Part III - Annual TRAC

Section C: Staff costs

Chapter C.1 Academic & research staff time

Categories of time

1. Staff time should be attributed to activities and to sub-categories of these activities on the basis of the time actually spent on each activity. This information is then used to attribute staff costs.
2. This attribution is carried out irrespective of who is funding the salary.
3. TRAC definitions should be followed in all cases. These are given in Annex 6.
4. The activities are Teaching, Research, Other and Support. The sub-categories are as follows:
   • the time on Teaching should be attributed between PF and NPF;
   • the time spent on Research should be attributed to each research sponsor type. PFR (institution-/own-funded) and PFR (PGRs) are two of the seven research sponsor types.
5. Where staff wholly or mainly work on one of the main activities (Teaching, Research, Other) then their costs should be attributed directly to those activities:
   • the costs of Research Assistants and Research Fellows whose time (and therefore cost) is wholly chargeable to one or more research projects should be attributed directly to Research. They may carry out Teaching and Support duties, but where the sponsor of their research project agrees to include this time in the project, then it should be attributed to Research in the annual TRAC time allocation process;
   • the costs of visiting lecturers engaged in Teaching should be attributed to Teaching;
   • the costs of contract staff engaged in services rendered should be attributed to Other (or as appropriate for the activity being carried out).
6. Where staff are working on more than one activity, time allocation methods are used to attribute their time, and therefore cost, to activities. Timesheets are not required. Time allocation methods collect time spent on each activity expressed in terms of percentages of a working year or hours.
7. The following guidance – on allocating time between activities – refers to ‘academic time’. It also applies to any other researcher (see Annex 6 for definition) who is not working solely on Research (or Other) activity.
8. When academics are completing time allocation schedules it is possible to design these either to include numerous activities, or to minimise the number of activities listed.
9. As a minimum, academics should separately record time for:

   Teaching
   institution-/own-funded Research
   externally-funded Research/PGRs
   Other (Clinical Services)
   all Other activities
   Support

10. Institution-/own-funded Research and externally funded Research/PGRs should be recorded separately as there is no proxy that could be used to allocate any ‘Research time’ total between them.
11. Clinical services should be recorded separately as O(CS) to allow its subsequent attribution to T, R, O, S on the basis of services received from the NHS (applicable to medical/dental schools working under ‘knock-for-knock’ arrangements):
    • institution staff, paid by the institution, who provide clinical services to the NHS, should initially allocate that element of their time to Other (Clinical Services) activities. This should subsequently be reattributed to T, R, O and S, depending on the services being provided to the HEI by the NHS, where possible;
    • the initial allocation of clinical activities should therefore be recorded in the time allocation system to O(CS), and collected separately from the other types of work being allocated to Other, (such as consultancy and non-Research clinical trials).
12. Annex 10 gives more detail about the attribution of the costs of medical and dental schools. This Annex includes mandatory guidance.
13. Proxies can be used to attribute time further:
    • Teaching time can be attributed between PFT and NFPT on the number of students falling into each category.

      Costs of teaching overseas and self-funded students taught on UK credit-based courses are generally recorded to PFT by academics in the first instance.

      The costs of teaching these students should then be allocated from PFT to NPFT. A proxy of student numbers can be used (the number of FTE overseas and self-funded students, divided by total students being taught). However, this calculation should be made at a departmental level, not at an institutional level.

    • externally funded Research time can be attributed to research sponsor types on the basis of numbers of RAs and PGRs – perhaps weighted; or on the basis of directly incurred costs (excluding equipment purchases).

      However, this can only be done in laboratory departments. Different patterns of research activity in non-laboratory departments, with fewer RAs, make these proxies less usable, and the heads of those departments need to be involved in advising on the allocation of their departmental time between sponsor type.

