HR and payroll support for university and HE institutions
The higher education sector can be challenging for HR and payroll teams tackling complex pay structures, pensions, multiple contracts and HESA returns. They’re also responsible for attracting a diverse, talented workforce.
A specialist HR and payroll system simplifies admin, ensures accuracy and automates everyday tasks.
We can help you with:
- Streamlining recruitment and onboarding
- Automating time-consuming, laborious processes
- Ensuring you’re compliant with data protection and other legislative requirements
- Achieving 99.99% payroll accuracy
- Managing pension schemes
- Security and peace-of-mind
HR and payroll solution manage both complex and day-to-day challenges
We will help you meet strategic and operational objectives. We administer and pay 24% of UK university employees through our robust, innovative system which is used by nearly 50% of UK universities.
Our industry experts engage with education professionals in the ongoing development of our products and services.
Overcome complex payroll challenges
Our specialist payroll solution delivers unerring pay accuracy and automates processes to ensure employees paid by the hour, term or year are paid accurately, on time, every time.
Attract and retain the best talent
Our streamlined online recruitment module helps reach a wide candidate pool, enabling you to attract international academics and educational support staff.
Free-up time, reduce admin
Our solution automates HR tasks, freeing up time and reducing costs. It helps manage sickness, timesheets and staff rotas in one place with automatic reporting built in.
Stay compliant and secure
Keep employee records secure. Our comprehensive HR and payroll software is regularly updated in line with legislation and supported by rigorous security processes.
Quality training
Deliver targeted training by matching role requirements with people profiles. Managers can monitor progress through a holistic up-to-date view.
Greater autonomy for employees
Employee self-service and chatbots on both desktops and mobiles facilitate finding answers and key information quickly.
Find out why some of the top UK universities count on us for HR and payroll

Higher Education Pocket guide
Our handy new guide helps explain why our services are trusted across many education institutions. Get more insight into the pressures the education industry faces and how MHR can resolve the pressure of higher education establishments, with tailored, best-of-breed solutions.

Complex payroll made simple
With different employee grades – from course leaders to lecturers to support teams – people are employed on varying pay scales and different contractual arrangements.
iTrent’s comprehensive payroll software – ideally suited to higher education – ensures all employees (whether paid hourly, by term or year) are paid accurately.
Our payroll solutions allow for the running of multiple payrolls simultaneously, managing pension schemes while reducing manual processing times.

Seamless recruiting and onboarding
In the competitive higher education world, the ability to attract international academics is crucial. By streamlining the journey, recruitment and onboarding processes are sped-up significantly.
The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) – which ensures compliance is vitally important to the higher education sector. The HESA return has been created as a standard report in iTrent, produced in the correct format with appropriate field validation.

Improved compliance and enhanced security
For academic establishments with complex staff records, guaranteeing personal data security can be a challenge.
Our cloud-hosted HR and payroll system facilitates the secure storage of employee records and documents in one central, location. Additionally, iTrent Shield provides added layers of security through multi-factor authentication and user behaviour analytics, making it easier to stay on top of compliance and data protection requirements.
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