HR, Contracts, and Salaries FAQ

This article covers common questions regarding HR in Arbor, including Contracts and Salaries. If you cannot find an answer to your query in this article, check our dedicated section of the Help Centre here.

Can I amend staff contracts in bulk?

It is not possible in Arbor to bulk edit staff contracts, for example to change the number of FTE working weeks or edit the start or end dates. These would have to be amended for each staff member. 

There are certain things which can be updated in bulk. This article may be useful when updating pay scales: Can we update Pay Scales in bulk?

If there is a change in contract hours or details you would need to go to the staff members profile, click Contracts from the left-hand side.

For example, to change the salary you would:

1. scroll down to the Salary section, click into the current salary and add an end date
2. then add a new salary with the correct hours. This article here explains how to add a salary: Managing staff contracts and adding a contract to a staff member.

Can we delete staff Positions?

Staff positions can be found via School > All Staff > HR Admin > Positions.

It is not possible to delete Positions that are no longer used. 

We recommend that you don't assign any old positions to staff, they'll then be archived in the 'Historic' tab on the Positions page.

Can we update Pay Scales in bulk?

It is not possible to increase all your pay scale spinal points automatically by a certain percentage or in bulk in Arbor. Schools often want to do this for example when all points are updated in April or September to account for inflation.

However, you won't need to amend the amounts for each individual staff member.

You can either:

• Import the new Pay Scale Spinal Point values in bulk following these instructions: Entity Importer
• Push them down from the MAT MIS
• Click the Set New FTE Salary Values button to update all the values within a pay scale. You will need to enter the full salary amount manually as Arbor won’t be able to calculate a percentage increase. Read more about this in the Adding new salaries to a Pay Scale after review or inflation section in this article.

Can we record Line Managers in Arbor?

There isn't a built-in concept of line managers in Arbor.

However, you could add a User Defined Field to record who is someone's line manager: Using User Defined Fields (UDFs)

When setting up a meeting between a line manager and the person they manage, you'll just need to select the specific staff members: Creating and managing events.

Why can I not add two positions to a staff contract?

In Arbor, each staff member with multiple roles must have a separate contract for each role to ensure data accuracy and compliance with DfE requirements. Guidance is provided for setting up a SENCo and managing staff contracts.

In Arbor, if a member of staff has two roles (such as a teacher who is also your SENCo), you'll need to add a separate contract for each role.

We've created it in this way to match the way that the DfE gather their data, it also means that your data stays clean and so that you won't have mismatches between roles and positions.

For your SENCo specifically, you can see how to set them up here: How to set up your SENCo for the Workforce Census

To add another staff contract, you can see how to do this here: Managing Staff Contracts.