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Staff appointments

Find information and guidance to help you with appointing your research staff, obtaining financial approval and what to do in the event of a budget shortfall.

Although research staff recruitment is managed through HR, Principal Investigators, Departmental Administrators and Award Services are all integral to the process.

Advertising a staff appointment


All job advertisements must be placed through the UCL's online recruitment system, TalentLink (UCL login required).

A departmental account must be given for the advertising costs. Once the research project has been activated, with the new staff member commencing on the project, the advert cost can be moved to the project if it is an eligible cost to the funder. Please see the funder’s terms and conditions.

Appointment of successful candidates


Requests to appoint staff to research projects must be submitted via MyHR, Department Transactions.

Department Transactions is a workflow tool used by Departments, Finance, and Human Resources to support employment contract administration. Guides to provide a step-by-step walkthrough of the various workflows in Department Transactions can be found on the MyHR website.

Financial approval


Award Services, Post-Award team, financially approve all new appointments or amendments to existing staff on research projects, submitted via MyHR, to ensure the following:

  • There is sufficient budget available.
  • The appointment is within the project duration.
  • The appointment is eligible, as per the funder’s Terms and Conditions.

Once approved by the Post-Award team a workflow is sent to HR Services to action.

Please note that some funders require prior approval of an appointee before the post is confirmed, or to approve changes from the originally planned appointments.

Shortfall in staff budgets


Several funders require organisations to apply for funding excluding any provision for pay awards, preferring to apply their own inflation scheme e.g. the UKRI. In some cases, this is lower than UCL’s forecast inflation rate on staff appointments. This may result in a budget shortfall.

In this situation, Award Services will advise either to:

  • Reduce the length of appointment to fit within the available budget (this does not apply to Fellowship posts).  Please contact your Research Finance Administrator for further information should you require this
  • Vire (transfer) from another budget within the Award, if allowable by the funder’s terms and conditions
  • Fund the shortfall from an alternative non-research source.

Further information with regard to guidance on UCL contracts of employment can be found on the HR website

Research Funded Studentships


Payment of student stipends and tuition fees are administered by the Student and Registry Services. If a student is to be funded by a research project then a Form S should be completed by the academic department and submitted to Award Services via the Portico system.

Award Services is responsible for checking there is sufficient funding on the project, that the costs are eligible, authorising payment, and subsequent claiming of the student stipend and tuition fees from the funder.