Excellence in supporting the student lifecycle
Service and Contribution to Imperial
• Collaborating in an exceptional way with others outside of the department to benefit the department and/or faculty/Support Services and/or College
• Supporting others in an exceptional way to benefit the Imperial community
• Demonstrating an exceptional contribution to the improvement of service provision, research and or teaching administration or management
• Contributing to internal/and or external activities, e.g. committees or networks beyond the usual expectations of grade
• Producing and upholding exceptional results, through well-managed projects that support the Faculty, Support Services or department and university mission
• Generating successful initiatives in line with the expectations of the individual/ team’s role, (particularly during unexpected or challenging circumstances), or which enable staff development whilst promoting equal opportunity in order to produce excellent results
• Introducing new procedures or streamlining processes, to be more effective and productive well beyond the usual expectations of the grade
• Suggesting and/or piloting solutions to difficult or complex problems beyond what is expected for the grade
• Undertaking a one-off piece of work to a high standard in addition to carrying out all the main responsibilities of their post. This could be a project or research piece which was delivered under difficult circumstances and/or of an exceptional quality.
• Those who have taken on considerable extra work and who have demonstrated excellent achievement under challenging circumstances.
The lists within the three main criteria are not exhaustive.