Professional, Technical, Operational & Learning (PTO&L) Framework review

The university’s negotiating team and the Joint Trade Unions (JTU) successfully concluded local pay negotiations for the year 2024/25, with the JTUs formally accepting the pay award. The acceptance of the pay offer in its entirety enables progress on the commitment to develop a reformed Professional, Technical, Operational, and Learning (PTO&L) Framework.

I will be leading this significant undertaking with a dedicated cross-university Working Group, including local Joint Trade Unions (JTU) and staff network members to ensure a comprehensive and inclusive approach. The Working Group will provide input and feedback on a range of proposals for the new framework for approval from the University Management Board (UMB), after which formal negotiations with the JTU will commence.

Following the work we have undertaken to revise our Academic, Research and Teaching Frameworks, the reform of our PTO&L Framework will enable structured and coherent career pathways for our staff with clear expectations required of each job level, in addition to improving our processes and governance.

Our work will be data-led including reviews across external benchmarks and stakeholder feedback, whilst also understanding the different approaches used in the Higher Education and other sectors. The reforms will also support the delivery of the ambitions contained in the Great People pillar of Imperial’s Enabling Plan where people and ideas thrive, and the employee experience is one of growth and belonging. 

Richard Martin
Registrar and University Secretary 
Chair - PTO&L Framework Review Working Group

What is within scope of this review?

• Review of best practice frameworks across all sectors.
• Review the current grading structure, including the starting point for a fixed salary.
• Develop new job family descriptors (for Professional, Technical and Operational only), to enable improved future career progression in addition to structured job description templates which are to be consistently used and applied across the university.
• For the Learning job family, only the pay structure will be reviewed and considered. Work is ongoing on the review of this job family.
• A review will be undertaken with regards to the future pay progression process, and if the university continues with the current auto-incremental increases which occurs annually in October for each year of employment served or if a revised process is adopted where evidence of delivery and outcomes during the year are reviewed first against a maximum of up to five spine points per grade.
• Review of the London HEI and other London sectors' median to upper quartile pay benchmarks obtained from independent external providers by the HR Reward team.
• Develop draft pay structures along with implementation options and costs based on the grading structure and informed by the pay benchmark information.