    • Support time can be attributed to T, R, and O on the basis of the time that has already been allocated to those activities.
    • information about the volume and type of services provided to the HEI by the NHS under knock-for-knock is used to attribute Other (Clinical Services) to Teaching, Research, Other or Support.
14. Proxies should be applied at a department level, not institution level.
15. The following proxies should not be used:
    • income (as the funded elements vary by sponsor, with some paying indirect costs and some not);
    • direct non-staff costs (as the levels of consumables and equipment purchased are not indicators of how staff time is spent).
16. Using proxies, rather than asking academics to record their time against multiple categories of time, does reduce the complexities of the time allocation schedule. However, many institutions believe that these proxies are not sufficiently robust. It is good practice also to collect separately:
    • Support for Teaching, Support for Research, Support for Other, general Support. This provides a more robust method of allocating Support costs to activities (and Support costs are a large item of cost). There is otherwise a danger that Support will be a large figure that cannot easily be understood or attributed to T, R and O.

      However, if these are collected separately then at least four categories should be added (Support for Other should not be subsumed into general Support, for example); and it should not be assumed that scholarship can easily be assigned directly to Teaching or Research – some will relate to all activities and therefore should be assigned to a fifth category of scholarship, or included in the general Support category;

    • PFT courses (attended by both PF and NPF students), and short or overseas courses. This categorisation can often be made by academics.

      What is difficult is for them to categorise their time on credit-based courses between PF and NPF students as the cost of teaching these two types of student is significantly the same. A proxy of student numbers can be a more robust method for allocating Teaching time on credit-bearing courses between PF and NPF;

    • time by research sponsor type. This categorisation can often easily be made by academics (who may only be involved on a few research projects, and with a few PGR students, at a time). This avoids the need to ask the head of each non-laboratory department to allocate their department time to research sponsor type.
17. Some institutions also consider collecting additional information to help satisfy some of their other costing objectives, for example:
    • lower-level activities within T, R or O – e.g. outreach activities and knowledge transfer within O, collected separately from time on consultancy
    • types of Support – preparing bids, or course committees
    • projects, courses or programmes.
18. This information can be useful in course costing, for example. However, it is not a TRAC requirement. It can add significantly to complexity.
19. When recording time, care should be taken with the following definitions:
    • scholarship, as distinct from Research – see Annex 6 - definitions;
    • the inseparability of Teaching and Research. Some academics might find that a small amount of their activity cannot readily be split between T and R. They should apportion this activity on the basis of the amount of T and R that they have otherwise directly allocated;
    • academic time spent in training and supervising PGRs. This should all be allocated to PFR (PGRs). This is despite the fact that different individuals and organizations can be paying maintenance grants, bench fees, stipends, or tuition fees – and not all of these will be PFR sponsors. This apparent anomaly is corrected when income is reported, see Annex 15 (income allocation).
    • overseas and self-funded students who attend the same courses as HEFCE-funded students. It may be easier (and more robust) if the academic reports the teaching of both of these type of student under one category, and proxies are used to allocate the total to PF and NPF, as discussed above.
20. The time on which academics are asked to report should be defined as the total time they have made available for HEI work. This is different from the number of hours they are contracted to work; or any standard working year (e.g. 1650 hours).
21. The time should not include holidays taken and ‘standard’ levels of sickness (i.e. they should not report for TRAC purposes on holiday taken within the entitlement, and sickness up to say two weeks in a year). This has important implications when calculating the indirect cost rate and estates charges and then applying these to the days available to work (i.e. excluding weekends, holidays and ‘normal’ sick leave) – see standard working hours.
22. The time should include longer periods of leave. This might arise from maternity leave, paternity leave, sick leave, secondments or compassionate leave. The allocation of time (and costs) associated with longer periods of leave will depend on whether any cover is to be charged to the department and activity – see Annex 9.
23. Any extra hours over a ‘standard working week’ (howsoever defined) will not be reported under TRAC, even if information on hours is collected by the institution. The extra hours will not be reflected in the costs, as hours are converted to percentages of time when reported and used in cost allocation. TRAC leads to the reporting of costs: it does not consider productivity.
24. Care should be taken with regard to private consultancy. There are three main types of consultancy, although not all of these will necessarily apply within any particular institution. Materiality is an important consideration here – see Annex 9.